When I bought my house, a 1920s stone colonial, it came with all of the latest features… from the 1950s and 70s ! So I had a kitchen with steel cabinets, shag carpet everywhere, funky light fixtures, a wall with cork covering… and, a pink bathroom. Now, personally, I love a house with older features. I think it feels like I am living my TV sitcom family dream or something. But I did get rid of the shag carpet and cork wall right away. And I took down the steel kitchen cabinets (more on that later). But I didn’t have the money… nor the inclination to get rid of my dated bathrooms. Especially the pink one.

So I started doing some research about how I could make my older bathrooms feel more modern without having to redo them. And because the internet is a wonderful thing, I came across a blog called “Save the Pink Bathrooms” that is dedicated to encouraging people to recognize the charms of these vintage bathrooms and not tear them down. This is where I learned that Mamie Eisenhower popularized the color in the 1950s and that pink bathrooms have a glow that makes you look great in the mirror (and that is totally true in mine!).

Out of this blog, grew one of my favorite websites, www.retrorenovation.com. There, they champion the beauty and craftsmanship of vintage features in homes. We have a lot of older homes in our area and I am seeing many renovations, especially flips, that take out the original charm and replace them with generic features. These often look sleek and great now, but will soon be as dated as my metal cabinets, and often aren’t as well made as the original features.

Speaking of my kitchen cabinets… So I’m not entirely wedded to the old and did redo my kitchen almost immediately, because it just didn’t work for our needs. But had I known about RetroRenovation at the time, I would have salvaged my cabinets (mine were Geneva brand) and sold them, rather than just get rid of them.  Apparently there is a market for this stuff, and metal cabinets are a hot item for people redoing their homes in a vintage style. I could have paid for some of my renovation by selling them!

If you are buying an older home and don’t have the money to redo everything – or if you just want to check out how you can preserve and update what you already have, check out the website. They also have great resources for tracking down replacement fixtures and accessories or things like vintage tile. And sometimes they can tell you about those little quirky features in your house… like all the funky ways toilet paper rolls were hidden.

Take a look and maybe think twice about sinking the pink!