A Cooks Tour

 

I keep meaning to write a post about my 50s kitchen - we still have all the original hard wood cupboard units, with leaded glass wall cabinets, that were built when the house was built in the early 1950s.

We also have the original 1950s rayburn solid fuel stove, and in the utilty room there is an old butlers sink with 1950s leaded glass cupboard above with glass storage holders.

 The larder is also luckily still here, complete with shelves, mesh window and old roller towel holder on the back of the door - we are so grateful that the people who owned the house before us did not rip out and replace all these lovely old cupboards and larder, as the majority of people have done.

Here's just a taster, mainly from this morning as I was playing around trying to get some better pictures out of this poor old camera!

Posy from the garden

red geraniums from Mr Italian

mantlepiece above Rayburn

old 1950s solid fuel rayburn - we had this going constantly during both lots of snow last winter, and cooked all sorts of meals in and on it. It made the kitchen as warm as toast! As it runs on logs and coal, it is not the type of stove to keep on throughout the year - but come the autumn..........

sweet biscuit cannister bought for 50p at the last boot fair - it belonged to the stall holders Mother, who had received a matching set of tins as a wedding gift, so she reckoned they must be from the 50s - sadly she had already sold the rest.

Above the sideboard is one of four large canvases I own by artist Gilli Austin, a very talented artist who paints amazing pop art style large canvases and smaller works.

I also have Summer Solstice, Where's the Money in Art (shown below) ,and a fourth which isn't shown on this website (click on her name above to view some of her work).

One day I will do a post on my growing art collection, and on how I aquired these paintings (perfectly legal I assure you, and direct from the lovely lady who painted them!) and for how much - my best bargains yet!

Clutter corner -Yikes that surface needs a tidy!

Amazing corner cupboards with swivel shelves inside that spin round - Magnet, theres nothing new!

leaded glass cupboards - have painted the inside back and shelves of the double cupboard candy pink! As usual, the job is half done and the smaller cupboard is still waiting to be painted!

The three drawers to the left of the sink unit (that you can only see two of) have narrow metal poles side by side instead of a solid drawer base, for storing your vegetables - any dirt or dust falls through and the air can circulate around your veg.

The makers label - Nevastane of London who made kitchens during the 50s

In the rather fuzzy photo above, you can just about see a wooden strip - there is a little button underneath, that if you press it releases a cutting or chopping board - we were amazed at all these clever features incorporated into a kitchen built 60 years ago.

There would have also been one in the sink unit (see picture before, right hand side) but the board is missing

Utility cupboard with thick glass containers below - sadly one is missing, but I shall keep my eyes open for one

Hope you enjoyed the quick kitchen tour!

At some point I hope to paint the cupboards in the kitchen as they are a rather sad steel grey that I am not very keen on. The cupbards above in the utility are a strong blue green - again I will probably change the colour at some point.

But as it is such a well made and unique character kitchen, we have no plans to replace it for a new modern kitchen.

Hope you had a great weekend!