Before the Remodel

Yellow tile and textured glass

The pre-remodel kitchen was a classic early-1950s composition: yellow tile counters edged in dark red trim, upper cabinets fronted in textured obscure glass, and a black-and-white checkerboard floor. A built-in wall oven and cooktop anchored the work wall, with original wood cabinetry wrapping the room, including a curved peninsula counter that separated cooking from the eating area.

Chrome hardware and original cabinetry

The original cabinets carried round chrome pulls set on polished backplates, a detail typical of the period and visible throughout the kitchen photographs. The cabinetry itself was solidly built in warm-toned wood, and its character informed the millwork choices made later in the remodel.

The room-divider screen

A geometric wood room-divider screen stood beside the home's brick chimney wall, sitting on a built-in wood cabinet base. Open squares and rectangles of wood formed a pattern that filtered light between spaces without closing them off, one of the clearest expressions of the home's original mid-century design language.

Brick and hardwood

The interior brick chimney wall and the oak hardwood floors visible in the pre-remodel photographs are part of the home's 1953 fabric. These elements carried through the renovation, which worked with the original architecture rather than erasing it.

Knotty pine and checkerboard tile

Downstairs, the hallway was lined in knotty-pine paneling over a grey-and-white checkerboard tile floor, a finish combination straight out of the early postwar decades. This is the space that the remodel later transformed into the two lower-level suites with their added kitchen and bathroom.

The basement bar

The lower level included a built-in bar with a red-painted back wall, mirrored bar-back, and pendant lights, along with a separate panel-walled media room. These rooms show how the basement was used before the remodel reorganized the lower level into today's suite layout.

Seeing the scope of the remodel

Comparing these photographs with the current galleries makes the renovation legible: the opened main kitchen, the reworked lower-level suites, the smoothed wall surfaces, and the updated lighting and systems all read differently once you have seen the starting point.

The before photos also document the home's provenance. The house arrived at the remodel with its 1953 character intact, and the renovation built on that foundation, preserving elements like the brick, the hardwood, and select original fixtures while updating the home for how it is used today.