Our Hopeful Home: Home Alone Kitchen And A New Double Oven

Home Alone movie kitchen appliances stainless steel double oven

To say that buying large appliances for your home is a very daunting task is an understatement. Anyone who has purchased a washer, dryer, hot water heater, refrigerator, oven or stove can attest to that. And my husband knows this as well as anyone after having spent months researching, and then purchasing, a new double oven to replace the original one in our nearly 30-year-old kitchen.

This post contains affiliate links. A purchase of any one of these items helps to support this blog and its creative efforts at no cost to you. To read more, please see my disclosure page.

The original before and after photos of our kitchen were shared in my DIY White Modern Farmhouse Painted Kitchen Cabinet reveal.

We've been pretty happy with our kitchen makeover these past 18 months or so, minus a few problems with the paint that will need to be addressed at some point. Sigh. But I still feel that the look is so much better than it was -- more modern farmhouse and less 1980's dark kitchen. I'm pretty sure you can see that transformation in all the before and after reveal photos.

And I'll admit, even before the new oven arrived the kitchen still looked pretty nice. However, only one of the two ovens even worked anymore (and not very well) and it was killing me that the oven was totally black while the fridge, microwave, range hood and all the new cabinet hardware was stainless steel!

However, that black oven has a history. And that's where the movie Home Alone comes in. Oddly enough, the original Home Alone movie was made in Winnetka, Illinois, which is not too far from our home in the Chicago suburbs. The outside of our home and the movie home look somewhat similar.

brick colonial house shutters snow Home Alone movie

This has been our home for the last 14 years. I truly love this brick colonial with all my heart.

brick colonial house garage shutters snow Home Alone movie

Here's a photo the realtor used when we had it (unsuccessfully) up for sale over 5 years ago.

While our house is nowhere near as grand as the actual movie house (I want that front porch and those dormers!), there certainly are some similarities. We've been told that the developer who built our house fashioned it after the Winnetka house. And as odd as it sounds, we were also told that our house was known around town as "The Home Alone House" because of its kitchen appliances.

So whose kitchen is it?

There's so much trivia floating around out there about this movie, as it was a huge success at the box office and continues to be watched today, especially around Chistmas time. I've read that the kitchen in the film was the actual kitchen in the Winnetka house. I've also read that the kitchen was built on a set nearby. Either way, shortly after we moved into our house in 2004 we were told that our dishwasher, trash compactor, stove and oven were supposedly bought by our home's developer at auction some time following the completion of the movie.

I've searched the internet for decent pictures of the movie kitchen to no avail. All I can find are two dark and grainy shots that show the trash compactor, dish washer and stove. (Later I found a photo with a black wall oven in it but it's of such poor quality that I can't even be sure if it's a double oven or not.) I will say that our cabinets match those in the movie exactly.

You can google the Home Alone house and see that it looks very different inside today than in the movie, and that it sold for around 1.5 million dollars back in 2012. Maybe we should have auctioned off the old dishwasher that we had to replace way back when we moved in, as well as the old oven we just got rid of. Who knows? We might have collected a pretty penny from some hard core movie buffs!

Ironically, rumor has it that the basement in the house across the street from us was custom built with 9 foot ceilings in anticipation of filming the movie "Married to the Mob" there in 1987. The movie ended up being filmed in New York and Florida instead, but it's another tidbit of local lore that's interesting to note.

So, are we really our neighborhood's "Home Alone House"? Maybe, however I don't think we'll ever know for sure. But it's certainly fun to think that we are.

Here is the empty wall opening after the old oven was removed. The appliance company came and measured the opening in advance to make sure that the new oven would fit. Unfortunately, they neglected to measure the depth of the opening and it wasn't deep enough. So they had to cut out the back wall and rearrange the electrical components. But in the end they got it to fit and now it's sitting pretty right where it belongs.

Granted there's still an element of black involved, but overall I'm very pleased with the new cohesive look.

And I'm still absolutely in love with our stainless steel french door refrigerator. It's a Sear's Kenmore Elite. I don't think I ever mentioned its name in my kitchen reveal post. I found a very similar stainless steel French door refrigerator that looks equally as nice on Amazon.

Frigidaire Gallery stainless steel double oven door and handle

The oven is a Frigidaire Gallery convection double oven. I love that the handles on the oven doors match the refrigerator's. (Update: Over two years later we LOVE this oven! We can cook a ton of food at different temperatures at the same time, as well as take advantage of the convection feature. I would recommend this oven in a heartbeat.)

We got the refrigerator at a great discount from a Sears Appliance Outlet store. We got the oven for a great discount as well from a local family-owned appliance store. We got additional discounts on both appliances for what amounted to a few inconsequential, practically invisible dings. And that really means a lot when you're talking about appliances that can cost well over $2,000 each.

Below you can see the progression on that side of the kitchen with just four photos.

Photo One: Old oven, old refrigerator and old cabinets. Eh.

Photo Two: Old oven, old refrigerator and painted cabinets. Better.

Photo three: Old oven, new refrigerator and painted cabinets. Even better.

Photo four: New Oven, new refrigerator and painted cabinets. Best. Hallelujah!

Another plus -- I was so excited about the new oven that I was motivated to spring clean the entire kitchen from top to bottom! And that happens like, never! Just ask my family. Seriously.

Overall the kitchen has come a long way from how it looked when we first moved into the house in 2004. My family has come a long way as well. Our 14-year-old son was 3 months old at the time, and the girls were 4 and 2 years old, respectively. Now we have a house full of teenagers and I can not fathom how we got here.

Well, that's it until next time, friends!

I hope you enjoyed reading about our

Home Alone Kitchen And A New Double Oven

and that I've inspired you in some way!

Don't forget to Pin it!