Nope, it won’t let me save the photo, I’ll just have to hope the link still works.

A house by the same builder as ours has just sold. Most of theirs was in its original 1950s state, although the wood-panel walls in the master bathroom were replaced with tile: those did tend to rot.

I’m having flashbacks at how much of it is like what we saw when we walked in this place the first time, right down to the white kitchen tile. That bar across the entry to the kitchen hit Richard at forehead level and the woman across the room said into her phone, Oh, these people are not going to buy this house!

She and her husband were fixing it up for his parents to sell. They were Japanese and had changed the master shower to be nice and low. I was a little too tall for it at 5’5″. Richard was 6’8″. It was such a small stall that he couldn’t kneel down to get under the shower head because his legs were cut in half by the metal runners the door slid across on. The daughter-in-law knew whereof she spoke.

That showerhead was the first thing to go. The bar in the kitchen went when we remodeled seven years later.

Our kitchen cupboards were–this was the latest thing in the 1950s–pressboard on wooden runners: you don’t pull them open, you sliiiide across, lightweight and easy.

Except that after the Loma Prieta quake, if you tried to slide them they simply fell down on your head. That got old.

In that listing they’ve given the upper cabinet fronts hinges instead. They’ve put in a double oven. In the original, the oven was up high, singular, and so small that when I bought a Thanksgiving turkey the first year, I got it home and suddenly realized it might not fit in. Good thing it was a small one. And in ours, the kitchen had been painted sunflower yellow and avocado green.

I’m mostly typing this because our youngest was six when we started remodeling and I don’t know how much the kids remember of how it was. It’s fun to see it. We still have those hanging sphere lights; they’re great for telling if a sudden rumble is a new earthquake or not.

And that kitchen makes me really appreciate our oak cabinetry.