Minor Kitchen Renovation

The Homestead was built in three to five phases, starting with a one-room adobe cabin (circa 1880) and concluding (we think) with an indoor bathroom sometime after 1930. The building phase that created the most indoor square footage was completed around that same time (~1930) and included a fairly large (200 sq. ft.) kitchen. It is the same kitchen we are using now. In fact, the kitchen cupboards and cabinettes were built on site (in situ) by the same man who built the kitchen, and they are still in place.

What the '30s era construction did not include was insulation or heating. At the time it may not have mattered because it looks as though the cooking was done, for many years, on a cast iron wood burning range. Rural Ways has not had the priviledge of living with one of those, but they look as though they must have given off a great deal of heat. It seems as though the work of cooking would have kept that end of the house warm all the time—probably too warm in the summer.

In any case, at some point during the 1950s though 1970s, the wood-burner went away and was replaced, at the same location, by an electric range. The picture above shows the set-up. The current electric range is an old Gibson from some other era—probably the 1970s. Notice, however, that the wall is tiled with a heat resistant or heat reflective brick. The tile has been painted over, but each piece consists of an outer layer of brick with an inner sandwich of some other heat resistant material. (It does not look like asbestos.)

The reason I know the tile's composition is that I have started to remove it. (See the upper right section of the wall.) VSO doesn't like having it there because it is grungy. You can see from the picture that dirt and grease get into all the cracks and can't be cleaned out. Under the tile is plaster, mostly cracked, and then lathe. What I'm going to try to do is remove the tile while leaving as much of the plaster in place as possible. Then, I'll skim coat the plaster with drywall mud and we'll have a cleaner looking—though textured—wall behind the range. Speaking of the range, Grandma and Grandpa have recently donated a newer model that we will try to install.