Remodeling a Wood Streets Bungalow Kitchen Without Losing Its Character
September 13, 2026
People who buy a craftsman bungalow in Riverside’s Wood Streets tend to buy it for the same reasons. The front porch, the tapered columns, the built in bookcases beside the fireplace, the dining room with the plate rail. Then they walk to the back of the house and find a kitchen that looks like it came from somewhere else entirely.
That is usually because it did. Very few of these kitchens are original. Most were remodeled at least once between the 1950s and the 1990s, and those remodels tended to treat the old room as a problem to cover up. The good news is that a lot of what made the original kitchen right is often still there underneath, and a careful remodel can bring it back while giving you a kitchen that works for modern cooking.
This is how we think through a bungalow kitchen, in roughly the order the decisions have to be made.
Start by Learning What the Kitchen Was
Before you design anything, find out what the room looked like when the house was new. The house will tell you more than you expect.
Look at the rooms that were never remodeled. The dining room and hallway trim show you the casing profile and the finish, painted or stained, that the builder used. A linen cupboard or a dining room built in shows you door style, hinge type and hardware. Look at the back of the kitchen doors and the inside of any original cupboard for old paint colors.
In the kitchen itself, look for the ghosts. A patch in the plaster where a vent once went through the outer wall often marks a cooler cupboard, a ventilated cabinet common in California houses of the period that kept food cool using air from the shaded side of the house. A filled rectangle in a wall may be an old pass through to the dining room. A strip of different flooring can show where a pantry wall stood. Many bungalow kitchens also had a separate service porch at the back, which held the laundry tubs and sometimes the icebox.
None of this means you have to rebuild a 1920s kitchen. It means you know what you are working with, and you can make choices that suit the house rather than fight it.
Separate Character From Age
This is the most useful thing a homeowner can do before talking to any contractor. Walk the kitchen and sort everything into three groups.
Worth keeping
Original wood double hung windows, even if they rattle. They can be repaired with new sash cord, fresh glazing putty and weatherstripping, and they will outlast almost any replacement. Original trim and door casings. Built in cupboards with solid wood boxes and doors that still hang square. Old growth fir flooring, if it is not badly damaged near the sink.
Worth replacing
Anything added in a later remodel that does not suit the house: flat slab overlay cabinets, dropped ceilings with fluorescent boxes, aluminum windows set into the old openings, sheet vinyl, laminate counters with a rolled front edge. These are not character. They are just old.
Worth replacing even though it is original
The systems. Galvanized supply pipe, cast iron drains past their life, knob and tube wiring, a fuse box. Nobody remodeling a kitchen should keep these for sentimental reasons, and hiding them behind a new cabinet only means opening the new work later.
Writing the list down matters. On demolition day, anything not clearly marked tends to end up in the bin.
Accept the Footprint, Then Work Within It
Bungalow kitchens are small and narrow. Many are galley kitchens with a doorway at each end, and the room doubles as the path from the dining room to the back door. That shapes every layout decision.
The first thing to check is aisle width. A comfortable working aisle is 42 inches between counter fronts, and 48 inches is better if two people cook at once. In a lot of Wood Streets kitchens, a run of cabinets on both walls leaves exactly that, which is why the island so many people want simply does not fit. Forcing one in usually produces a 36 inch aisle that feels cramped every single day.
What does often work:
- Borrowing the pantry. If the original pantry wall is still there, or was removed and replaced with cabinets, that space can hold a tall pantry cabinet, the refrigerator or a baking counter.
- Using the service porch. Enclosed back porches are sometimes framed well enough to be brought into the kitchen, though floor level, framing and insulation all need to be checked first.
- Reopening a pass through. A modest opening to the dining room brings light and connection without removing a wall, and it is period appropriate. Our hero photo shows a similar opening in a later house.
- A small table instead of an island. A sturdy work table can be moved, looks at home in an old kitchen, and does not need plumbing or power.
Removing a wall is possible but should be approached carefully. In many bungalows the wall between kitchen and dining room carries ceiling joists, and taking it out needs an engineer to size a beam and a permit to install it. It also changes the room sequence that makes a bungalow feel like a bungalow.
Think Twice Before Moving the Sink
The sink in an old kitchen is usually under the window, and it was put there for daylight long before anyone planned a work triangle. People often want to move it to an island or another wall.
Moving a sink in a raised floor house with cast iron drains is not a small change. It means a new drain line through the floor, a proper vent, often new supply lines, and sometimes cutting floor joists or running pipe through the crawlspace at a slope that works. Keeping the sink where it is saves real money, and the view out the window is usually the best seat in the room anyway.
Expect Surprises Behind the Plaster
Every old house kitchen we have opened has held something. Budget for it rather than hoping.
Plumbing. Galvanized steel supply pipe corrodes from the inside and closes up over time. Riverside’s hard water adds mineral scale, so the kitchen faucet with weak pressure is a common sign. Cast iron drains tend to rust through along the bottom where water sits. Replacing supply lines in the kitchen and back to a sound point is almost always part of the job.
Electrical. A modern kitchen needs separate circuits for the refrigerator, dishwasher, disposal and microwave, at least two small appliance circuits for the counters, GFCI protection at counter outlets and AFCI protection where the code requires it. A house still on its original service may need a panel upgrade, especially if you want an induction range, which needs a large dedicated circuit.
Framing and floors. Decades of small leaks under a sink can soften the subfloor and the joist ends below it. We check from the crawlspace before designing cabinets on top of it.
Lead paint. Houses built before 1978 are assumed to have lead paint somewhere, and bungalows almost always do. Demolition and sanding need containment, dust control and proper cleanup. This is not a place to cut corners, especially with children in the house.
Cabinets Are Where the Look Is Decided
If you remember one thing from this article, make it this: inset cabinet doors are what make a new kitchen read as belonging to a craftsman house.
On an inset cabinet the door sits flush inside a wooden face frame, and you can see the frame around each door. Every original built in in a bungalow was made this way. Standard modern overlay doors, which cover the front of the box, look perfectly nice in a newer house and look noticeably out of place in an old one.
Inset costs more and needs more care. The gaps around each door are small and uniform, so the boxes have to be square and the installer has to scribe cabinets to walls that are rarely straight. In Riverside’s dry climate the wood also needs to be acclimated before building, or the doors shrink and the gaps grow.
A few other choices that suit the period:
- Shaker style flat panel doors, painted or in quartersawn oak.
- Exposed hinges in aged brass or nickel on a dish cupboard, even if the working cabinets use concealed ones.
- Bin pulls and small knobs rather than long modern bar pulls.
- Glass front uppers for dishes, which is how many original kitchen cupboards were made.
- Cabinets that stop below the ceiling with a flat top, or run to the ceiling with a plain crown, rather than elaborate molding.
Refacing is a reasonable option in newer houses where the boxes are sound. It rarely works for a craftsman look, because inset construction lives in the frame and cannot be added to an overlay box.
Choose Counters and Finishes for the House and the Heat
Original bungalow kitchens commonly had tile counters, wood work surfaces or a porcelain drainboard sink. You do not need to copy that, but a few materials sit much more comfortably in an old room than a glossy slab.
Honed stone and soapstone look calm and age well. Soapstone darkens with use and shows scratches that can be sanded out, which some people love and others do not. Quartz is practical and fine in a matte finish, but resin based surfaces can discolor over years in direct sun, and many Riverside kitchens face west with strong afternoon light. Butcher block works well on a short run or a table, less well around a sink unless you are happy to oil it.
For the sink, an apron front or a large undermount single bowl suits the period. For backsplash, a simple subway tile in a warm white with a slightly darker grout is hard to go wrong with. Our post image shows exactly that combination beside a newer set of painted shaker cabinets.
Hard water matters here too. Choose faucets with replaceable cartridges and finishes that hide spotting, like brushed nickel, and consider a filter or softener for the kitchen line if scale is already a problem.
Ventilation Without Wrecking the Wall
A range hood should be ducted to the outside, not recirculating, and sized so it covers the full cooktop. The difficulty in an old house is getting the duct out. The route through the ceiling may cross a joist or run into a finished room above. The route through an exterior wall may face the street.
If the house is in a designated historic district, a new vent on a visible wall may need review before a permit is issued. We check the address with the City of Riverside early so the hood location is settled before cabinets are drawn. Very large hoods can also trigger a requirement for make up air, which is another reason to size the hood to the cooking rather than to a showroom.
The Order of Work and Living Through It
A full bungalow kitchen remodel generally runs in this order:
- Design, drawings and cabinet order.
- Permit application, plus any historic review the work needs.
- Protection of items on the keep list, then demolition.
- Rough plumbing, electrical and any framing repair.
- Inspection of the rough work.
- Plaster repair or new drywall, insulation where walls are open, and ceiling work.
- Floor refinishing or new flooring.
- Cabinet installation, scribed and leveled.
- Counter template, then counter installation a couple of weeks later.
- Backsplash, plumbing fixtures, appliances, lighting and final trim.
- Final inspection and a walk through against the keep list.
Expect roughly ten to sixteen weeks without a working kitchen. Custom cabinets typically take eight to twelve weeks to build, so ordering them before demolition keeps the room from sitting empty. Set up a temporary kitchen in the dining room or on the back porch with a refrigerator, a microwave, a hot plate and a folding table, and plan meals around a laundry sink or a bathroom for washing up.
When Not to Remodel
Sometimes the right answer is a smaller job. If the original built ins are intact, the plumbing has already been replaced, and the layout works for you, you may only need restored cabinets, new counters, better lighting and paint. That can cost a fraction of a full remodel and keep more of what makes the house special.
If you are not sure which camp your kitchen falls into, have someone walk it with you and look behind the sink, in the crawlspace and at the electrical panel before you commit to a plan. Call (951) 530-8884 and we will take a look at yours.