My First Retro Home is the ongoing story me and my partner and our first home.  I have been collecting vintage items since I was knee high to a grasshopper, with special interest in vintage Disneyland memorabilia from the 50’s and 60’s.  We have been living in a 1950’s back house that does not have that much character.  With the change in the housing market in California we are lucky enough to be in the position of buying our first home.  We spent about 3 months looking at one 70’s disaster after another and finally decided that we had to have a home from the 50’s or before, the only problem was that almost every one we looked at had been horribly altered in some way.  We saw original walls ripped out,  horrible add-on’s that made no sense and, my personal favorite that I call “lets stucco every possible surface of the house except the front door. 

The house that we finally ended up was meant to be.  We saw it when it was first listed.  We drove by it and loved the neighborhood that was full of similar homes that were will taken care of with tree lined streets.  We contacted our realtor and she found that it had already been sold.  About a month and a half later, the same day that one of our offers was rejected, I got a listing update that stated that the house was showing active.  We called our realtor and she was able to show it to us the same day.  We put in an offer and it was accepted 2 days later.  It turns out that the person that was going to originally buy it was relocating and the job fell through - oh well.   We have now been going though about 7 weeks of this and that to complete the deal and we should be able to move in next week. 

What drew us to the home is that most of it is original (oh yeah, it also has a cold war era bomb shelter in the back yard!)  It has the original hardwood floors throughout and the original tile on the bathroom counter and shower - blue and pink!   All the closets in the house are original along with two pocket doors in the kitchen.  The brick on the fireplace has remained unpainted but the mantle is a little more 1940’s than 50’s (the house was built in 1952).   The kitchen looks like it was redone in the early 90’s (big disappointment, but we can work with it). 

My style is a bit eclectic so we needed some pieces to pull the mid-century look together.  I was lucky enough to find an unused pull-down saucer lamp (still wrapped in 1954 newspaper) on eBay.  We got a Broyhill Brasilia-esque table and chairs and Lane end tables and coffee table.  It all seems to work well with my vintage rattan chairs that were just recovered in a bold philodendron pattern.   I found a huge 1950’s office desk with a Formica top and wood sides on craigslist to replace our monstrosity of a computer desk. 

Now we need to move in!