Retro CoMO

It’s been a slow week on local Craigslists (though that art deco desk in Holts Summit was posted again- now $14! that’s a $1 savings!), and one of my favorite retro blogs is having a big week, so I want to direct you over there.

Retro Renovation is a pretty great site, with a blog and a Flickr and a very dedicated webmaster in Pam.  The tagline for Retro Renovation is “Love the House You’re In!” which is very inspiring especially on weeks like this week, which is themed Save the Pink Bathrooms.

Both of my grandmothers have very 1950s bathrooms.  My maternal grandmother’s master bathroom has a turquoise toilet and sink with a pretty yellow tile pattern, and my paternal grandparents had a pink bathroom that was almost untouched until they tore out the bathtub a few years ago to put in an accessible one (they are getting older), while the hall bathroom has fixtures that are a kind of warm brown color with matching tile.  And they both have kitchens with 1950s cabinets and in-wall vintage ovens that still work.

It’s so sad when people buy vintage homes and then tear out 40-year-old bathrooms & kitchens to put in updated styles that don’t match the architecture and will look dated in 5 years or less.  I understand it if the fixtures are nonfunctional, or even if, like my grandparents, you want to put in something that is necessary for your advancing years, but tearing out otherwise functional fixtures is really wasteful.

Case in point: an amazing art deco house in Centralia, Missouri, is currently for sale.  My parents live just south of Centralia, and saw the inside of this house at a party a few years ago.  My mother raved about the vintage kitchen and bathrooms.  When the house went on the market, I went looking for the listing so that I could see the images from the inside.  And, of course, they’d torn out the vintage kitchen and bathrooms and replaced them.  I’m sure that the realtor thought the house would be more marketable with updated kitchen/bathrooms.  And perhaps that’s true, especially as the house is probably the biggest house in that town, and costs $735,000, which is probably more than any house in that town has ever sold for.  But if I had the $735,000 to buy that house (and I so would), I would want the vintage fixtures.  If I wanted to update, I would want to do it my own way, not just Generic Updated Granite & Stainless.

But maybe that’s just me (and everyone else on the Retro Renovation website).

Meanwhile, I live in a house built in 1994, and I am always thinking about how a future owner, 30 years from now, will like certain “vintage” elements to my house, like all the ridiculous orangey oak that is everywhere.  I would love to paint it all crisp white, but I am concerned that that future owner would slap my hand.  ”Why did you do that to your gorgeous vintage 1980s oak?” they cry.  So currently I live in a 1994 house with a lot of mid-century modern furniture and 1980s oak.  I am nothing if not an enigma.

(I should do a post about that house in Centralia since the house is still for sale and the pictures are online.)

Anyway, the point of this post (I’ve digressed) is the amazing resource that is Retro Renovation.

It doesn’t stop with bathrooms; Pam posts about all kinds of things, from vintage and reproduction light fixtures to textiles to appliances.  She’s got the scoop on where you can get a replacement vintage pink toilet for your own house!  She is also dedicated to getting retro design pictures (new photos of vintage design, vintage photos, and vintage advertisements) into her Flickr photostream, which makes for great browsing.

Pam also has a killer blogroll- I haven’t even checked all of the blogs that are listed on her site yet, because most of them are great reading.

So take a look at Retro Renovation.  Love the house you’re in, especially if you’re lucky enough to live with pink bathrooms.

Retro CoMO is a week old today (which is like a first anniversary in Internet years), so it’s fitting that today seems to be a little slow for Craigslist postings (and Craigslist itself seems to be having some connection problems).

Since things are slow, here’s a shout-out to one of my favorite design & thrifting websites, BackGarage.

BackGarage is a site run by Katherine Raz, and it’s based out of Chicago.  It was totally one of my inspirations when I started this site, and I even emailed Katherine with a couple of questions when I was getting serious about starting this one.  (She emailed me back!  She was so sweet!)

In the site’s own words, BackGarage is “about the aesthetics of everyday living on a thrift store budget”.  On the blog, Raz reviews thrift stores and flea markets, talks about garage sales, and shows lots of pictures of her own and other people’s beautifully designed homes.  She regularly does exhaustive round-ups of Craigslist items in Chicago and random other cities.  In addition, Raz sells vintage items in her Etsy store and posts pictures to her Flickr photostream.  Clearly, it’s a great resource, and not just if you live in Chicago.

I’m not trying to be BackGarage for the Columbia, Missouri, area.  That’s far too much work and I’m far too lazy.  Not to mention that Katherine is already doing a bang-up job with her site, and she doesn’t need poor imitations.

Instead, I want to show that great deals can be found in lots of out-of-the-way areas.  Columbia, Missouri, doesn’t seem like it would be home to much in the way of vintage modern, but there’s more than meets the eye.  I want to show what is available!  And if it’s for sale, I want to find it a good home.