How many of you have ever heard of a Lustron home?  Until about a year ago, me neither.  So, dust off your post WWII, baby boomer history, because this is one of those mid-century curiosities that still live tucked unsuspecting in neighborhoods throughout the country.

I got the call to design a kitchen in one of these pieces of atomic-age Americana over in Durham, but before the “before and afters”, I’m going to give you some schooling:

At the end of WWII, thousands of GI’s came home from the war to a housing shortage. 

Enter, one Carl Strandlud, an entrepreneur who was in the process of developing porcelain-enameled cold-rolled steel panels to make prefab. service stations.  Turns out, what folks needed more than service stations were little bungalows – so why not build a metal bungalow!

I love everything about this picture - but most especially the pageant posed pink perfection pictured hosing off her metal house.  Really…how many of us haven’t found ourselves giving our houses one last squirt before heading off to bridge club?

All the materials in these homes, inside and out from the built-in bookcases to the downspouts, were fabricated from metal….you can stick a magnet everywhere from your dining room wall to your bathroom vanity!  Other innovations of the Lustron home included space saving devices such as the fantabulous Thoromagic combo clotheswasher / dishwasher. 

If it’s anything like my dishwasher, this would backfire as soon as you started finding coffee grinds lodged in your brassiere. (I hate my dishwasher.)

As you can tell from a cursory walk around the block…Lustron homes didn’t exactly catch the world of real estate on fire, but there are still some out there, and they’re pretty cool. 

 The Durham Lustron had lost some of its original luster until a Ms. Deborah Chay swooped in.  Here are pics of her before kitchen (pardon the exceptional photo quality…I think these were taken with a cellphone):

The built-in separating the dining area from the kitchen is a feature of all Lustron floorplans…it’s metal.

Note the grid of the metal panels that make up the walls.  Note also….the best before pictures always always feature a really messy room….it ups the drama.

You can spy the other side of the built-in in the above picture.

Now, the afters including cute dog.  I keep a kennel of these in my studio closet for all of my after photoshoots…kidding.

Backsplash is back-painted glass in white.  This also wraps the pass-through sill. Counters are stainless steel with an integrated sink.  Cabinets are clad in acrilux. Dog is Kimba, named after a Japanese cartoon.

I think what we were able to do is reminiscent of the original spirit of the house, but imminently more functional….have you ever tried to open a sixty year old metal drawer?  They can be a bit clumsy.  

Fun house, fun project, fun client and cute dog…what more could you want?