The Tour - Part I

Ryan and I do not entertain much at the moment. I am sure this doesn't come as a surprise to anyone. Consequently there are not many people that have seen The Barn. I have been receiving more and more requests for pictures of the inside. Time for the Grand Tour, in petite form.

We will start off with the kitchen. We originally considered a SIEMATIC kitchen, but we changed our minds. Instead we went for a genuine 1935 Wedgewood Gas Stove, with the original spice jars included, readily converted for use with a propane tank. An awesome yard sale find!

It has four burners, an oven that we don't know how to use and two warming drawers if you can get the oven to work. I am very happy to be cooking on gas again. And I love the look of it. We think it fits the barn perfectly. It is in very good shape, considering its age. If you click on the pictures, you can take a closer look.


I found a nearly identical stove online, completely restored, and called the seller for information on the oven. I wasn't very smart about it, though. Rather than expressing an interest in buying the stove and requesting information, I explained I owned one too but did not know how the oven worked. Too honest for my own good. The seller was not very helpful. And there are not too many manuals from 1935 around anymore...

The open shelving unit serves as a pantry. Unfortunately my daughter knows exactly where on the shelves her favorite foods are (at the moment dried cranberries, multi-colored goldfish crackers, and pretzels) and simply squeezes in behind the trashcan to grab them. Of course, I have moved them out of reach, but that does not stop her from wanting them. We will at some point need to invest in closed shelves. Or cupboards.

To complete our vintage kitchen theme, we found a 1920's icebox on Ebay, made by J.B. Van Sciver, descendant of Dutch immigrants. It leaks however, and we turned it into storage instead. Our friend Royce offered us the use of his spare fridge and freezer which we gratefully accepted. It has locks on the doors that will undoubtedly come in handy when Lola figures out how to open the fridge. She already knows, but she respects a closed door still. Not for long, I am sure.

This concludes the first part of the tour. Give us some time to reorganize and clean, and we will show you more in the near future.