Nostalgia for a retro kitchen whets appetites

Key takeaways

Social media audiences are increasingly drawn to time-capsule kitchens for their bold colors and hidden storage.
Homeowners are incorporating historic design elements — from restored metal cabinetry and colorful midcentury finishes to century-old iceboxes — to create character-filled, standout spaces.
But retro style doesn't always mean retro function, as homeowners blend historic aesthetics with modern conveniences.

Melani Helt’s refrigerator is a 1,000-pound antique icebox.

The 7-by-7-foot, eight-door appliance dates to 1915 and is clad in oak with mirrored panels. Getting the fridge into her Otto, Michigan, farmhouse was a challenge: Helt and her husband, Adam, had to hire a moving company that specializes in bank safes for an eight-hour relocation process that involved ripping out their pantry doorframe and placing 16,000-pound-rated joist supports in their basement so the floor under the fridge wouldn’t collapse.

Although the fridge was electrified in the decades since its analog days, it’s quite noisy, its temperature must be set by hand and its interior light needs to be switched on manually. It also has no freezer section, and it generates enough condensation to fill a large steel bowl that must be emptied every other day. All that gives the fridge enough personality to merit a name; the Helts call it “Frederick” in honor of the 19th-century ice magnate Frederick Tudor.

In the 21st century, a time when fridges are smart enough to order groceries, owning such a mammoth, needy appliance as Frederick is an act of devotion. Still, whether by aesthetic or statement, it’s a choice that appeals to a certain vein of homeowners interested in filling their homes with the trappings of a time that predated the smart-home era.

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Max Natanek is getting to see that growing interest play out in real time through the content he creates for his @homeswithmax accounts on Instagram (where he has more than 360,000 followers) and TikTok (where he has nearly 60,000). After attending architecture school and finding that the “architectural firms of Chicago had what I would describe as an aggressive disinterest in me,” Natanek started filming tours through the old homes he dreamed of one day buying.

“My favorite thing is time-capsule real estate,” he said. “I've toured places from the turn of the century, the '30s, the midcentury, '70s, '80s. As long as it's original, I truly have a lot of affection for it.”

He would troll home listings, contacting real estate agents for permission to film inside a home and share it with his followers. The hope, to some extent, was that it might encourage a potential buyer to preserve the home, seeing value in its original features.

But some of those original features are more popular than others.

“All I can tell you is that the people long for vintage kitchens,” Natanek said. “I get such a great response from videos with a good kitchen. It can really make or break a house tour.”

Natanek understands the allure; kitchens are his favorite part, too. Even as these spaces remain the hearts of a home, kitchens have become increasingly boring over the past 15 years, he said. They rely heavily on creamy quartz counters, neutral cabinetry and the glow of satin silver appliances. Increasingly, they also have the glow of several screens, with microwaves, fridges and ovens all connected to smart-home networks.

Older kitchens, on the other hand, are fearless mixtures of colorful laminate cabinetry, mosaic backsplashes and tiling and experimental features, he said. While there are ongoing questions about the durability of some of those plastic-based materials, “the functionality of old kitchens is unmatched,” he said.

Take, for example, a 1958 home he filmed in Stockton, Illinois, a few years back. The residence had a blue and pink kitchen teeming with hidden features: a pop-up appliance shelf, a dumbwaiter tucked into the walls, a hidden spice cabinet and a pull-out cabinet below the counter that doubled as a three-tier dinner trolley. A couple who watched his tour purchased the home and invited him over after they settled in. One of their double ovens needed repair, Natanek said, but everything about the kitchen remained completely original.

Embracing an ‘Old World’ look, just with modern appliances

For some homeowners, however, a kitchen that has the excitement of something they might’ve seen in a grandparent’s house doesn’t have to mean a full-time capsule space.

When Katie Falbo and Cody Scheppers, who founded the Los Angeles- and Illinois-based design office Highboy LA, bought an aging Victorian property for $180,000 in their home state of Illinois, the couple loved the bones of its kitchen (an authentic Youngstown Kitchens by Mullins added in the 1940s) — just not every detail.

“We loved the kitchen because it has all metal cabinetry ... in today's world, you're not going to find that,” Falbo said, noting that the material is great for pest prevention. The couple also loved the room’s gleaming tile walls and its mosaic floor arranged in a geometric pattern of 4-by-4 squares.

Falbo and Scheppers were not the biggest fans of the kitchen’s red enamel ceiling, however. “While we're not afraid of color, it is aggressive,” Falbo said. “Every time we went in there, we kind of got a little mad because it's just shining down on you.”

So, the ceiling got a soothing coat of white paint, and, after watching lots of YouTube videos, the couple restored their cabinetry. They also swapped out the cracked linoleum countertops for butcher block and replaced the existing 1990s appliances.

“Living in a very retro aesthetic space, however, having all of the technology be very modern, that is like our jam,” Falbo said. “So, for the refrigerator and stove, we’re making sure we're getting something that is brand new but has very straight lines because the metal cabinets are very boxy.”

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The couple likes the pop of contrast between the old and the new, Falbo said, but their retro-modern aesthetic is also practical.

“I think it's easier to function through life with a modern stove,” she said.

While someone can absolutely function with an older stove, she added, this is their first house purchase, so the couple just wanted to upgrade.

But "upgrade" means different things for different homeowners.

For Melani Helt, the buyer of that century-old fridge, Frederick, it was fitting for the “Old World” kitchen aesthetic the family sought, she said. Warm-toned hardwood covers the floor, the cabinets are stained a walnut hue and the brass fixtures will patina.

When she and her family relocated to Otto last year, they started renovating their home. That’s when Frederick came into the picture: Her husband sent her the link for a $12,000, 1915-era antique icebox listed on Facebook Marketplace as part of a restaurant closure. They offered the seller just under $5,000.

Currently, the fridge is “a work in progress,” Helt said. The Helts estimated that it costs roughly $28 a month to run, and they’re scheming out further restoration measures. Still, Frederick is in use. Eleven cartons of eggs can fit on a single shelf, and the fridge has room for seven shelves, she said. Instagram followers — Helt has more than 150,000 on her @boogesmom account — like to watch her fill the fridge with her latest grocery haul.

“I couldn't even tell you how many people saw this and now message me because they're getting one or they found one and have questions,” she said with a laugh.

Purchasing Frederick also encouraged the Helts to reach even more deeply for the trappings of an antique cooking and dining space. They opted for a new stove with complementary brass finishes, but their dining table is a 10-foot-long 19th-century church piece from Grand Rapids. They also embraced the laborious task of embedding a 400-pound, 1940s brass postal box (the kind with lots of cubbies) into their kitchen wall.

“When we look at this house as a whole, we want to preserve history,” Helt said, and the pieces also bring a certain warmth to the spaces.

"We want it to be a place of wonder for our kids.”