I was the executive director of a Habitat affiliate with a ReStore. We never received, or requested, cash donations to pick up items. These days some ReStore locations request a donation to facilitate a pickup especially now with the cost of gas and fleet maintenance.

People often get mad that thrift stores price their items 'high' because they were free, but each material donation requires paid and volunteer (which has paid staff time behind them) resources to make them sellable. Habitat ReStore has a pricing guideline to help stores make money to support themselves, build new home and renovate others.

Americans have more discretionary spending money than any generation before. Of course the home improvement people were going to compete for those dollars!! They financed HGTV and the power of advertising took over. The average homeowner was suddenly convinced that permanent fixed elements were suddenly exchangeable! Our grandmas would be SHOCKED the money we spend for purely LOOKS!!!

My DD (20s) has always loved vintage and antiques. As a teen, she and her PaPa (my dad) would enjoy regular outings to area antique malls. Her 1940’s apartment is super cool and eclectic (very few new items) and she has expressed a desire to someday be next in line for our family heirlooms.

My nephew (11) is the same. I recently gave him a vintage horse lamp for his room. He was over one day a couple of years ago and said, ”When you die someday, can I have that lamp?” 😂 I decided not to wait until then. 😆

We never received, or requested, cash donations to pick up items.

I agree they should not be requested. But I want more people to think about it!

I will say that sometime when we have given a cash donation at the time of drop off, a manager was needed to figure out how to process it.

Is this kitchen objectively ugly because it is knotty pine, has a low ceiling, the cabinets do not go to the ceiling, has laminate or Corian countertops, or just because it's at least 30 years old?

Many would say yes to all of the above.

Does the context help? (200 yo house) Does the context matter?

I like that K, and would keep most of it. Laminate is a non-starter for me, because it is plastic, right? And I have a thing about microwaves over stoves. I don't want to stare at a M/W while I cook. Strong pet peeve of mine.

In the late 80s and early 90s not a lot of people were doing granite yet, and quartz had not been developed.

Our cabinets are knotty alder. Or, as we call it, naughty alder. Ha, ha, we’re so witty.

We have rustic tile counters. It fits our style, but I can certainly understand why it’s not for everyone.

I still dream of Allison’s kitchen in her lakehouse. Well, before the now-owners ruined it. I’d like to have a word with them.

I had Silestone last kitchen and miss it. Tile can be a pain.

I don't mind Formica - it lasts an incredibly long time. You just can't put hot things down on it. Another bonus is glass and ceramics don't break when dropped on it - and it usually doesn't either.

I think that's a nice kitchen - not flashy, but simple and functional looking. The floor's really nice looking too.

Here's a couple tougher ones.

Now in color. This was Marjorie Lord's house in Trousdale Estates

A lot of people don't understand that if they wait, ugly and dated come back in style and become trendy again. NO patience. I actually advised someone keep their huge enterainment center and paint an accent wall behind it...we'll see lol!

Look at those 70's plates from @lakeaffect_gw and someone jumped at 'em. Who'da believed it! I guess the trinity Harvest Gold, Burnt Orange and Avocado Green are coming back.

I wanted a tile counter for the sink area in our Butler's pantry in Maine. I had done granite, marble, wood, soapstone, even pewter in other kitchens and I wanted something different. The woman at the tile store had never done a tile counter!

I love my brown furniture. You could buy gorgeous “brown“ antiques for a song these last seven or eight years. I'll be sad when brown furniture inevitably cycles back on trend. No more huge bargains!

I like tile counters and had them in a condo I lived in briefly, they were insalled in the late 80’s when the unit was built and were 4” square dark blue with bright white grout. I was living alone, so no hard useage, but I bleached the grout lines every couple of months, which wasn’t difficult, but bleach is to toxic, I hated doing it. I would have them again, though, it’s such a welcoming look and can add color, pattern and interest, but i would never use bright white grout, and I’d make them funky as hell, There was a poster on the old GW Home Decorating forum who had an incredible tile counter, full of patterns and color, it was so great, I think their name was pllog or something similar? I may be confusing posters though, it was a long time ago.

Jinx I love tile counters! if i did not have a family of klutzes I would have installed them here.

After all the counters we have had over the years and all those I have seen in showrooms and friends’ houses my favorites are still Corian, tile and wood.

And another heresy— a bathroom is the worst place for tile. Solid surfacing is safer, cleaner and to me more visually appealing than all those grout lines. TBH, I even like fiberglass better than tile … she said in a whisper.

Countertops are fashion, just like shoes or hemlines. Nothing else explains why there are nasty rust spots at the soap dispensers and faucets on the granite countertops in the men's room at the Atlanta airport. Corian would have laughed at the rust.

Nothiing but fashion lust explains the Brazilian's ability to continue to import and sell quartzite that bleeds and stains and is completely unsuitable for countertop use. Women continue to fall in love with the bad boy, no matter our warnings.

The deoderant manufacturers need to convince you that you smell, the shampoo manufacturers need to convince you that you have dandruff, and in the sink replacement business that I run, my ads have to convince you that your sink is small, disfunctional, ugly, and unsanitary. Fortunately, the way so many are installed, that's not too difficult a job.

I don't mind people doing what they want to the home interiors, but the third house in a row in my neighborhood was just repainted in dark gray with white trim.

At least the "Little Boxes" Malvina Reynolds sang of came in different colors.

Resale-resale-resale... Even automobiles now are nearly all variations of gray.

I recently visited DD who lives in the Hudson valley area. We toured a summer home of one of the Vanderbilt grandchildren, as well as some homes in a late 1600s Huguenot settlement. I toured some rooms that I thought were beautiful and could be lived in today.

The mistaken notion is that something not on trend is actually ugly.

Hey, I preach that message all the time!

"Dated" should not be a concept; as a society and as citizens of a planet with limited resources, we cannot afford to throw things away just because the color is no longer in style. Personally, I like a number of things that have been "out" for a while: stained glass light fixtures, ceiling beams, simple baths.
I also stopped watching HGTV after the Gains it the scene. I detest about everything she does. It's not peaceful to me but very boring with a dash of impractical.

I like some parts of her style, but you're not wrong about the "dash of impractical".
Thank God there is a "new" trend, in the younger generation, one that is averse to "fast furniture" or condemning dated pieces to the landfill.

Eh, I don't really see that ... maybe it's because we have an Ikea in our city.

Our home was always nicer looking than most of my friend's, but done piecemeal.

That's real life ... cabinets this year, bathroom faucet next year. Few of us do a major overhall all at once, so it's rare for most of us to see "a whole new room".

Only replace the appliances when they break, not because they're the "wrong color".

When I was a kid, my mom painted our Harvest Gold range. It worked.

I can't imagine anyone of a younger age group jumping at the opportunity to hang this up in their home.

I'm 56, and I'd love to have that clock! My Auntie Dot had one similar to that, and I adored it.
We have rustic tile counters. It fits our style, but I can certainly understand why it’s not for everyone.

My mom redid her kitchen while I was pregnant with my now-28 year old. Those tile counters are still in perfect condition.

I can't imagine anyone of a younger age group jumping at the opportunity to hang this up in their home.

I'm 56, and I'd love to have that clock! My Auntie Dot had one similar to that, and I adored it.

uhhh...

LakeEffect, i was reading from my local MCM fb group thqt the sellers’ costs of repairing and refinishing are more than 50% higher than a year ago, sometimes almost double. and they have to pass that along, but people don’t want or can’t pay that. It’s a shame.

Clothes and hairstyles have always received the same ”can you believe we used to wear that?” treatment and laugh. When at the time, it was THE thing to do.

If I ever redo my kitchen for me, I would keep Corian countertops and do a sheet vinyl floor. And have upper cabinets even over a peninsula. But if I were to do it for resale (which I won’t), I’d have to have quartz and hardwood.

As houses get huger, of course, there are more "reasons" to keep shopping. I used to fall prey to far more home decorating purchases in our house that was 3x the size of our current home.

We changed our small front screen porch to a wrap around and I was stunned to see how many porch decorations are now available and how many articles urge me to have seasonal porch objets. Many of these porch thingmabobs seem to hark back to the era of the bescarfed geese, it seems to me, no matter the house style.

Hey my Granny still has her bescarfed goose!

Put me back in my 20's and a German cuckoo clock was not on my 'Pinterest wasn't invented yet' mood board. But we were stationed in Germany and DH always wanted one. It's distinctive and melds well with our antiques. Our house is an open concept with well light beige walls, so it doesn't feel dated or cramped, balanced by a cabinet made in Bavaria.

@User, you can definitely find her another if you need a Christmas idea! Wayfair. For her porch.

The problem of comparing a kitchen countertop or an entire kitchen for that matter to fashion, like a haircut or a hemline or--even a car, is that those things are all relatively independent of anything else. They don't have much of a fixed context.

Hair's only attached to your head. It grows every day. You can get a terrible haircut and in months or a year it's gone. It has no particular lasting effect on anything else you are wearing. You can have a terrible haircut but still be attractive, you can have a great haircut and be wearing an unflattering outfit. They don't have a whole lot to do with each other. And if you are fifty and have thin hair, you can't get the Tik Tok boy haircut. It's just not going to work. you have to work with the hair you've got.

A hemline can go up and down. If you are handy, they can go up and down on the same article of clothing. Most people will still wear a hemline that flatters them, the buyer usually takes into account their own age and body type and tastes. Most people won't intentionally wear clothing that is unflattering (of course people do have different tastes in what they think flatters them). In any case most people do not take out a home equity loan to buy clothing and they don't expect an outfit to last 20 years.

Cars are another thing that are not attached to anything. They can look like themselves. They have nothing to do with what You look like or what your Garage looks like. Cars look the same now in the same way that all phones look the same. There are some hampers to creativity because the concentration has been on evolving technologies and getting maximum amounts of interior volume, a high seat, and aerodynamics into the same package.

A countertop is attached to the kitchen, the kitchen is attached to your house. Your house, no matter if it is post 1980 and is the typical box of transitional blandness, still has particular styles and shapes and volumes that do dictate when it was build and what kind of a house it is. And many houses do have a little bit more to say about what they are than being the bland transitional box of 1985, 1995, 2005, etc. But people will charge right ahead and spend $75,000 or $100,000 or $150,000 shoehorning whatever is the fashion of the minute into any sort of house without considering what sort of house it's going into at all. It's not the same as a haircut or a hemline or a car at all. And it shouldn't be treated like one.

Interesting that you write that, Palimpest. I am planning a kitchen reno, to improve the function of the room, particularly as I age, and not because I want to update for update sake.

I want to give a nod to the age of the house (1966-67). I’m thinking something like this photo. Medium tone slab doors, a white countertop (that isn’t granitej. Any thoughts or suggestions on achieving a functioning kitchen that looks like it belongs in my 1966 moderate priced suburban home in a moderate priced neighborhood?

Mid-Century Renovation · More Info

@Jen K (7b, 8a) I've never cared for grandfather clocks, but yours is gorgeous.

I like the kitchen in that picture, Hihireno. Seems like it would look perfect in the setting you describe.

I think that looks like a good fit @hhireno. I think the only things you need to be concerned about (in theory, not with that picture, is doing something too slick if the house is modest.)--Like you could consider doing the short backsplash as appropriate.

This is 1966

You can see that they are moving toward a little more formal/transitional door with molding.

This is Case Study House #28 - so as modernist as it could get pretty much, by Buff, Straub, and Hensmen 1966: again, not too slick, a partial overlay slab with a bit of a radius.

This is Case Study House #26 (1963)

And Case Study house #25 (1962)

Note that (in my opinion) the earlier kitchens are a little more of what we think of as MCM--the period was ending by the mid 1960s.

Also note that in general it's not quite as minimal as a lot of people now seem to think it is.

Thanks for those images. I still have some of what I believe where the original kitchen cabs in my laundry room. They are oak, slab door, with exposed copper hinges.

For countertop, I want Formica but I’m getting negative pushback from the KD and contractor (and anyone else who hears my idea 😆). I have Formica now and its warm to the touch, not shiny, has held up like a champ, no maintenance. I don’t like the cold, hard, busy, shiny look of granite. I’m willing to consider quartz (or as someone in the kitchen forum called it ”glued together sand”) if I can get it matte. Can it be honed or sueded or whatever they call a non-shiny surface? Does dulling it alter its supposedly no maintenance surface? I don’t like the feel of Corian. Is there another surface I can use that would be a basic, white, no maintenance option?

edit: I have Raynaud’s and I’m always focused on how things feel. The appliance person doesn’t understand why I’m not interested in touch screen tech. I have trouble with that because of the Raynaud’s. What good is a cooktop or oven I can’t work because my hands are too cold?

You can still have Formica if you want it. It's your kitchen.

If you want to get rid of the brown line, you can use Formica ColorCore2 which has four whites and it is white all the way through.

Or there is a material called Fenix that feels like laminate but is thicker and self healing (?)

https://www.formica.com/en-us/campaigns/fenix-innovative-materials

I am probably going to do stainless steel, which is not basic--and cold, but not hard.

@hhireno I'd do Formica. I didn't know about the ColorCore2 nor the Fenix. Sounds really cool. I love Corian too. People can call it plastic all they want. So what. Lots of great products are made with plastic. I too am not crazy about cold/shiny counters.

I have no experience with matte quartz, but there are quite a few people who have complained in these forums about staining. Use "matte quartz staining" or something like that in the search bar. above.

The very same people who won't use Formica or Corian because it is plastic will put luxury vinyl plank in their living room. It is not quite rational.

I have had Formica all my life. I love it. When we refurbished the kitchen in 2019, I put Formica back in again. I love it.

"But people will charge right ahead and spend $75,000 or $100,000 or $150,000 shoehorning whatever is the fashion of the minute into any sort of house without considering what sort of house it's going into at all. It's not the same as a haircut or a hemline or a car at all. And it shouldn't be treated like one."

I would agree that one should respect original fabric in historic homes and put remodeling projects in context, however, I've been paid to smash perfectly fine functional granite so a woman could put crappy concrete countertops into her 80s home. It made me sick and I'll never do it again for any amount of money, but that's fashion, like it or not.

I laugh at the fact that everyone has to have white quartz and will pull out granite for being dated just to put in white quartz that doesn’t look too different from the white formica and corian of the past. I see so many posts on year where people are told keep your wood cabinets and update by pulling out your black granite for a white quartz. The end result looks just like my 1999 kitchen in my first home, white wood cabinets and white formica and white backsplash. The formica still looks good in the pics I saw back in the spring when the house sold for over double what we paid in 99

but that's fashion, like it or not.

I remember years back a poster who wanted to demolish a relatively new kitchen and replace it all with "green" and "sustainable" finishes like bamboo cabinets, linoleum and recycled glass countertops and get "more efficient" appliances.

Totally missing the point that the greenest thing they could have done was kept the old kitchen as long as possible and replace appliances only when necessary.

The very same people who won't use Formica or Corian because it is plastic will put luxury vinyl plank in their living room. It is not quite rational.

I'm a no on Formica and on LVP, but I like Corian very much. To me the difference is that Corian can be repaired. I also chose linoleum (term?) because I wanted a retro patterned floor in a bathroom

I am not against any material in context really. I can't remember but I thought your bathroom was actually vinyl from the UK.

I recently purchased a very interesting home which was remodeled in the mid 50's with the latest and greatest products available at the time. The charming 20s exterior was mostly untouched, except for the addition of a three season room complete with jalousie windows. The inside got new bathrooms, new Geneva cabinets, new light fixtures, storage built-ins, paneled den and basement rec room. Fortunately, only the kitchen has been changed in the intervening 60 years with granite countertops, new windows, and dishwasher. I would have probably preferred the formica counters and original backsplash but the cabinets are still intact. 

It is an interesting time capsule to see how the 50s remodel took down original woodwork between sunroom and living room and between dining room and living room. The worst aspect of the remodel was a room divider with planter box in place of the original columns or French doors. It is so completely dated but the interior style is a major mismatch to the exterior style. Other than changing out a cracked bathroom sink, that house is staying in the 50s until I sell it. 

The 50s remodel has aged very well because the workmanship and materials were high quality. The owner was the president of a large construction company and the house was an appropriate example of good quality interior design. I doubt most of today's remodels will last 60 years because the quality workmanship is rare, except in the highest end projects. Standards have changed as well because I can't see the owners of a similarly placed company now accepting a 1400 sq ft house. It isn't just the styles are considered dated, but the type of property itself.

Yes, Pal, that was why i put "linoleum(?)" because I could not find the word. https://www.thedesignsheppard.com/flooring/cath-kidston-flooring

Talking about what upper level executives and such will live in, I have a bunch of Architectural Digests from the 1950s and 1960s, back when the demographic of who read the magazine and the demographic of who was featured in the magazine was much more similar. (The relative income of the readership was significantly higher than now, the relative income of the homeowners featured was a mere fraction of what it is now. The only car advertised was often Rolls Royce)

Anyway, the male CEOs of some pretty significant companies slept in small bedrooms adjacent to the master suite in a twin bed. Some couples slept in twin beds. Of course back then they were also making maybe 20 times what their workers made not 2000 times.

I will post some interesting photos of an 1850s house with a 1950s renovation.

It's not quite 2000x, but thing sure have trickled up. There are various ways to measure, but this sounds about right.

Using the realized compensation measure, the CEO-to-worker compensation ratio was 21-to-1 in 1965. It peaked at 366-to-1 in 2000.

The worker-to-CEO compensation ratio is meaningless in a capitalist economy. Companies compete for the most talented leadership as they should. If your daughter becomes a highly competent leader, they will compete for her, I promise.

And isn’t it interesting how many of those ultra highly compensated CEOs run their companies into the ground and leave with their golden parachute intact….

I love those 1950's indoor planter boxes. I would like to put one in our front entrance just as my MIL had in her 1950's home but unfortunately it faces the wrong way for good quality sun. And I'm not putting in fake plants no matter how real they look.

The worker-to-CEO compensation ratio is meaningless in a capitalist economy. Companies compete for the most talented leadership as they should. If your daughter becomes a highly competent leader, they will compete for her, I promise.

To whom are you speaking?

I was clarifying Pal's figure. I don't believe I know you.

The ratio reflects many trends, including the demise of unions, wage stagnation more generally, the knowledge economy, changes in the form of compensation. As an investment banker, I am a rather ardent capitalist and unaccustomed to anyone thinking I need assurances about the benefits of free labor markets to me and mine.

I also happen to believe that the extremes of income in equality are unsustainable, and I would like them addressed, If not on any "altruistic basis," then if only to keep people with pitchforks off my manicured property.