While we're on the topic of renovations - part 2

Today, finishing up on a couple of posts about our pending kitchen remodel at the Hawksbill Cabin…

On our block in Alexandria, there are two other houses that have the same exterior profile as ours. At one time, we thought this might be a series of the same kit house, but closer inspection and analysis reveals this isn’t so – for one thing the interior rooms would be in a similar layout and the dimensions would be precisely the same. So the developer here, in 1929, basically designed the three houses pretty much to order, and they very substantially inside.

We had befriended one of the other owners, Mrs. Barclay, who had lived in her place since the 1940’s. Mrs. Barclay would visit our house on our January 1 open houses, and we’d take her on a little tour of the place. She would delight herself by pointing out the little differences in where the walls were, the arrangement of the bathroom, things in hers but not in ours, or vice-versa.

She always offered that we could come for a similar tour of her place, but sadly, she passed away this spring, and we never took her up on it.

Our realtor arranged for us to have a look at the place when it went on the market. We remembered Mrs. Barclay’s description of her kitchen, last remodeled in 1954 or so. Visiting her house brought back fond memories of our friendship with her and her visits to our place, and as we looked around we realized that there were a lot of opportunities to remodel and modernize the home she had loved for so long…not a challenge we were ready to take on, however.

So the house went on the market, and within a week or so, it had three competing offers (I’ll reserve the details for a future post), with the successful one an all-cash deal at the offered price. We subsequently learned about the remodel plans the new owners have, and we offered to let them look around ours if they were looking for ideas.

We also remembered the kitchen in Mrs. Barclays – custom cabinets, likely built and installed by her late husband.

Given the mid-century heritage of these, in the back of our minds we thought we might like to save them to recycle into some future project if they became surplus.

Sure enough, the new owners decided not to use the cabinets. We’ve decided to use the wall cabinets - shown in these photos - as part of the kitchen remodel. The Hawksbill Cabin kitchen is galley-style and short on storage, so these will double what we have in there. We will mount them on the stone wall above the sink, under the new windows. Their “streamlined” shapes will fit right in with the new countertop and mid-century style of the house.

We also have the two base cabinets. No plan yet on what to do with these.