1960s Mid-Century Kitchen Renovation

The Situation

This mid-century kitchen renovation began with a familiar problem: a small kitchen that no longer worked for the way the homeowners lived.

The kitchen was 9×11 feet. The previous owner had put an island in it — nine inches from the counter on one side. Not a typo. Nine inches. Enough to technically walk through, not enough to actually use.

The family called it their boat kitchen. Storage was rationed. Two people couldn’t be in the room at the same time without negotiating. In the morning, when breakfast and lunch prep overlapped, it became a problem with no good solution — just people working around each other in a space that had never been designed for how they actually lived.

The 1990s renovation had made the room smaller without making it better. That was the real problem to solve.

The Build

When I told my clients I could give them three different layouts, they were surprised and incredulous. A 9×11 kitchen with decades of workarounds baked in — they couldn’t see how the room had options. It did.

The island came out. We went back and forth on replacing it: island versus peninsula. The peninsula won, and not narrowly. It gave them a run of storage that an island in a room this size simply couldn’t — no floating footprint eating floor space, no circulation gaps to manage. The peninsula anchored the room, gave it back its perimeter, and picked up bar seating on the end — a place to land that wasn’t in the middle of someone cooking.

The house is 1960s MCM and the clients’ instincts matched it, so we let the architecture lead — slab doors throughout. Walnut lowers, painted white uppers — enough warmth to keep the room from reading cold, enough contrast to give it some structure. White quartz countertop with a waterfall edge on the peninsula end. White oak flooring, lighter than the cabinets, which keeps the room open rather than grounded.

The backsplash is a grey-green tile. The appliances are all new. And then — one splurge, the right one — a 48-inch pendant over the range. In a minimalist kitchen, one focal piece does more work than a dozen small decisions.

One drawer sits at the peninsula’s edge, accessible from the hallway and living room. It’s dedicated entirely to charging. Every family has a version of this problem; many kitchens ignore it.

The Result

The boat kitchen is gone. Two people can make breakfast and pack lunches at the same time without bumping into each other, and the storage problem they’d been managing around for years is actually solved.

The house is mid-century, and the kitchen follows that now instead of fighting it — slab doors, clean lines, one pendant. A 9×11 room that finally works.

Details Scope: Kitchen design, layout reconfiguration, custom cabinetry, peninsula with bar seating, countertop, flooring, bathroom and laundry room design.

Location: Boulder, CO

Studio Olio specializes in historic home renovation in Denver and remotely. If you’re planning a kitchen renovation and want to understand what’s possible — let’s talk.

1911 Victorian Bathroom Relocation

The Situation

The original upstairs bathroom had been removed from one bedroom, and the previous owner planned to rebuild it inside the adjacent sitting room — a 15×15 space flanked by three other rooms, more circulation than destination.

The footprint he’d roughed out was 8×8. Barely functional. Not worth the wall space it would claim.

The sitting room had two windows worth keeping and enough square footage to do something real. The plan changed.

The Build

The bathroom grew to 8×15 and kept both windows with it. Expanding the room allowed for proper circulation around the tub and enough wall space for the bathroom to function comfortably as a daily room rather than a salvaged compromise.

The tub sits directly beneath one of the windows — a restored clawfoot painted navy on the exterior, with chrome risers and a full shower surround.

The placement was deliberate. A clawfoot tub belongs near a window the same way a fireplace belongs on an exterior wall — it’s where the room wants it, where the rhythm of the house pulls it. You don’t put a tub like that against a blank wall and call it done. You find the window with the best light and the best view, and you orient the whole room around it.

Lighting was layered: a chandelier, two sconces with Edison bulbs, and heat lamps over the tub.

The house runs on an eight-zone mini split system, allowing every room to be controlled independently. In a bathroom with a clawfoot tub and no forced air, that matters.

The original floors were too far gone to save. Bamboo went in. It wasn’t historically correct, but at the time, it felt like the right compromise between durability, cost, and starting over.

The walls were colour-drenched alabaster white: not a neutral, a decision.

The Result

The room doesn’t announce itself. It settles in — the way rooms in old houses do when you follow their rhythm instead of overriding it.

The tub faces the window. The light is right at every hour. The temperature is exactly what you set it to.

A 6×6 afterthought became the best room in the house.

Details
Scope: Full Home Remodel, Bathroom design, space reconfiguration, clawfoot tub restoration, custom lighting, mini split installation, flooring
Location: Richmond, VA

Studio Olio specializes in historic home renovation in Denver and remotely. If you’re planning a kitchen renovation and want to understand what’s possible — let’s talk.

Best Historic Bathroom Renovation Project 2026 — BUILD Architecture Awards

1889 Victorian Bathroom Renovation
Richmond, Virginia

The Situation

The bathroom was 36 square feet with mold in the walls, cracked plaster, a soffit above the sink cutting into the headroom, and almost no storage. It had been operating as an afterthought for over a century.

What it had was a large window with good morning light and a cast iron tub with 1913 stamped on the bottom. The original hex tile — black and white, already making an argument — was still on the floor.

The room had almost nothing going for it. Almost.

The Move

No plumbing moved. The tub, toilet, and sink stayed where they were — not because relocation was off the table, but because the layout wasn’t the problem. The room needed storage, light, and a design that could hold its own in a house with this much history.

The client had spent time in France and wanted something of that sensibility brought forward — classic contrast, pattern with intention, a bathroom that felt personal rather than just renovated. The original hex floor was already pointing that direction. We followed it.

The Result

The soffit came out and the room exhaled. The 1913 tub was refinished and its surround enlarged. A custom vanity built to fit the room exactly quadrupled the storage, and wall-mounting the faucet freed up enough counter space for an artist-edition sink. Black and white diamond tile on the walls — graphic and fully committed — picks up where the original hex floor leaves off.

Thirty-six square feet. It doesn’t need to be large to be exactly right.

Details Scope: Bathroom Renovation, HVAC relocation, full interior renovation Location: Richmond, VA

See the full sequence — before, during, and after — in the journal

Studio Olio specializes in historic home renovation in Denver and remotely. If you’re planning a kitchen renovation and want to understand what’s possible — let’s talk.

1889 Victorian Kitchen Relocation
Richmond, Virginia

The Situation

This Victorian kitchen renovation began with a house that had everything it needed — ten-foot ceilings, intact millwork, and a layout that still largely made sense — except for the way it had been altered over time. A 1990s renovation had inserted decorative columns and an arch into the dining room, dividing what had originally been a well-proportioned space into something that felt smaller and more constrained than it should have.

The kitchen was still operating as it had in the 19th century: small, back-of-house, disconnected from how the homeowner actually lived.

The Move

Rather than force a modern kitchen into a space that was never meant to hold it, the decision was to move the kitchen into the dining room — a room with the ceiling height, proportions, and central placement the kitchen needed to function well.

This required a series of adjustments guided by what the house revealed during demolition:

• A missing structural beam from a previous renovation was corrected before any new work began
• A bricked-in original window was reopened, restoring natural light that had been absent for decades
• The non-original columns, arch, and keystone were removed, giving the room back its original proportions
• Original openings were preserved and adjusted rather than closed, maintaining how light moves through the home

Throughout the project, original elements were retained and restored wherever possible — heartwood pine floors, rosettes, plinths, door hardware, trim profiles, and millwork — with new work fabricated to match so closely that it becomes indistinguishable from what was already there.

The Result

The original fireplace surround was deconstructed and rebuilt as a full-height range hood, allowing the range to sit exactly where the firebox once was.

The proportions, profiles, and painted finish remain consistent with the rest of the home, while a dark tile backdrop and a single pineapple detail quietly anchor the wall in the client’s own story. Custom cabinetry was designed in a tone that works with the original heartwood pine floors rather than against them. The layout allows the room to function in a continuous loop — separate zones for cooking, baking, and gathering — with a freestanding table that references traditional Victorian worktables while adapting to modern use.

What changed is everything — but the house absorbed it without a seam.

Details Scope: Kitchen relocation, structural correction, full interior renovation, bathroom renovation, outdoor living renovation Location: Richmond, VA

Studio Olio specializes in historic home renovation in Denver and remotely. If you’re planning a Victorian kitchen renovation and want to understand what’s possible — let’s talk.

Project Journal

Historic renovations are rarely defined by a single decision. This project is documented across three journal entries exploring the reasoning, construction, and finished result.

Why the Kitchen Moved
The decision to relocate the kitchen from the original rear addition into the former dining room.

Relocating a Kitchen in a Historic Home
Structural engineering, masonry work, millwork restoration, and the construction process.

Victorian Kitchen Renovation: The Finished Space
The completed kitchen, custom cabinetry, restored details, and final layout.

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Site preparation, drainage corrections, custom structures, and the early phases of construction.

Building the Patio, Ramp, and Gardens
Hardscape installation, planting design, and the final transformation of the outdoor spaces.

1911 Victorian Kitchen Relocation

The Situation

The house had good bones — original heart pine floors, intact millwork, three bay windows, a fireplace in the front room. The kitchen, tucked into the back, had none of that. It was still operating as it had at the turn of the century: disconnected from the rest of the house, storage-poor, dark, designed for a way of living that no longer existed.

The real problem wasn’t the kitchen itself. It was the location. The back room had no light worth keeping, no architectural features worth working around, no reason to stay where it was. The middle room — previously the dining room — had the bay windows, the fireplace, and the floor space to make a kitchen that actually functioned.

So we moved it.

The original built-in pantry stayed with us. The heart pine floors were worth saving throughout. The bay windows became the whole point of the new layout. Everything else got rethought from scratch.

The Move

The cooktop went into the island, moving cooking into the center of the room and orienting it toward the windows. Storage was designed to the inch — six deep drawers on one side of the island, pullouts flanking the range, a butler’s pantry under the stairs for everything that would otherwise crowd the counters. Upper cabinets were left out of the bay window wall entirely; a single shelf running across all three windows gave the room light and the plants somewhere to live.

The original built-in was painted black and paired with botanical wallpaper — black ground, copper metallic branches — chosen to work with the copper pulls. The original heart pine floors were hand-stained plank by plank and finished for a kitchen that actually gets used.

The Result

The fireplace stayed. The floors creaked in exactly the right places. The stone countertops read differently at seven in the morning than at noon, which in a kitchen with three bay windows matters more than any trend. Two people could cook together without negotiating space.

This kitchen didn’t announce itself. It settled in — like it had always been there. Which, in a way, it had.

Detailed Scope: Full home renovation, kitchen renovation, custom cabinetry, floor refinishing · Location: Richmond, VA

Project Journal

This kitchen is documented across four journal entries — the decision to move it, the layout process, the full build, and the finished room.

The Layout: Five Openings, a Fireplace, and What Victorian Homes Were Actually Saying
Five openings, a fireplace, and a built-in that was already telling you where everything had to go.

The Build: What It Actually Takes to Renovate a 1911 Kitchen
Knob and tube wiring, heart pine floors, eight HVAC line sets, and the dust that came with all of it.

The Finished Kitchen: A 1911 Folk Victorian
The completed kitchen — stone counters, restored millwork, open shelves, and a room that settled in like it had always been there.

Studio Olio specializes in historic home renovation in Denver and remotely. If you’re planning a kitchen renovation and want to understand what’s possible — let’s talk.