Cupboard Anthropologist

The mudroom into the kitchen

We're moved in and are living out of boxes.  Unpacking the kitchen has been a challenge.  I've decided to cover the shelves with contact paper, but first I have to remove the old stuff. 

Each cupboard and drawer has told me a different story as I excavated the layers of past strata.  One cupboard held three layers of contact paper; 90's tan filigree, 80's heart wreaths, 70's checkered green and then underneath, pistachio green paint.  On some shelves linoleum has been affixed from different decades.  Inside the structure there's an even older hint of yellow paint.  

I wonder about those before me.  Why not cover everything in one pattern?  Why do some places and not others?  And why oh why, did none of you just update the whole kitchen?

In its defense, all the cupboards are very well built.  Nice thick sturdy wood, every door still fits tightly still.  The original hinges and handles are still shiny and in good working order.  It's like going back in time while trying to live modernly.

Here's the before of one of the cupboards:

This is Why

A few weeks ago we shook hands with a rancher and his wife and agreed to rent a house from them.  This house is located about 22 miles outside of Billings, MT near an unicorporated town with no gas station or grocery store.  I don't even think there's a pop machine.  The last seven miles to the house are on a dirt road that they told us we needed a four wheel drive for.

The house is best described as "vintage charm" as it was built in the 1940's.  There's nothing really modern about it but it does have water, plumbing, heat and electricity.  So when we tell people around Billings that we're moving out there, we get this question:

Why do you want to move out there?

I refer you to the photo above as  my answer.  It was taken on one of our drives last year just a mile or so from the house.  In words, my answer is, the views, the space, the country life.

Four mountain ranges are visible from the yard although some might be harder to see at times.  Our nearest neighbor is our landlord and they are a half mile away.  The house sits on a 4,000 acre ranch that has been in their family for about 109 years.  We're welcome to walk on it and hubby can hunt.

So I ask you, why not live in a Vintage House on the High Plains?  Anyone (well almost) can rent a house in town with a modernish kitchen and bath.  There are lots of cookie cutter houses out there, I've viewed quite a few of them.  But not everyone can find a location like this and be happy about it. I've live about all my life in Minnesota and they don't have mountains.  Now we'll have mountains every day even though sometimes they'll be covered by clouds.