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Updating A 1970s Cabin For Modern Residence

Written by Posted On Wednesday, 24 January 2018 16:06
Updating A 1970s Cabin For Modern Residence

 

 

Moving into my father-in-law’s cabin sounded terrible at first, but things changed when the I saw the decades old decor.

 

And I don’t mean for the better.

 

Having just moved into our first home (no more rentals) my concerns were of course first towards the nature of the weather and what it would mean for my energy bill. Of course, having known that I would be moving into my wife’s family cabin, the true priority would be updating the cabin in an efficient manner but also one that would appeal to us aesthetically.

 

Little did I know how much of process this would be.

 

Many of the features in the home had been touched by the trends of the 70s and 80s, which also tended to be on the cheaper side.

 

Although these features are certainly out of date, there was still some life to the cabin, and perhaps it's all about to come back around in style anyway.

Here's our rundown of the updates we were able to make to save money and materials.

 

The Kitchen

 

After some much needed planing, we decided to update the space and give the 70s Kubrickian space the update it deserved. We applied a color shift to the cabinets, as the slightly warm tone of the wood and it's fine grain were really quite beautiful.

 

We used a color shifting stain, which are generally performed to remove the yellowing look wood gets from aged oil based finishes and save the cabinets.

 

This pinched some pennies as well, since we weren't spending on traditional staining or refurbishing the kitchen with new cabinets altogether.

 

The space was really suffering from the linoleum job that was ever so popular at the time of installation. Still, we weren't sure if replacing the material was a good idea as we were in danger of losing the sheik that pulled the whole room together. Thus, we had two real options:

 

Cover the linoleum job.

or

Remove it and hope for the best.

 

Obviously the latter option wasn't very realistic.

 

After some scrupulous research and a trip to the reclaimed building supplies store, we found that for very cheap, a dollar per 4x8 square foot, one could acquire plywood and refinishing it to mesh with the rest of the house is an easy task.

 

The cabin was starting to demonstrate the average Seventies love-affair with wood.  A holdover from the earthy hippie mentality which had gone mainstream. Wood and the natural palette was “in” at the time, and we still wanted to reflect that.

 

Carpet

 

That’s right there was carpet in the kitchen, which we promptly removed and followed suit with the plywood squares.

 

Countertops

 

The counters were also rife with linoleum. This was a major setback because frankly there didn’t seem to be an obvious answer to matching this with the appliances. After some research it became apparent that granite could be sourced from leftover pieces at the local granite dealer. Slabs would come in a variety of sizes but doing my best for a seam left us varying with seams from 1/16” to 1/8” and would only end up being slightly visible.

 

Granite ultimately fit the aesthetic of the cabin and filling the seams with grout only left us thinking that the cheap addition was still of the 70s style.

 

Residual dust should be expected during the countertop installation process. We made sure to cover areas to contain the dust to the construction area, as we lived there during the process.

 

Redecorating

 

Let’s face it, at this point is was pretty important for us to remain true to the spirit of the 1970s kitchen.

 

As we got a lot more “settled in”, more and more plant life started entering our home.  Maybe it started as just a couple ferns hung with macramé. Soon, the addiction to newly freed oxygen got kicked up a notch.

 

It wasn’t long before our living quarters became less like a house and more like a terrarium.

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Ryan T De La Rosa

Ryan De La Rosa is a writer living in rural Pacific Northwest. Hoping to get a feel for the United States' tiniest places and write about it too, he's bought a small RV and is set to travel to a new place every six weeks.

twitter.com/fernsandmoss

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