Boomerang

Our house was built in 1956 and a young couple, Morris and Pearl Wolf, bought it. They raised a family in the house and both eventually died here. To be the second owners of a house built in the '50 was, in our minds, good karma.

In addition, there were a couple of other selling points:

• The oak hardwood floors throughout much of the house (which evidently had been covered by lovely green hi-low carpeting) now seeing the light of day 50 years later.
  
• The original boomerang Formica in the kitchen maintained by "Mo" for half a century.

According to Formica's history page, the product dates back to the early 1900s when the Industrial Age demanded lighter and cheaper insulators. An engineer, Dan O'Connor...

....had an idea that was pretty straightforward: take fabric, coat it with resin while it winds on a spindle into the shape of a tube, slit the tube lengthwise, unroll it, press it flat and then cure it. The result was a laminated plastic material that was tough, light and an excellent electrical insulator.

Mica was a common electrical insulator at the time and the new product was a substitute "for mica."

In the post-WWII housing boom, Formica...

... patented a rotogravure printing process that produced decorative designs on sheet laminate that could be used on tables and counter tops. In the early 1950s, Milwaukee designer Brooks Stevens came up with a pattern of interlocking “boomerangs” in blue, pink and yellow against a gray background. Skylark, as it was named, appeared in restaurants and on passenger trains and soon became one of Formica’s most popular patterns.

Boomerang was originally named Skylark and depending on the styles of the times it has been discontinued; then reissued. Fortunately for us, it's currently available and that's what we will be putting in for our countertop surface. The original Formica in our house was the pink and gray pattern. We're going with the "aqua" pattern shown here.

We are also bringing in the hardwood oak floors into the kitchen to match the existing wood.
This entire week is all about the hardwood floor getting installed. Photos to follow.