Texas ranch kitchens

In a slab ranch, the floor under the cabinets is the foundation, so start there. Slab-on-ground foundations became common in the early 1950s, and light houses on slabs over expansive soil are more exposed to damage when the soil's moisture changes.⁷ Expansive clay soils swell when they take on water and shrink as they dry, and those cycles can crack foundations and walls, jam doors and tilt floors.⁷ A crack that runs across the old floor tile, or doors in the den that no longer close square, are worth having looked at before anyone sets new counters. Houston treats repairing fractures in a slab or stabilizing a house that has moved as foundation repair, and for a slab-on-grade foundation the repair plans must come from a Texas-licensed engineer and show where the supports go.⁸ Fort Worth requires a building permit and engineered plans for every residential foundation repair.⁹ Drain lines also run through the slab, which is why moving the sink to a new island means saw-cutting the floor.

If you want the wall between the kitchen and the den gone, plan on it being drawn and permitted as a remodel, not handled as a cosmetic job. Austin takes interior remodel applications through an Interior Remodel web form and asks for existing and proposed floor plans when the work removes or adds any wall, window, door or plumbing fixture.¹⁰ Neighborhoods such as Glenbrook Valley add design review outside the house. Houston's guidance for Glenbrook Valley says original windows were typically very large, often with aluminum frames, and that replacing them with white or light-colored vinyl can change a house's appearance, so a replacement frame should be unobtrusive.⁶ San Antonio's Office of Historic Preservation doesn't need to approve work that is interior only, with no work on exterior windows or doors, though a Development Services permit may still be required.¹¹

Postwar kitchens were finished in materials worth testing before demolition. Many postwar interior materials can't be made anymore and some may be hazardous, so test what they're made of before deciding to keep or remove them.³ The EPA lists vinyl floor tile, vinyl sheet backing and flooring adhesives among products that may contain asbestos, which is released mainly when the material is disturbed.¹² The EPA advises having an accredited asbestos professional inspect before a remodel that could disturb suspect materials, and not sanding or power-stripping suspect flooring yourself.¹³ For homes built before 1978, the EPA advises hiring contractors who use only lead-safe certified renovators.¹⁴

Houston grew out in ranch houses. Houston had very few ranch houses inside its city limits in the 1940s, but from 1950 to 1980 the ranch house dominated the city's residential architecture.¹⁵ Census data agrees: 21%¹ of the city's homes date from 1950 to 1969 and another 18%¹ from the 1970s. Glenbrook Valley, a planned community of 1,254 homes in southeast Houston built in 13 sections between 1953 and 1962, is the city's largest and most intact neighborhood of Ranch and Mid-Century Modern homes, and the whole neighborhood is a designated historic district.¹⁶ Kitchen remodeling in Houston

Across North Texas, 22%¹ of Dallas County homes and 15%¹ of Tarrant County homes went up between 1950 and 1969. Kitchen remodeling in Dallas–Fort Worth

In San Antonio the ranch years run later: 23%¹ of the city's homes were built in the 1960s and 1970s, after 14%¹ in the two postwar decades before. Kitchen remodeling in San Antonio

Austin's ranch houses are a smaller slice of a young city, 11%¹ of its homes from 1950 to 1969, tucked into older neighborhoods. Ranch houses rose to enormous popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, and the Travis Heights-Fairview Park district in Austin counts 129 of them, built from the early postwar era through the 1960s.² A 1954 ad for a new ranch house on East 22nd Street in Austin listed three bedrooms, two all-tile bathrooms, hardwood floors, a carport and a den; the den, at the rear, opens through full-height sliding glass doors onto a concrete patio.¹⁷ Kitchen remodeling in Austin

Placed in Texas because the sources above show these homes there.