Kitchen Mysteries

July 01, 2009

Kitchen Mysteries

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Does anyone know what the name or function of this structure might be? It's in the kitchen of the little house we're hoping to buy. Robb wonders if it might be an adaptation of the built-in ironing board cabinets that are present in many of these homes. I'm not so sure. It seems that the owner of this house used these little cubby-holes for storing bags of pasta and papers. We found some twenty-five-year-old kids' drawings in one of the shelves.

Our friend Sarah suggested that these must have been built as shelves for Frisbees.

What do you think?

Comments

Anonymous said…

The structure is a wall type shelf, or door, generally used to store spices and note pads, I think. Is it made from wood? Since the house dates from the 1920's, lets think what was going on about then- maybe the shelf was used to store many, many bottles of home-made booze, or home-made liquors, since prohibition kicked in then, right? I suspect if these are bottle-accomodating sized shelves, I bet you and Robb can make some mean wine from the mini-orchard you have in the backyard, if you eventually decide to get the place. Gary and I picked 23 pounds of black raspberries for our neighbor yesterday, who lets us take out berry picking in trade. In exchange, we got some mean blueberries, which I would put up against ANY ONE elses berries! I bet berries would grow really good out there in California. I have some new red raspberries out by the barn, but am planning to put in more on a fence Gary put in. This is good, as we are running out of places to plant stuff to eat. I suspect this winter is going to be a really hard one, financailly, for everyone concerned. On a gardening note, I have planted so many potatoes this year, I hope I dont get sick of eating them.

I see from your book list you are reading Pride and Prejudice and Zombies. A classic among crap, may I tell you!

If things get really dire this winter, I do NOT plan on eating human flesh, as my zombie buddies do. It's stringy and gets stuck in my teeth. On a lighter note, when Gary and I looked for a place to buy, he expressly wanted a place surrounded with pikes, so he could have a place to store his zombie head collection. We borrowed the idea from the Amish, who have a long history of fighting Zombies.

Annalisa

9:00 AM

Anonymous said…

Also could be a place to store cookbooks-

Annalisa

9:01 AM

Emily said…

Based on the curved openings at the bottom front of each shelf, they look to me to have been the previous home to drawers (the curved parts would provide a place for your hand to get under and pull out the drawer). Maybe storage for grains, potatoes, onions, etc (the west coast version of a root cellar)?

9:58 AM

Emily said…

Hmmm...my second look at the picture makes me think they are a lot less deep than I originally thought...then I'd have to go with boring old "magazine rack"...

10:00 AM

Kaaren said…

I'm going to go with magazine rack or recipe book holder too.

10:28 AM

Anonymous said…

is there a space behind it? could have been a door to a pantry or stairway and used for putting stuff for quick use.

Or,, check my letterbox plants, it could be a portal to hell

george

10:41 AM

Anonymous said…

Get yourself some LIFE and LOOK magazines from the '20s and stick them in this built-in magazine/newspaper rack. We both have LIFE magazines from the week we were born--very fun!

~~Doublesaj~~

11:06 AM

The Dread Pirate Queen said…

How far up the opening of each shelf does the "front" come? If it's not too far, they might be a place for china display. The cutout would reveal the complete center design on the plate.

I don't know anything about architecture of the period, though. Are these original to the house?

I can't wait to find out what they are! :)

The Dread Pirate Queen,
usually a lurker

1:17 PM

Anonymous said…

If this were in the bathroom, it could be holders for those horrible paper toilet seat liners....

Grumpy

1:35 PM

Violets said…

Are the shelves open-work?
It looks similar to a little pantry that was in a house we were once looking to rent. The owner said that it was a pantry, designed to keep things cool in the pre-fridge days. It was kind of neat. :-)

Uncorny

2:49 PM

terri said…

I can only guess that a 1930s stage manager must have lived in that house - looks like a perfect storage spot for call scripts!

Just wanted to pop in and say hi! It's been too too long since we had a live conversation but I come often to blogville to at least check up on you guys.

sending you lots of love and good house karma

3:51 PM

Unknown said…

without benefit of personal inspection, I'm going to go with Robb. I think it was an ironing board closet that was subsequently modified into its current state: holder of things.

3:52 PM

Anonymous said…

I have no doubt that the original intention of those shelves was pizza storage. Although a more modern and culturally diverse explanation could involve tortillas as well.

-wassamatta_u

7:51 PM

Unknown said…

Plates?

7:59 PM