I think the set up of this set is so strange. The kitchen has two doors that go to the same room. The oven unit looks like an antique and is oddly placed in the kitchen, on the complete opposite side from the fridge with an awkward L shaped island in the way. The front and back doors appear to be on the same plane of the house. And if I recall correctly I once read that no exterior shots were ever established, so the outside of the house was never seen?
shareYeah I guess it is weird that everything pretty much takes place in the kitchen
shareMy guess is that they lived in an old Victorian. The layout was always confusing to me too.
"The end of the shoelace is called the...IT DOESN'T MATTER!"
In the episode where Alex and the girls turn the house into a hotel someone described it as a old big house, so I always assumed it was supposed to be a older Victorian type house. That would be the kind of house hippies would live in.
shareI loved that TV house. They were supposed to be hippies so it made sense with her being architect and him working @ pbs (this old house). Plus this is in the 1980's pre-gentrification so they had to look for somewhere 'cheap'. Back then these neighborhoods (unlike today!) were the cheap part of town--bc people wanted the suburbs. The bohemian people were the ones who had to fix these homes up.
share"The oven unit looks like an antique and is oddly placed in the kitchen"
"Looks like an antique"? Are you daft? They had the best oven in sitcom history. That was a Wolf commercial 60-inch gas range, a current model at the time (definitely not an antique, plus, it's a timeless design anyway; commercial ranges made today don't look much different); very high-end. It has 6 high-BTU gas burners on the cook top and a 24-inch gas griddle on the left side (atop the elevated section). The griddle plate is 3/4" thick carbon steel and weighs about 125 pounds by itself (talk about even heating and heat retention). Additionally, it has 2 full-size, side-by-side, high-BTU gas ovens. Even when I was a kid in the 1980s, before I knew much about anything, I could tell just by looking at it, that it was a kickass oven.
The only thing strange about it was the idea that the Keatons would own a high-end commercial range that cost as much as a new car. You would normally only see a range like that in a restaurant, or in the house of a rich person who simply wanted the best of everything, or perhaps in a professional chef's house, assuming he could afford one and wanted to cook like a professional at home.
The Keatons were middle-class and none of them were employed as a chef or even took cooking particularly seriously. So why was it there? It isn't something a set decorator would normally put into that sort of a setting. The answer is: it wasn't the set decorator's idea. It was the idea of the creator and producer of the show, Gary David Goldberg. He specified it because he had a Wolf commercial range in his own home. It certainly added a unique and memorable element to the Keatons' kitchen, despite its incongruity with the Keatons' financial status and other appliances. The refrigerator, for example, was just a run-of-the-mill Kenmore from Sears or whatever; would have cost a ~couple hundred dollars when new.
wow! you really know your ovens! ..and BTUs
shareMaybe the oven came with the house?
shareThat just shifts the incongruity to the previous owners of the house, and also raises the question of why they would leave behind a range that's worth a significant percentage of the value of the house itself.
shareReally over-analyzing a fictitious home, lol, but maybe the previous owners died and Steve and Elyse bought it as an estate sale.
shareThat doesn't eliminate the incongruity (i.e., ridiculously expensive range in a run-of-the-mill house with run-of-the-mill appliances, furniture, et cetera). Like I said, it just shifts the incongruity to the previous owners.
shareSo, maybe the previous owners were really into cooking and chose to spend big bucks on an expensive range. Like some will spend a ridiculous amount of money on an entertainment system, or customizing their car, etc.
I would put it on the previous owners though. I doubt Steven and Elyse would buy a range like that. Especially when they were never shown to be majorly into cooking or baking.
Here’s a cool article on the set of the house. Apparently the producer had a Wolf Range in his house.
https://www.architecturaldigest.com/gallery/michael-j-fox-family-ties-tv-show-set-design-slideshow
I disagree too. I loved the house too. I grew up in the south in an area with a lot of Victorian homes. The layout was pretty similar to the homes of my friends.
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