I'm disgusted

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cornutt

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Huntsville, AL USA
Watching HGTV, we just watched a couple buy a nice mid-century home in L.A. and then completely gut it for a trendy-hip "Tuscan" style. And worse, they took out a wall and then, to support the load, put in a beam -- one end of which rests on top of a doorway.
 
HGTV USED to be a good network but now its repeats of the same programs over and over. I always enjoyed Mike Holmes where you could learn something but they took it off. Now its day in and day out of that obnoxious Love it or List it where the only thing you learn is how to fight and bicker. Seems all the networks are doing the same thing now with the constant reruns of the same programs.
 
HGTV Would Benefit....

....From a program titled something like Real Solutions, where their design team has to deal with real-world situations like a dated, dark kitchen that is owned by people who have maybe $2000 kicking around.

It is amazing what you can do with cleaning, repairs, paint, paper, new vinyl and some re-accessorizing, but HGTV seems content to ignore the vast viewership they could reach with a show telling folks how to do that.

Oh, wait - they couldn't take sledgehammers to perfectly good appliances, cabinets and fixtures if they did that.
 
Right now mid century modern is trendier in LA than Mediterranean of any sort so I’d suspect the episode is several years old if the original house was MCM. Unfortunately, bad MCM is every bit as nasty as bad Mediterranean and we’re now seeing more bad MCM done by people who clearly don’t know what they’re doing.

There seems to be a lot of this stuff on HGTV so I rarely if ever watch it, too depressing. Besides, I can see bad remodels without turning on the TV: right now a lame colonial in my neighborhood is being made into a horrifically bad Mediterranean. Every time I drive past I’m amazed at how it manages to grow even uglier when I thought it couldn’t get worse. 

There is nothing intrinsically wrong with bringing the load from one end of a beam down above a door or window head, it just means that the head must be sized to accommodate the load. The biggest problem with this in a remodel is often the foundation; it’s usually easy to rip out a door head and substitute a larger one but then you have to deal with a pair of point loads on each side of the door. That often requires pad footings since the original foundation will not have been sized for the point loads, so you end up demolishing the floor in that area.

The California Building Code requires permits for removing any loadbearing wall so there had to be an engineer involved in the project who submitted structural plans and calculations to justify that the framing and foundation are adequate for the loads involved.
 
Sandy and all, These programs are not meant to be instructional as much as entertainment for voyeurs who have nothing better to do than watch people work and argue. It started with cooking shows and some of that genre morphed into commercial kitchens with harried staff and authoritarian head chefs. The same thing with the home shows. It all makes programs like PBS' cooking and gardening shows look like the treasures they are, not to mention the 4 guys who really solve problems on This Old House. I don't have the time to watch more than a bits of the PBS shows.

I did watch an online clip of Joan Rivers rattling the frozen sugary facade of Martha Stewart but, otherwise, have no use for that.
 
There is nothing sacrosanct about a MCM home, there are plenty sorry excuses out there. If I moved into a house with those ugly site made birch cabinets they'd be ripped out so fast your head would spin. There are lots and lots of people who have no desire to live In tiny cramped rooms that are common in mid century homes.

I'm not saying that every MCM home should be updated, there are a few jewels out there, but just as there are many crappy modern homes, there are a great number of crappy MCM homes too.
 
Open kitchens...... and tiny cramped rooms

 

 

"The open kitchen needs to be illegal."

 

I guess I'm the minority here because I couldn't disagree more.   During the process of looking for a home I had looked through a number of homes, all different ages and styles.   I definately don't care for the "tiny cramped rooms" in many homes of the 50's as mentioned above.   Nor am I a fan of the completely segregated / closed off kitchen that's only accessable through a single doorway or a maze of hallways.

 

One property that stands out in my mind was a (new construction) 3 story townhouse with nearly 3000 sq ft of space.   It was on a hill with incredible unobstructed city views, but numerous walls and multiple tiny cramped rooms made it feel MUCH smaller than it actually was.

 

Give me an open kitchen, a large "great room" and a master bedroom with an attached full bathroom please!

 

Don't get me wrong, I do enjoy <span style="text-decoration: underline;">visiting</span> the 50's, 60's & 70's..... I just don't want to live there.

 

Kevin
 
The Coronado, 1961 Mackle Brothers

I grew up here, my neighborhood of River Park came into being around 1958. The houses ranged from tiny to what passed for large in that era. None of the houses are spectacular, but they were stylish for the era. The year my house was built, 1961, the Coronado was the top of the line in the Mackle Brothers General Development offerings. You should see this house now. The decorative blocks have been largely destroyed, the left and right windows are boarded up with plywood. The large screen porch behind the carport is plywood from top to bottom. The whole mess is painted chalk white from stem to stern. A formerly nice house around the corner from that is done over in Spanish. None of the models from '58 to '64 are Spanish style. Around 1970, they came out with some very attractive Spanish designs.

112561++5-6-2014-07-34-29.jpg
 
NYCWriter

<span style="font-family: helvetica; font-size: x-small;">Just read an article in the NYtimes real estate section that people are requesting separate kitchens with dining rooms, so there is hope....at least there is a beginning.</span>

 

<span style="font-size: small; font-family: helvetica;">I get the open kitchen thing if you want everyone watching you cooking and cleaning the mess,  and please don't help me to cook......but for me....let us eat somewhere else please, then....let us go to another area to continue socializing without the need for looking at a kitchen mess which will be cleaned up 12 hours from now. </span>
 
I've been researching for an apartment in Los angeles Area and I've seen countless pictures of kitchens.

Two things come in my mind:

1) I hate cooking alone in the kitchen. At this point, I'd love to have an open kitchen where i can be together with my family or guests, chatting while cooking. Even better when someones come to help doing minor things.

2) What about the grease? My kitchen is closed, I have an excellent hood that exausts the air into the barbecue chimney. It's a Bosch Slimline built in unit but I also use a lot of other appliances out of the stove area (grills, electric pressure cookers, griddles, etc) My kitchen is closed and once in a while i have to wash everything and clean the cabinets and walls with a strong degreaser. By the way, I'm not a messy cook.

My concern is... with an open kitchen, the grease would reach the whole house and settle on furniture, curtains, etc. Wouldn't it?
 
Would grease reach the whole house, furniture, etc?

 

 

Perhaps if you do A LOT of frying and you have a fan blowing through the kitchen while cooking!

 

I have a semi-open kitchen and have only noticed grease in the immediate vicinity of the stove.   But then I do very little frying.

 

When looking for an apartment, be aware of a kitchen located on an interior wall!   I have seen a number of vent hoods in apartments and some condos which recirculate the air back into the kitchen, NOT outside!    They draw the air from the cooking area and blow it out vents on the top of the hood, up at the cabinets above.  

 

 
 
So many details to check.. furnished or unfurnished, a studio to live alone or a 2 or 3 bedroom to share and reduce the rental costs? house or apartment? Which neighborhood? and now the kitchen open or closed and even if it's an interior or exterior wall I feel like choosing a new home will make me crazy before i arrive.

And after I arrive and start visiting the properties I'll end up in a mental hospital ROFL.  
 
Actually ...

"I hate cooking alone in the kitchen. At this point, I'd love to have an open kitchen where i can be together with my family or guests, chatting while cooking. Even better when someones come to help doing minor things."

I actually hate being "that" guest who arrives (on time) while the host is still cooking in an open kitchen. I feel pressured to "help" with the cooking (despite protestations from the host), which is something I did not sign up for when I accepted the dinner invitation. (Even worse, there's also, of course, that subliminal pressure -- with an open kitchen and a mess staring us all in the face -- to help with cleanup. Something else I did not sign up for.)

A CLOSED kitchen enables the guests to feel at ease, while the unpleasant realities and pressures of food preparation are isolated and kept discreetly out of sight.

If the host doesn't want to feel "alone in the kitchen", he/she should prepare the food ahead of time, or hire kitchen help.
 
I am USED to cooking alone-preparing food for ME to eat-no borders!I too,would feel uncomfortable preparing food in an open kitchen with guests.If they could pitch in and help-that may be better.
 
hahahah, no, i don't make any pressure for someone to help me... and I never accept help for cleanup because i LOVE cleaning up the kitchen.

Also, I'm too organized so, no matter how complex the dish is, right when the dish is ready, the kitchen is also clean.

One thing that helps a lot is open the dishwasher and pull both racks out BEFORE start cooking. Instead of throwing utensils in the sink, i load them in the machine as soon as I finish using them.

Other thing that certainly helps a lot is making the mise-en-place, putting all the ingredients i'm going to need for the recipe together on the counter.
 
Matt, but I love when my guests feel "pressured" to be seated on the kitchen table and drink a glass of wine while chatting with me.
My mom taught me that cooking must be made in a happy environment (the fried green tomatoes effect) so, asking someone that doesnt like to cook to help me in the kitchen is completelly out of question.

One thing I'll certainly want to do is a "dinner club", just like the one I have here... 12 friends, each week one makes a nice gourmet dinner to invite all the others. The only rule is: if the dishes won't take too klong to be prepared, we start only after the last guest arrive. the cook of the week does everything alone but if someone offers to help, it's ok. The important is not the cooking itself but the pleasure of chatting informally with the friends.
As we try different recipes to discover new exotic flavors from all over the world, sometimes the result may be terrible and we just laugh (and maybe order a pizza).

As I have the biggest kitchen among all the other members of the group and my kitchen has almost every kind of appliances, cookware and my dining room has a huge table that fits up to 20, plus i'm one of the few people in Brazil that still have vintage dinner and cutlery sets and embroidered napkins, etc (they say it's a Bree Van der Camp apartment) the other members of the club always ask me to let them use my kitchen for the friday night events. 

While one is cooking and the others are drinking wine and watching, there's always at least 5 laptops and tablets being used to search for new recipes for the next dinner and we discuss and decide together. We also try to discover a little bit more about the history around each dish and the local culture. 

One of these dinners was the beginning of a vacation trip. One of the guests who is a japanese imigrant prepared sushi and sashimi for us... the discussion during preparation and the meal was like a super class of japanese culture. We ended up traveling to japan together 8 months later for vacations.
 
Those shows would love to attack this house, while I would end up in the nut house.

I have watched enough episodes to see that they would open up my foyer to the living room, destroying the spanish revival arch and continuity of the flooring. Thinking about it, they would likely take out the other arch between the living and dining rooms.

Historic casualties involved:

Two arches
Inlaid hardwood flooring
Three rooms of plaster crown molding
Eight wall sconces
A pair of built in shelves

They would end up with a sterile open concept main floor with spanish revival flair. Hopefully, they would keep the leaded glass, the stone fireplace, and the railing. It would all look out of place in the new space though. They would also lose all of the little storage this house offers.

Upstairs, they'd destroy the third bedroom to create the master bathroom. I am not sure why they need another bathroom, since they'd have a two bedroom house, but I am confident they would.

What I don't understand is that all of these older homes had more food prepared in them than most do nowdays. People worked with what they had and did more with it.

I consider myself to be a space hog. This 2000 sq. ft. house doesn't seem large to me with all of the interior walls. If you removed them, it would feel like a barn, with spanish flair! No thanks, I am glad I got here first.
 
I'm more of a 1950s-style homemaker. Unless it is a pot-luck style dinner with guests bringing dishes, and thus it is necessary for them to be in the kitchen to do final prep on their dishes, I prefer to be alone and do everything myself.

It is distracting for me to feel like I need to interact with guests while preparing food. Since we don't entertain often, I'm usually feeling nervous about making sure everything is just right.

Visual presentation is important to me, so I don't necessarily want guests seeing how the "sausage is made," so to speak. I remember one guest being surprised about me using a meat thermometer to check if the meat had reached a safe temperature. That conversation didn't add to my presentation, I think.

Fortunately for me, on those rare occasions when we do entertain, I have a hubby who enjoys visiting with guests in the living room while I panic in the kitchen.

Thus, I think the desirability of an open kitchen vs. a closed kitchen depends a lot on how an individual or couple likes to entertain.

retropia++5-7-2014-11-05-24.jpg.png
 
Open Plan

Funny thing is the open plan was high design (and the ultimate in mid-century modern). See the plan of this Eichler (courtesy of Ultramatic) floor plan.

Eichler's got bigger towards the 70's and always had two bathrooms, though the bigger ones weren't, often quite as open.

I'm a separate kitchen person too, though I wouldn't say no to the right open-plan mid-century house either.

http://img845.imageshack.us/img845/263/on69.jpg
 
When ever I have people over it seems there are always 10 or 12 people in the kitchen, everyone just settles in there.  And, I do not have an open floor plan, just a big kitchen.  I don't mind a bit.
 
Open plan + fire = extra bad news

Something many don't think about is that in the event of a fire, damage is likely to be somewhat more severe than in a house with lots of walls and doors between the rooms.

As an example, we had a grease fire in our kitchen in the summer of '73. Though the kitchen had four walls, there was no door between it and the dining room. The dining room was continuous with the living room, which was open to the bedroom hall. My bedroom and my parents bedroom had the doors closed, and had no damage. However, the remainder of the first floor, including my sister's bedroom with the door (and closet) open, were all smoked and sooted up. Though the fire was contained to the pan of French Fries, everything had to be throughly cleaned and four room and hall had to be repainted. Even the toilet seat had to be washed with Lestoil before anyone could use it. My recent renovation has the kitchen/eating area separated from the rest of the house by two doors.

I've known of several houses with open plans being nearly completely destroyed because the fire spread so rapidly with nothing to slow it down. If this happened at night, it might be difficult to escape from upstair bedrooms, with the halls being open to large areas below.
 
While it is preferable to escape a fire via the stairs it should be possible to use a bedroom window. Modern codes are strict in requiring at least one window in every bedroom with an opening large enough to exit. If a bedroom has a door leading directly outside then this takes the place of the escape window. Obviously if the drop out the window is great then having a rope ladder stored in a closet would be a good idea. Homes with large second story areas require an additional stairway that can be interior or exterior, it must be located some distance from the primary stair. Under the old codes here in California this was required for second stories of greater than 3000 sq. ft. but the new code uses distances instead.
 
What about an automatic fire supression system just like I have in my kitchen?

I don't know if codes require them, here it's not required but its something to think abou when remodeling ou building because those systems are reasonably cheap and the discounts given by the insurance companies make the idea very reasonable.

When i had a small fire in my kitchen, the system went off. The gas discharge scared me to death but cleanup was easy.

The company that installed the system in all apartments in my building is american by the way because it was cheaper to hire that company and pay for the whole staff trip to Brazil than hiring a brazilian company that scared the engineers when they suggested water fire sprinklers in a kitchen. The company is Ansul and none of the units had troubles with it. I love the system and I'm sure i can trust it. Also, except by a huge pull station and the gas tank in the utility room, it's virtually invisible with the pipes runjing behind the cabinets and the discharge nozze is much smaller than ordinary sprinklers that are too ugly.
 

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