Homegazing: Robbinsdale rambler is retro cool

If you dig the look of the early 1960s, you'll really dig Jon and Trixi Hunt's house. Outside, it's a pretty typical Robbinsdale rambler, but inside, it's swingin', baby!

It wasn't that way when Jon bought it in 2005. Most of the original features had been covered up, under layers of "cheap, cheap, cheap modern." But he liked the home's overall "midcentury modest" vibe.

"That was the draw, that it was retro," he said. "It looked like it had a lot of potential."

After his wife, Trixi, moved in, the couple began to unleash that potential — by bringing their home back to its Rat Pack-era roots.

The makeover started in the kitchen, where the plain-vanilla vinyl flooring had started to come loose.

"One night we were home and pulled up a corner of the linoleum," Jon recalled. Underneath was a '60s relic — stone-patterned flooring in the decade's signature avocado green.

Intrigued, the Hunts spent two months peeling back the white vinyl, then scraping the adhesive off their find. It was worth hours of sweat equity, according to Jon. "We love it! It looks cool."

"We wondered, 'What goes here?' " Jon recalled. "After a lot of Googling, I figured it out. It was for a NuTone Food Center," a vintage appliance station that was the height of modern efficiency in the 1960s. The Hunts found a replacement on eBay and installed it.

The bathroom, too, was hiding its '60s roots.

"The tub had been re-glazed white," Jon said, but underneath, they could detect a hint of pink. They asked some longtime neighbors if the entire room had been pink in its heyday, and they said it had. So the Hunts set about restoring its rosy glow.

They chiseled off the white glazing to reveal the pink tub, and bought a pink toilet to match. They retiled their shower using reclaimed pink tiles. A vintage gold-and-white glittered Formica countertop, found at a salvage store, completed the glam makeover. "We turned it back into a Mamie Eisenhower pink bath," he said.

Their most recent project was redoing their lower-level family room and bar to give it the same vintage vibe as the upstairs. They've also painted their rooms in rich, retro-inspired colors.

And the couple are ready to tackle another makeover.

"We couldn't do much else to this house," he said. "My wife and I love a project."

The first real estate agent they consulted advised them to repaint everything white, but the Hunts declined. "Our furniture would look weird in a white room," said Jon, of their collection of vintage finds. More important, they didn't want to destroy their home's time-capsule charm.

"How many of these houses are left?" he asked.

He knows pink and avocado aren't everyone's cup of Sanka, but he's hoping for a new owner who appreciates its retro chic features. "This house has a niche market — people who love midcentury."

The house, which is located blocks from Theodore Wirth Park, has four bedrooms, three on the main level, two baths and hardwood floors.

Shawn Korby of Keller Williams has the listing, 651-442-0829.

Kim Palmer • 612-673-4784