That Olde Tyme Look

The steady march of progress is robbing this kitchen of some of its original charm. Don't get me wrong: the room is far more sanitary than it ever was. It's an improvement, to be sure. But there's a real contrast between how this room was originally finished and how it looks now.

Take the walls. This room was originally finished in nice bead board below the chair rail, with plaster above. The redwood tongue-and-groove bead boards are all around the lower half of the kitchen. The redwood was stained originally, but got painted over later. Oddly, we've found a mix of green and yellow boards on the same wall, and some are more faded than others.

I had briefly (very briefly) thought we might restore the bead board in the kitchen, but after taking a closer look we quickly abandoned that idea. It would never pass the health inspection, but even if it did... nah. It's too far gone.

The first restaurant that went in here in the 1970s covered the room in a mixture of stainless steel and aluminum. The stainless held up pretty well, but the aluminum sheeting corroded and was pretty nasty. When we removed the old kitchen sink we also tore off the aluminum behind it, and uncovered all of this bead board. That also gave us the opportunity to replace the old plumbing and re-wire the electrical outlets on this wall. See that ungrounded outlet near where the sink used to be? Yikes.

After all the behind-the-wall work was done, the next step was to mount "green board" over the top of the bead board and plaster. That's water-resistant drywall, and lays the foundation for the new stainless. We had a local stainless guy come in and take measurements. Then he scurried away to get the materials and came back at the end of December to install it. Installation took maybe an hour, with another day to let the adhesive set.

Now the "wet wall" is all shiny and neat and up to code. Once we get the sink installed it'll actually be functional, too. We've got new PEX plumbing in the wall, new shutoff valves, and a new GFCI outlet. (Electrical note: the entire metal wall is now grounded.) It may not look quite as charming as the old redwood bead board (at least, back when that was new), but it's a lot safer for cooking and a lot easier to clean.