looking into kitchen from our living-dining room/The Hall:
...and miss it in our other place especially since its hung-up/high cabinets are literally starting to fall off the wall, yikes!!! So I'm trying to figure out an economical and attractive alternative. Here are retro thoughts from 1925 on that, from Modern Priscilla Home Furnishing Book:
In the kitchen the question of built-in furniture is more important than in any other room. First comes the decision of what to build in and what to buy ready-built. The kitchen cabinet is the outstanding example of such equipment. It is more convenient than a pantry and combines, in its cleverly designed spaces, a place in which to store food supplies, a shelf for food preparation, tills for money with which to buy food, reminders of what to buy, directions for preparing and serving food, and even (perhaps we might say often) a place where one may eat a cozy informal meal, in order to save work. A kitchen cabinet is much better bought than built in. It has been planned to achieve the greatest possible economy of space and it comes into the house entirely equipped for service.Surely this "kitchen cabinet" is like the Hoosier cabinet my grandmother had; I've collected some pictures of such treasures:
The same chapter says it's preferred to have built-in things rather like I posted about just before this, such as "a closet to receive the food supplies [delivered] to the house," in an outside wall, so "no muddy feet insult the kitchen floor and you are free to leave the house." They suggest "above this compartment an iceless refrigerator" useful except in hot months and recommend space for inserting glass milk bottles.
Also, they say "the best built-in feature of all is the cabinet partition between kitchen and dining room. The wall is entirely omitted and in its place are installed shelves and drawers which open from either room," saving many steps because you put washed dishes away next to the place where they'll be needed next.