The Kitchen, like the dining room, was busy and always full of activity. The Roedde family thought of this room as being the working "heart" of the house. It was always used, not just to prepare food, but also as a room of escape and relaxation. Just like the dining room, this room was a casual place to sit and have some tea, read a book, or just to collect one's thoughts.
Cooking Table
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The room has two very large windows on the east wall, which bring in great amounts of sunlight. The warmth of the sunlight is greatly enhanced by the warm colours of the wallpaper. The top half of the walls are covered in a yellow and red patterned wallpaper facsimile of the original. This replica was created using a traditional silkscreen method, and not machine printed like most of today's ordinary wallpaper. The bottom half of the walls are covered with cedar paneling. Wood paneling, called wainscoting, was a typical treatment in the busier rooms because it was more durable than wallpaper and it protected the wall from bumps, scrapes, dirt, and even cooking splatters. Therefore, the wainscoting was both functional and decorative.
The Sink
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The kitchen sink is original to the house and was built low on the wall because Matilda Roedde was a short woman (4'11") who would have had trouble with counters of average height. Beside the sink is a washboard used to scrub dirty laundry. There is also a small toy washboard on top of the sink for the young girls to mimic their mother! The laundry would have been scrubbed by hand on the washboard numerous times with soap, then rinsed. The clothes would then have been put through the clothes wringer to squeeze out the excess water. The final step was to hang the clothes on the drying rack, which hung from the ceiling above the kitchen doorway. The kitchen, which was the warmest room in the house, was ideal for drying wet laundry.
Oven
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The oven is not original but is a close representation of the kind of cooking surface, which would have been used at the turn of the century. If you look closely at the top of the stove, you'll probably recognize many of the same kitchen utensils we use today.
The coffee grinder on the dough box, a large box where bread dough was put to rise, would have been one of the many time-saving kitchen appliances the Roedde family would have owned.
The coffee beans are put in the top, and the wheel turned. A little drawer would then access the ground up coffee. There was always coffee in the Roedde household. Gustav Roedde would buy the beans by the 100lb sack from the Hotel Vancouver. It must have been really good coffee!
Coffee Grinder Table
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The door on the south side of the room led to the pantry and meat storage. The room would have been used to hold all of the food items. Examples of items stored in the pantry would be the flour, sugar, salt, preserves, seasoning used in the various recipes that Mrs. Roedde would make, and, of course, sacks of coffee beans.
In addition to the pantry and meat storage, many kitchen and food items were stored on shelves. The kitchen features a series of shelves that hold an abundance of kitchen utensils and other items that would have been found in a kitchen at that time.
It seemed the Roedde House was always full of people, of talk and pleasant smells. There were always guests visiting from the Roedde bookbindery and almost daily Mrs. Roedde would cook large lunches for them, thus gaining her reputation as a good cook.
In addition, Mrs. Roedde was always baking something for other family members, a favoured remembrance was her desire to cook sweets and other delicious treats for her children and grandchildren when they arrived at the house.
Shelves
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