Bringing Back the Charm: A Vintage Farmhouse Kitchen Reveal

An in depth tour of our vintage farmhouse kitchen reveal with all of the details and a little history of our house.

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I am so excited and feel like such a huge weight has been lifted off our shoulders since completing the kitchen. I cannot wait to share our kitchen reveal with you!

History of the house

We honestly don’t know much about the house and it has been so hard to find any information on it. We have tried our local courthouse, the tax assessors office, county clerk, and anyone else we can find to ask. The only information I have found is by tracking back the deeds and by local people in our town. I did a deep dive on ancestry and was able to find out a little information on the family but I have not been able to find any pictures of the house.

I was hoping someone somewhere would have pictures so we could use them for inspiration and help us on our journey of renovating but so far we haven’t found any. Before we bought the house it sat empty for 5 years and during that time people had broken in, vandalized it and used it as a party house. Many of the windows were busted out resulting in animals having access to the house and between the people and animals this house was extremely trashed. It needed an immense amount of work but we absolutely loved it so we set out on a journey to bring it back to life one room at a time.

Cleaning out the house

We started by removing all the trash from each room. The entire house was filled with trash and belongings that previous renters had left behind. During this process the house had no electricity (hints the dark pictures) so we would focus on cleaning one room each day. Some of the rooms took much longer than a day but slowly we chipped away at all the trash until we had a trash free space so we could see what we were working with.

We had to completely gut the kitchen because everything had been exposed to animal feces and urine. When doing that we had to strip away a lot of the detail. Nothing in the kitchen was original to the house except for the pantry. Everything else had been renovated in later years. Our goal with this kitchen renovation was to make it look like it would have been original to the house. We didn’t want it to look cookie cutter or like a builder grade home. Not that there is anything wrong with that we just weren’t looking for that in this house.

Kitchen reveal details:

Stove

Our stove is a 1956 Frigidare. We ended up buying the stove from a family friend. We had to replace the insulation and door gasket on it. For safety measures we had it completely rewired. Thankfully my brother is an electrician and we only had to pay for materials.

The stove has 3 burners and on the back left it has a thrift pot. This pot has many different names but often times it is referred to as a well pot or a deep well pot. It can be used as a fryer or used to cook in it (Sort of like a crockpot today.) The left door on the stove is a massive storage drawer that pulls out. We currently have all of our daily cookware in there, everything besides cast iron. The right door is the oven and broiler and the bottom is another massive storage drawer. We currently store container lids and cookie sheets in there. Many vintage stoves have a warmer drawer but ours doesn’t. Both are storage drawers which works out great since we don’t have tons of cabinetry.

Sink and sinkbase

The sink is extremely special to our kitchen but unfortunately I have very limited information on it. The sink was Ben’s great grandparents sink. We installed it in our previous house but as soon as we bought the farmhouse we knew we had to bring it with us here. His great grandparents remodeled their house in the 1950’s so we know the sink is older than that but that is about all I know.

The sink base we custom built. I ordered the wooden chunky table legs and showed Ben an inspiration picture of what I wanted the base to look like and he took it from there. He built it without any plans so I don’t have those to share. (Sorry!) The sink is 66 inches long and is a double drainboard, double basin sink. Since the sink is so big and since it is cast iron it is extremely heavy so we had to reinforce the sink base so it could support the weight.

Faucet

The faucet is a Kingston Brass faucet in antique brass. We wanted the antique brass color so it would help tie in our vintage light fixtures. I have a whole blog post on the faucet so if you want more information you can read more here.

Fridge

Our current refrigerator is not the fridge we planned on having in our early 1900’s farmhouse kitchen. We were hoping to have a vintage fridge to go with our stove. Unfortunately the one we planned on using ended up being more expensive and beyond our ability to fix. We then tried getting a number of vintage fridges from Marketplace but every sell ended up falling through. So after weeks of delaying our kitchen reveal we decided to go ahead and use the fridge we already had. It was previously the refrigerator in our garage at our old house. We decided to go ahead and use it temporarily in the kitchen until we can find the vintage refrigerator of our dreams.

Cabinet

The cabinet we think came from an old hardware store that used to be in our town. We don’t know much about the cabinet other than it came from a store in our town and we got it from an auction.

When we got it, it was in decent shape it just needed a deep cleaning and needed braced so it would be sturdy enough to hold all of our essential kitchen items.

The counter on the cabinet was in really rough shape and was not salvageable. We used poplar boards to make a new counter so it would match our poplar flooring. We planed, ripped, and jointed them together. I treated it just like butcher block and stained it using a food safe wood stain, sealed it with butcher block oil, and then butcher block conditioner.

Hutch

We decided to use this hutch in the kitchen so we could have the extra storage. Again, I don’t have much information on this piece. We have had it for a couple years now. I got it for my birthday several years ago from a flea market for $80. When we bought it we were told the bottom half of the hutch was a pie safe. The glass was busted out of the bottom when we got it and it needed to be braced up. When we were adding braces to it we found it was built using square nails. So I don’t know the exact age of it but that is an indicator that it is extremely old. At the time of this post we still haven’t replaced the glass yet but it is on the to do list.

Island

The kitchen island came from a local antique shop. It is a vintage pastry table with an enamel top. It isn’t the original base, someone had rebuilt it. I didn’t really mind it wasn’t the original base because it is now extremely sturdy.

Lighting

All of the lighting in the kitchen including the sconces, chandelier, and the single pendant light are all vintage from eBay. From the research I have done they seem to be from the 1930’s.

Walls

Vertical boards

When renovating the kitchen we wanted to keep as much original as possible. The vertical boards were already on the right side of the kitchen but they weren’t behind where the old pantry, countertops, and fridge were. So we bought 1×3’s to put up on the rest of the kitchen walls to match.

Horizontal bead board

Since we were on an extremely tight budget when renovating this kitchen we needed to save money where we could. We found an old house in our town that was about to be tore down so we got in touch with the owner and to our surprise they were willing to sell us some of the material from the house. Salvaged all of the bead board we could from that house. We used it in our laundry room makeover and what was left we used on the walls in the kitchen. It required a lot of time and effort but now that it is up on the walls we love the authentic look it gave to the kitchen.

Brick and studs

The brick and studs are original to the house. We exposed the brick and studs when we were removing the old damaged plaster. The plaster in the kitchen was not salvageable. In the 5 years the house sat empty before we bought it raccoons and other animals had been living in the kitchen so the ceiling and walls were saturated in feces and urine so it all had to be removed.

After removing the plaster we saw the chimney and could tell at one point in time they had a wood burning cook stove. We thought it would be so cool to leave it exposed and to help show some of the houses history. We weren’t planning on leaving the studs exposed. Originally we wanted to remove them but we found that the studs were supporting the second story and the brick that sticks out. Our only option was to remove the brick that sticks out, all the studs, and add a header. We didn’t want to take away from the originality of the brick and we weren’t sure how the brick was laid. If we started taking some of it off we could run the risk of causing it to collapse.

Ceiling

We were hoping we would have enough of the salvaged bead board to use on the ceiling too, but we ended up only having enough for the walls. Since we were working with a tight budget we went to our local lumber yard and bought their discounted bead board. We ended up getting it for half price but it was bowed and some of it had damage. After we cut off the damages and imperfections we now have a beautiful bead board ceiling for half the price.

Floors

We got the poplar flooring from the same house we got the reclaimed bead board from. Some of the boards were 12 – 18 inches wide so we ripped and planned them down to match the flooring in the rest of the house while incorporating a few wider boards. I sealed the floor with 4 coats of Polyurethane for floors in a semi-gloss finish.

Trim and baseboards

The baseboards are 1×8 boards we purchased from our local lumber yard. Unfortunately none of the baseboards were salvageable but some of the trim boards were. We were able to salvage the top trim pieces above each of the doorways and window as well as some of the door casings.

Pantry

The pantry originally was in the left corner of the kitchen but we ended up having to move it to the right side of the backdoor to make the kitchen layout work. We kept the original design of the pantry and rebuilt it exactly as it was. The only changes we made to the design plan was adding two extra shelves. We added one lower to the floor and added one past the doorway so we can utilize all the space up to the ceiling.

Pantry door and hardware

The pantry door and hardware is original. I stripped many layers of paint off the door and door knob and refinished them both. To find out more information on how to safely remove lead paint from an old door you can check out that post here.

Back door and hardware

The back door and hardware we bought from an auction. They had tore down a house in our town and all the material like doors, windows, and mantles went to auction so we bought them to repurpose in our house. Just like our pantry door this door and hardware had many layers of paint also. I stripped the paint off and refinished them and now we have a beautiful back door that allows sunlight to pour in.

Paint colors

For primer we used Zinsser BIN. We used High Hide white in a flat finish on the walls, baseboards, trim, and ceiling. The yellow cabinet is the same color it was originally when we got it. I took a drawer to the hardware store and got it color matched so I don’t have an exact paint color name but I do have the custom color code.

Stain colors

The back door, pantry door, and sink base are all Early American. The countertop is Hazelnut.

If you have any questions or comments about our kitchen reveal feel free to leave them below!

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