On kitchen design, and design in general. From the anti-designer.

One year I was watching HGTV around Christmastime, and I thought I was going to throw up.  I could not believe the waste.  Style for your house, they tell you, you must have a stylish house.  People were spending, literally, thousands of dollars to decorate their houses for Christmas, in the name of Christmas, and on January 1 (or maybe even December 26) it would all be torn down and thrown away.

Later, I realized that they apply this rule to all of house decorating.  I call it house decorating rather than home decorating, because a true home should not need to be "updated" every 4-5 years.

Yes, that's what they tell you: if you are doing it right, you should redecorate your house every 4-5 years.  Hogwash.  Malarcky.  Absolutely ridiculous.

* * * * * * * * * *

A year ago, we were finishing a kitchen renovation.  I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  It had not gone well.  I am not going to do this again in 4-5 years.

Also, I did not put in white cabinets, or gray quartz countertops, or (gasp) an island.  I incorporated neither open shelving nor glass fronted cabinets.  "What even is the point?" the HGTV believer asks.

But, a year later, I am very happy with the kitchen (now that my dear husband has fixed nearly everything that the contractors did wrong).  It is a good kitchen, and it works well.  I am thankful for it.  I like the way it looks.  I enjoy cooking and eating in this kitchen.

And that, after all, is what a kitchen is for.

Here is my take on "trends":

(1) White cabinets.

White cabinets are fine if you like them.  They just aren't my favorite.  To me, they look overly formal and high maintenance, or sterile and stark.  We wanted a bright kitchen, so we put in lights.  We have standard fixtures: in the middle of the room, over the table, over the sink.  We have recessed lights in the ceiling around the perimeter of the room.  And we have under-cabinet lighting.  When we turn on all the lights, our kitchen is plenty bright, and the cabinets are not white.

When we were shopping for a home, back before we bought this one (sight-unseen off the internet), each time I walked into a kitchen with white cabinets, my heart died a little bit within me.  I like the warm hominess of wood, even (gasp) oak.  I like it.

When we decided to renovate our kitchen, I read up on kitchen design, and all the designers said things like, "All the really good houses have white kitchens."  For awhile I looked into a white kitchen; I looked at white beadboard cabinets with an antique wash.  They were almost homey, almost inviting.  But my husband didn't like white, and truth be told, I honestly preferred wood myself.

Personally, as much as they try to tell me that white cabinets are classic and timeless, I am pretty sure that within 5-7 years, popular opinion will shift back towards warm wood finishes.  People are going to get sick of white, gray, black, silver and stainless steel.  It seems to me that if we sell our home, it will probably be after white cabinets have lost their allure anyway.  So why put them in if I don't love them, and they won't be a selling point by the time we sell?  Also, it's fairly easy for buyers to paint wood cabinets white, if that's what they like.  It's not easy to go the other direction.

(2)  Kitchen Islands.

Here's the deal.  I don't have an island, and I never have.  We could have fit an island into this kitchen, but it would have meant sacrificing an entire wall of uppers and lowers, and a lovely seven foot stretch of counter that works beautifully for either extra work space or a serving buffet.  I couldn't see how an island would offer me more than that.  Plus, this way the wall doesn't get scuffed up by passing traffic.

Islands are okay if you have a truly huge kitchen.  Mostly, I think they are nice for filling in an extremely spacious kitchen, so that the cook can turn around and find a workspace behind her, and not need to run a long way across a massive room in order to set something down.

In much of today's design, islands make me sad because of what they stand for.  Islands stand for the busy, frenetic, activity-saturated lives we live, where "family dinner" is an oddity, a rarity.  Islands stand for, "Belly up to the island and eat these chicken nuggets from the convection oven as fast as you can so we will not be late to little league."  People used to have a kitchen table in the middle of the kitchen, a place to peel apples, roll out cookie dough, experiment with watercolors, and do homework.  Now we have islands, we rarely peel apples, and homework is done in the SUV on the way to ballet lessons.

Kitchen islands also stand for a society of isolation and insulation.  So often, the kitchen sink sits in the island nowadays.  The popular sink placement now overlooks the family room, because that is where the children play.  It used to overlook the window to the backyard, back when kids played with the neighbor children, outside.  But now we have had to pull our families inside, and we wash up after dinner while watching our kids play video games on a giant flat-screen TV rather than whiffle ball out under the setting sun.  Practical, yes, but sad.

(3)  Open shelving and the trend toward no upper cabinets.

Really?  Do you want to use your kitchen, or take pictures of it?  Seriously?

Okay, open shelving is not a new idea.  In the eighties, they had open shelving in Michael J. Fox's kitchen on Family Ties.  It bothered me then, and I don't like it now.  Can we just think about this for a minute?  How much do you like to dust?  Are you really up for artistically arranging your dishes in plain sight on a daily basis?  A kitchen is a work room.  You need to be able to work in it, to get things done.  You should not design it with elements that will increase the difficulty of doing your chores, or add unnecessary tasks to your already long to-do list.  Unless you have a hired hand who dusts the shelves for you, and primps the dish display, and you generally just eat take-out off paper plates at your island, I do not recommend open shelving in place of upper cabinets.

One of my friends observed recently, "I know some people with really fantastic kitchens, with commercial quality ranges and giant stainless steel hood fans, but they don't seem to use them.  My friends who like to cook, who are really good cooks, they all have pretty normal kitchens."

I once read a blog where the woman had torn out her lovely cherry cabinets (uppers and lowers), and replaced them with white drawers (on the bottom), and no uppers at all, just some sort of gray stone backsplash (or maybe it was white tile).  I wanted to weep.  Why?  Why?  Why?  She was totally convinced that she had achieved a great increase in efficiency.  She did admit that she had to get rid of most of her stuff, now that there was nowhere to store it.  "A wonderful way to unload the excess," she raved, "And with drawers, it's all so much easier to access."

I find drawers to be the most inefficient form of storage around.  I admit that a few drawers are nice, if you can use them to sort and organize.  But overall, drawers waste space, and things get lost in them; you are always having to dig underneath and behind.  Also, clearly this woman did not have lupus, or rheumatoid arthritis, or a bad back, because nobody with any of those issues would ever say that low storage is easier to access than upper storage.  I'd be surprised if most healthy people would claim that lower cabinets are easier to access than uppers.

Once I read a surprisingly honest article about minimalism.  The author stated that minimalism is actually the most lavish and excessive of decorating styles, because it presupposes that the homeowner has so much space, he doesn't really need to use it.  Yes, he can devote an entire room to one artistically formed designer lounge chair and a window with a flowing curtain.  He has no need to seat a group of people, feed a family, entertain a small child, or store backpacks and books for students.  Or, presumably, he has rooms devoted to those activities hidden away somewhere else in his house.

I like things that are truly timeless, "design" that is not "in style" and never tried to be.  I like nice materials (natural wood, stone, metal), efficiency and neatness.  I like a house that says, "Sit down, we're glad you're here!  We'd like to spend some time, some face-to-face time, reconnecting and sharing and loving, and not so much observing the house as though it is some sort of a museum."  God made the Sabbath for man, not man for the Sabbath.  I think homes, likewise, should serve the people, and not the other way around.  Comfortable seating, good books, well placed lamps.  A place for everything, and almost everything in its place.  A vase of flowers, a lovely quilt, yes, but not an art-scape everywhere a person's eyes try to rest.  That's just tiring, or self-conscious like adolescent poetry.

And me, I like an old-fashioned kitchen.  Friendly wooden cabinets encircling the room like a grandmotherly hug, and a weathered kitchen table in the middle, surrounded by chairs, sheltering a dog and a toddler underneath.  Colors and textures that blend with the smells of cookies baking, soup simmering, coffee brewing.  A room that isn't seriously marred when a single item is out of place.  That's not exactly what I got, but I made a stab at it.

It has grown on me.  I am thankful.  A year later.

Bare naked soul (aka the kitchen)

I have not wanted to do this post, but I feel as though I should.

So I will try.

First, I put it off because my camera isn't working well.  All the pictures are blurry.  sigh.

Also, the original cabinet color, which I would call pale, dead flesh, actually looks good when I take pictures of it (with this broken camera), much more warm and wood-like than it looks in real life.

Since 95% of the (maybe 12?) people who "read this post" won't read this (meaning none of them, with the possible exception of one), but will only look at the pictures, I should not even waste the time to try to explain.  But anyway.  You will think my cabinets were a better color originally.  I assure you, they weren't.

But.

I am going to go out of my way to try to explain this (defensive a little?  maybe).  I will begin with pictures that I think accurately capture the colors of the cabinetry in my kitchen (at least on my computer monitor), before and after, IN SPITE OF the way they will look in the following "reveal" photographs.  So please, please believe me and use your imagination as you look at the eventual kitchen pictures.

This is a "sample" of the original cabinet color:

When we bought the house off the internet without looking at it, I knew I did not care for the kitchen cabinet color, nor did I like the way it looked with yellow brass hardware and pinky-beige counters.  I thought, "No problem.  We'll just switch out the hardware for some oil-rubbed bronze, and top it with some dark granite counters.  It will be fine."

However.

We arrived and found that:

1. There was no space to store anything larger than an average sized salad bowl, anywhere in the kitchen.
2. There was a serious traffic flow problem between the refrigerator and the peninsula (see below).

Imagine yourself standing with your back to the end of that peninsula.  Then imagine opening that refrigerator door.  It was a bad thing.

Clearly, it would be money thrown into a black hole to simply redo the counters on that footprint of a kitchen.

Ach.  I have wandered off topic, or ahead of topic, or something.  How did I do this?

Cabinet colors:

Original:

New (I used two, mixed together):

(a rich wood tone that Shawn really liked)

(a dark brown called chocolate that will heretofore look black in the pictures, which is quite distressing to me)

All this is to ask, to plead with you to realize when you look at the pictures:

1. The original color was, truly, a pale, dead flesh color, and not a whimsical light golden oak color as it may appear.
2. The new, dark cabinets are a rich dark brown, not a black so dark that it fades utterly into shadow.

Whew.

Okay.  On with the show.  Back to business.  Here we go.

Before:

After:

I really enjoy the way the kitchen is more open around the sink.  There is plenty of space both on the right and on the left.

We put these little "pull out pantries" on either side of the sink cabinet:

Before:

After:

By moving the refrigerator to the other side of the room, we created a large, traditional storage and serving buffet area.  It also gives us extra work space when we get lots of things going at once.

Before:

After:

One of my favorite parts of this change is the higher ceiling.  It is uplifting!  Incidentally, I love those little shelves to the right of the sink.  There are similar shelves on the left, but they are not as prominently visible, so the best stuff is on the right.  The top shelf displays this little beauty that I got at an estate sale in our neighborhood:

Before:

After:

We are so glad to have the kitchen open, without the constipated blockage we formerly suffered between the old refrigerator and the end of the peninsula!

Before:

After:

By moving the stove over to the right, we gained a nice workspace between the stove and the sink.  We also made room for a nice pots and pans cabinet.

Before:

After:

We gave up a little bit of kitchen storage here, but we got Shawn a nicer sink:

And... to the left we were able to put in a BROOM CLOSET!

 Before:

After:

Another view of the pantry,  Yes, we put this in, in place of the desk area.  it was a good change.  I didn't like writing in a kitchen corner (my kids even came home and said, "Mom, why is your computer there???").  And now we have loads of storage, even for large items, like our crock pot and our turkey roaster.  Best of all, it isn't even difficult or painful to get them out!

Before:

After:

As you can see here, I am a lazy photographer and got tired of moving things out of view, 

hence the colander of grapes in the lovely white plastic bowl on the counter,

 napkins, mail, a bin of dog medicine, etc.  

Oh!  Haha!  That great big drawer in the middle is my Tupperware drawer.  It is so much easier than it has ever been to put leftovers away!

Well, that gives you some idea.  I am sorry if you liked the old kitchen better.  My guess is, it was probably crafted with more love.  Our contractor experience was bad, and it left me with such a negative taste, I don't even know how I feel about my kitchen.

But...

I like the extra work space around the sink.
I like all the additional and specialized storage we got.
I like having the soffits out and the ceiling higher.
I like my big buffet serving area.
I like my broom closet!
I like the open space without the peninsula.
I like having a gas stove!

I am thankful,
I am very thankful,
and someday I might even get over the traumatized feeling the ordeal gave me.

Day 82

Up to now, I've been mostly holding it together in regard to our kitchen project.

Up to now.

They did such a terrible job on the drywall, we had to ask to have it redone.  This after the new cabinets, appliances and counters had been installed.

Since that point, we have experienced many more days of waiting than of working.

Last week they were supposed to get the drywall fixed, but they weren't paying attention to scheduling.  We moved everything back out of our mostly functional kitchen on Sunday night, and hunkered down again in our bunker.  Nobody showed up on Monday.  On Tuesday morning, they popped in and spent a couple of hours covering everything with plastic, taping plastic over the openings to the rest of the house, just enough work to inconvenience us until the real worker finally showed up on Wednesday to take on the drywall. 

Since no work began until Wednesday, of course it was not finished by the weekend.

Although they taped plastic over a lot of stuff, they did not pull the brand new light fixtures away from the ceiling (I'd asked for that, but I get exhausted fighting for things), so over the course of getting the drywall fixed, of course they have gotten joint compound and paint on the edges of my brand new lights.  At least the ceiling looks flat now.  I've been googling, "Removing paint from light fixtures," and it looks like it's something I might be able to take care of once they are gone.  If they are ever gone.

Meanwhile, my allergies kicked in something fierce.  I don't know if it's lupus, or the rain that's been rolling through, but my allergies have been accompanied by incredible aching.  So between the aching and the coughing, I haven't been sleeping.

Not sleeping, I haven't been coping well with disappointments.  Do other people turn into basket cases when they are over-tired?  I am a basket case.  I have lost my grip.  I don't want to do this anymore.

I am so upset, and disappointed, and exhausted from being upset and disappointed.   I was not up to handling today.

This morning, I got put on the spot in our Bible study leaders' group meeting and had to lead the "opening" because I am a newbie and need to be trained in.  I felt foolish and awkward; the whole morning had been so rough, plus I hardly had a voice.

Afterwards, I tried to cheer myself up buying flower seeds at the grocery store.  However, when I went to check out, the self-check computer kept yelling at me to "PUT ITEM IN CART!" because the seed packs were too lightweight for it to register when I did.  I had to stand there for an excruciatingly long time until a lackadaisical store employee finally pulled herself away from nothing to saunter over and help me.

The drywall guy had worked at our house for a little while this morning, but then he went away.  I came home from the grocery store, and I was locked out of the front door.  Nobody was here working, and Shawn had gone to work, and I have no key to the front, and the kitchen, which you enter from the garage, is taped and plasticked off from the rest of the house.  In the end, I piled my groceries on the front porch and then went around through the kitchen and busted through the plastic so I could open the front door from inside and take my food to refrigerator in the basement.  The plastic will have to be somehow fixed, as the drywall sanding is not over.

I want this to be over.

I want to quit, but I don't think that's possible.

I don't even know what my options are.  I guess I don't have any.  I want my money back.  Yeah right.

Sometimes I look at pictures of the old kitchen, the one I thought I hated, and I wish I'd never ripped it out.  I didn't care for any of the elements they'd used, or the layout.  But at least the construction was nicely done. The workmanship was decent.

Sometimes I want to go away, to my parents' house, or to a sunny beach somewhere.  Anywhere that isn't here.

At times, I want to scream and kick somebody in the face.  Really, I do.  It's rather frightening.

I cry, but it does absolutely no good.  Crying only aggravates my allergies.

Right before the last time we moved back out of the kitchen, I cut out a sewing project.  I would like to work on it, but there is nowhere to lay it out.  Anyway, I am upset, and I have found that it is not good to work on a sewing project while I am already upset.

Also, Easter is going to be heart-wrenching because for the first time ever, three of my kids will not be able to be here.

Don't get me wrong.  I am exceedingly thankful for Jonathan.  I love Jonathan.  I am looking forward like crazy to seeing Jonathan.  And probably the kitchen won't be done anyway, so it's probably good that they won't all be here.  Right?  Right?

Easter will come, and Jon will be here.  We will eat out and do fun stuff.  Fun Stuff.  Yes.

Sometime after Easter, the kitchen will be done and I will be able to do my sewing project on the kitchen table, in the kitchen, with good lighting.

I am trying to look on the bright side, but the Bible passage from James has popped into my mind:  "Come now, you who say, 'Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit'—yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes.  Instead you ought to say, 'If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.'"  (James 4:13-15 ESV)

Tomorrow, if the Lord wills, we will live and do whatever.  The Lord's will be done.

I wish the Lord's will was for me to sleep a long, deep, dreamless, coughless sleep and wake up feeling able to cope.

Kitchen Project. Day 75. Yes, 75.

The good news is that I had spaghetti for lunch.

Leftover spaghetti, quinoa pasta and sweet Italian sausage, warmed up in the microwave.  It was delicious.  Yes, it was.

I was able to use the microwave because nobody is here working on our kitchen.

Two weeks ago, we had some tough talks with the construction crew about work quality and the need to have some things redone.

Last week, Shawn was in California on business, and we took a break from having workers in the house.

Shawn arrived home late Friday night.  On Sunday night, he emailed the contractor.  As far as we knew, they were coming today; they said they were coming today.  We stayed up late last night, moving back out of our unfinished kitchen, transferring our food back into the basement refrigerator, carrying dishes back up to "the bunker," a.k.a David and Jon's room.  I got up extra early this morning, to spread some cardboard we'd saved over some surfaces we felt would need extra protection during the re-work.

I left the house at 8:25 a.m. for a long meeting, and Shawn was going to stay until the crew arrived to start.

I arrived home at 1:10 p.m. to an empty and untouched house . . .

at which time I fixed myself a delicious plate of spaghetti leftovers and focused on counting my blessings.

It is raining.

I can't reach Shawn at work to ask what is going on.

So.

Breathe.  Pray.  Hope.

Probably, the kitchen will not be done by Easter.  That is not what I am hoping.

I am just hoping for the best, for the sovereign hand of God working on my behalf, for peace, for God's will to be done on earth as it is in heaven, for assurance that God is on my side and that He will never leave me nor forsake me.

These things are all true.  He loves me.  Jesus loves me.

And He allowed me to have spaghetti for lunch.

Grace and Hope

My first spring in Illinois has been nice.

When I lived in Minnesota, March was a winter month.

When I lived in New York,  March was a winter month.

But here in Illinois, March seems to be a spring month.  Granted, the pale green haze of new leaves has not begun to spread through the bare tree branches.  But... the snow is all gone.  This blows my mind.  There is no snow.  Yesterday, Shawn and I spent part of the afternoon picking up sticks in our backyard.  Spring clean up.  It's here, really.  Today is 64 degrees of windy wildness, and I walked for an hour with a friend.

The kitchen is not done.  I am half hoping that it will be done by Easter, but I probably shouldn't even write that down, for fear of jinxing it, although I am not a superstitious person.  God is in control, but I think somebody messed some stuff up here, probably me being gullibly trusting, for one.  Handymen who are certainly not gifted at drywall work, for another.

Yes the kitchen.  I started out chronicling the renovation with high hopes that it would be quick, easy and satisfying.  It has been none of those things.

I've been through a roller-coaster of emotions: sadness, fear, anger, disappointment, remorse, guilt.  I've wondered if God is punishing me for taking on the challenge and expense of the renovation.  I've vented and wept and laid restlessly awake at night, unable to turn off my mind.  I've feared that God is angry with me.  Shawn finally told me one day, "You should never try to measure how much God loves you by how easy your life is."  God gave me Shawn for a reason.

Right now we are in a season of calm.  The sink and counters are in, so I can function (I've made quinoa spaghetti twice).  The drywall needs to be redone, however, so I'm not going to move things into my new cabinets until after that mess is over and we have cleaned again (and again and again).  No work is happening this week, and although it stretches the project even longer, at least I have a break.  A break is nice, perhaps even necessary.  God knows what I need.  God knows what I need.  Jesus says that our Father in heaven knows what we need even before we ask Him.

Apparently I did not need an easy and stress-free experience, because if I had needed that, God would have provided it.

God brings stresses into our lives to teach us things we need to know.  He brings experiences we had never imagined, certainly never hoped, to test us and refine us and help us grow.  Growth is painful.

Growth is painful.  I remember comforting one of my sons in the middle of the night, during a growth spurt.  His growing legs hurt so much, they woke him from sound sleep.  I gave him milk (for calcium), bananas (for potassium), and Tylenol (just because).  This usually seemed to work, and he would be back to sleep within the hour.  Spiritual and emotional growth pains are not often cured that quickly.

Growing pains.  Lessons learned.  Struggles undergone.  Conflicts handled.  Disappointments faced.

We all need grace.  We need to give it, and we need to receive it.  When it feels as though nobody else in the world has any grace for you, you can go to God, because He has infinite grace.

Grace sounds really good: love, hope, forgiveness, benevolence poured out on the undeserving.  It's not all daisies and pinwheels, though.  Flannery O'Connor said, "Grace changes us, and change is painful."  Grace, like water flowing over a cliff, is breathtakingly beautiful and frighteningly powerful.

There is copious pain in life.  Grace sometimes mitigates pain, but it sometimes intensifies it.  If you apprehend the source of the grace and the sacrifice that occurred in order to protect you, the undeserving one, from your rightful consequences, there is an excruciating pang that accompanies grace.  Grace is never free, it only means that the person who paid isn't the one who should have.  This is true whether you are the receiver of grace, or the giver.  To give grace is to sacrifice, to pay for someone else's mistake, to be the one thrown under the bus.

We do not like to give grace, but we certainly like to receive it.

Dear Lord Jesus, please help me to understand how You want me to live graciously as the recipient of Your great grace.  When should I stand firm against something I believe is unjust, and when should I gracefully give in?  Give me wisdom to discern Your heart, and give me courage to follow Your will when I understand it.  Also, thank you for spring, for hope.  In You there is always hope.

Kitchen Project. Day 37.

I stopped writing about my kitchen for awhile because...

(1) I was bored with it, and
(2) I was traumatized by it.

You see, the floor was damaged.

It looked to me like they spilled some sort of thick, sticky, black motor oil on it, and then tried to clean it up with a number of various and strong spot removers, failing to completely remove the spot and damaging the flooring.

Of course, this is only what it looks like to me.  I did not see anything happen.   One day I walked down and a worker was on his knees with paper towels and my window cleaner, going over the entire floor.  This was an uncharacteristic move at an unexplained point in the process.  Soon after--that evening or the next day--I noticed the black spot.  Shawn noticed some bottles of "Spot Remover" sitting around.  I got most of the spot out myself, using baking soda and dish detergent.  But a few days later, that piece of flooring was coming apart.

We asked them about it, and of course they knew nothing.

Have I told you before how afraid I am of these people?  I am absolutely terrified, because whenever he makes a mistake, the one guy gets mad at me.  So this issue, this was beyond what I was prepared to confront in every way, shape and form.

I emailed the flooring company, but I am sure that they will say it isn't covered because of some loophole: improper installation, or inappropriate cleaning methods.  And even if it is covered, they will refund the cost of the materials.  Period.  I don't want some money back.  I want a functional kitchen floor.  I want the project over and my house back.  This piece of flooring is smack in the middle of the room.  And they installed the flooring all the way to the walls, and then installed the cabinets over it.  So to replace this one piece of flooring would require tearing out the entire kitchen.  Literally. 

I do not have it in me even to consider doing what it would take to replace that plank.

When I first saw the damaged plank, I felt like I had been kicked in the gut by someone wearing spiked cowboy boots.  I started to shake. I felt guilty, as though I had done it, and I thought I was going to vomit.

I prayed, and after awhile God helped me to realize two things:

1. This is not my fault.  I did not do it.  Scrubbing a black spot with baking soda and dish detergent did not make my new floor come apart.
2. OK.  My brand new floor is coming apart before my kitchen is even finished, and this is a sad thing, but it does not reflect a  moral failing on my part.  It is not a moral failing.  I did not sin.

I still feel physical symptoms of guilt when I think about this, but in my rational mind, God is helping me realize that I do not need to feel guilty.  I prayed and prayed some more.  I did some internet research on adhesives.  I prayed some more.  I told God, "This is Your house and Your kitchen, and You have the power to fix it.  I am going to trust You and believe that You will work this out for my good and Your glory.  A kitchen is a silly thing to be fixated on, and I don't need a perfect kitchen, but at the same time, every part of my life is Yours and You can show Your power in every detail.  I don't think You want me to be consumed with worry over this, or for me to be distracted from things that are more important.  So I am going to trust You."

Online, I found an adhesive that looked promising.  I went to my local Ace Hardware, and they had it, in stock, for a fraction of the online price.  I bought a trial tube and brought it home.  Shawn and I tested it on some extra flooring we had lying around, and it worked great.  God is good and His mercies are everlasting.  Tonight we plan to patch up our damaged floor--ourselves--and pray again, prayers of both supplication and thanksgiving. 

On other fronts, they put in our stove, dishwasher and microwave.  The microwave is especially nice to have.  Now we can heat up leftovers from the crockpot (or a restaurant!).  Additionally, we have new paint, and I love the color, a very soft, understated yellow that is cheery and light.  I had no idea the color could make the room look this new and uplifting.

Another bright note:  the counter people measured for the counters today, well ahead of the recently expected schedule.

It has been a long, harsh winter and a long, dusty construction project.  Many times I've thought of Narnia under the reign of the white witch: always winter and never Christmas. But then there appeared holly berries and the trickling sounds of melting ice. . .  Aslan was on the move.

In my real life, I see God on the move.  And I am glad.

Kitchen Project. Day 28.

It has been four (4) complete weeks since we began this project.  Since we started on a Thursday, that also means four weekends without a kitchen.

We have eaten many various and sundry things out of the crockpot, including canned chicken and dumplings "enhanced" with canned mixed vegetables, canned soups, pot roasts, and bratwurst and beans.  I have learned to allow for over an hour to heat up soup.

We sometimes reheat leftovers in the toaster oven (not a bad system for the right type of leftovers).  We've also used the toaster oven to make quite a few chicken patties, as well as sliced potatoes with butter and salt wrapped in foil (the old camping dish), which isn't half bad.

We dug out our griddle from the sun porch where it had been packed away, and we've enjoyed fried eggs.  Let me tell you, it's a kick eating fried eggs out of your lap in an upstairs bedroom.

Now we have the dubious pleasure of waiting on the counter-tops.  It takes a week for the counters to be fabricated, once the company comes out and measures for them.  What nobody seemed to know before yesterday is:  it takes a long time to get into the counter-top company's queue for being measured.  We are ready to be measured, but I don't think we are in the queue for measurement.

So.

At this point we will have counters a week after we get measured, but it could be as long as five weeks before they measure us (even longer if were aren't even in the queue yet).  After the counters are installed, we still need to have the backsplash installed, the finish electrical (I think that means switches and switch plates), and faucets and such.

In the meantime, they still have painting they can do.

They may be able to install some appliances.  Maybe... the ones that don't depend on finish electrical being done, and the ones that are not in any way connected to the sink, which will arrive when the counter-tops arrive.  That definitely counts out the dishwasher, and maybe the refrigerator.  Fortunately, our old refrigerator is in the basement.  Our new appliances are in the garage.

I hesitate to show pictures because I asked for a lot of advice, and I didn't take everybody's.  I also hesitate because my camera's light meter is out of whack, and I really struggle to get a picture with decent lighting, especially after the sun starts to set, which is what happens by the time the workers leave.  My flash is broken, too.

But, in all fairness, some of you have been waiting to see this, so I am going to give you an idea, but please realize that these pictures are darker than reality, and they fail to show details that I wish you could see.

 

Here you see, from left to right, the space for the refrigerator, the space for the dishwasher, the corner sink cabinet, and the space for the oven and microwave.

At the left you see, again, the space for the oven and microwave.  

Front and center, Piper inspects the new digs.
Along the wall is our new buffet counter area, 

from which I hope to serve holiday dinners someday.

Here is my new pantry, across the doorway from the buffet,

and I am very excited to start filling it.

The door-style of the upper doors is incorrect and will be changed.

They will be square.

I did use two finishes, a controversial move.  The carpenters call them my red cabinets and my black cabinets.  They are more accurately reddish brown and blackish brown, or, as the company names them, briarwood and chocolate.

So there you have it.

Kitchen Project. Day 26.

I did not take any pictures on Friday, or over the weekend, although there was a small amount of visible progress, really nice visible progress, in fact.

But I was too traumatized.

I didn't feel like venturing near the computer all weekend.  All I did was clean, and then, when the sun came out on Sunday, I observed all the places I'd missed when I cleaned.

The carpenters hate me now.

When it came time to install the cabinets, it became clear that the wiring that happened on that fateful day, Day 7, is all messed up.  The electricians came back once to move some things, and now I've found more mistakes, so more things will have to be moved.

And every time they have to move something, it opens up another drywall project, complete with mudding and multiple sandings of drywall compound.

This is messy.  And it is time consuming; it prolongs the project.  It's three steps forward, two steps back, day after day.  And more drywall powder on my brand new cabinet finishes.

Maybe this is normal.

I just wish the carpenters didn't hate me.  It's not my fault the electricians put the lights and the wiring in the wrong places.  Or maybe it is.  Maybe I should have been on top of it all.  I thought we'd hired professionals, and given them drawings, and they would know what to do.  I didn't realize that I should be on top of every detail.  Indeed, they did not encourage me to be on top of details.  They seemed happier the farther away I was from the worksite.  The electricians just came raring in here like a small, destructive army, and everybody's body language was sending the message, "Get the dang homeowner out of the way."  So I retreated.  And now there are all these mistakes, and when we point them out we encounter thinly veiled attitude and hostility. 

Anyway, I think all the cabinets are set in place now, except for the one over the refrigerator.  There are, of course, spaces where the appliances will go.  I could post a picture, but I am not ready yet, psychologically.  I'm battered.

I think I'd be excited about the progress if I didn't feel like such a prisoner in the upstairs bunker of my home, where today I hid out, hunkered down, and listened to the icy chunks of snow pelting the large window in my bedroom.

Spring will surely come,

and my kitchen will be done.

I'll cook again some day,

and take walks out in the sun.

Kitchen Project. Day 21.

I stopped updating for awhile because I was so bored by the lack of visible progress, I figured everyone else must be, too.

We've undergone a great deal of drywall work and sub-floor work, both of which are important (and messy), and we are thankful that they were done well.  We trust that they were done well.

Yesterday they began to lay the flooring, and today they finished the flooring in the kitchen, but not in the laundry room.  I may be visiting the laundromat this weekend.

Yes, they finished the floor in the kitchen, and the upper cabinets were delivered today.  Observe them in my kitchen, in those cardboard boxes.

Tomorrow they will start to hang the upper cabinets, and when those are done, they will install the lower cabinets.  After that, the counter-top people come out to measure for the counters, and while we are waiting for the counters to be fabricated... then they will finish the laundry room floor.

Yes, I may be visiting the laundromat this weekend.  Or maybe even before that.



_________________________________________________________

If you are bored with this kitchen stuff, I wrote about something else over here.

Kitchen Project. Day 16.

Day 16. Leading into Weekend #3 without a kitchen... and this time, we are also without a washer and dryer.

Oh my.

Yesterday we had a difficult and incredibly scary talk with the contractors about the floor, and how we are not happy about the level of the floor, and the resulting bump right at the edge of a step down into our family room.

Both Shawn and I were extremely nervous to bring up a criticism, and dreaded doing it, fearing that we would ruin our working relationship with the people we have hired.  They are really very nice, polite, careful and even good about cleaning up after themselves.  However, I've taken two serious falls (not related to the kitchen) in less than a week (lupus?), and a tripping hazard right between the kitchen and the family room where we are always going back and forth, up and down two steps... well that is big concern.

We probably should have them tear up the whole sub-floor and re-lay it at a lower level, but since we will be charged by the hour and for materials involved in any rework, that simply isn't in the budget.  So we had this talk, which by the grace of God was very calm -- and I didn't cry, either -- and I think they heard our concern about safety.  The solution is yet to be seen.  I'm praying for an adequate one.

Ach.  Yuck.

And yes.  No laundry.  The washer, as you can see, is not in the laundry room.

The washer is here...

The drywall work is coming along.

I sure hope that by the end of next week I have my washer and dryer back.  I am not making this up.

Funny story.  When they detached my washer, one of the guys asked me, "Is this the only washer you have in this house?"

Ummmmm... yes.  I didn't know anybody ever had more than one washer.

Cooking without a kitchen

We ate homemade food at home last night, balanced on slightly wobbling TV trays, washed down with glasses of water drawn from the bathroom sink.

It wasn't too bad.

Crockpot Chicken Lentil Chili

28-30 oz. can crushed tomatoes

10-15 oz. can diced tomatoes with green chilies

3-5 oz. can chopped green chilies

1 cup dried lentils

½ cup brown rice

2 --1.25 oz. envelopes MSG-free chili seasoning mix

3 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts (2-3 lbs.)

1 quart (4 cups) water

Stir crushed tomatoes, diced tomatoes, green chilies, lentils, rice and one packet of chili seasoning mix together in your crockpot.  Stir in water.  Lay chicken on top (it will sink).  Sprinkle the second packet of chili seasoning mix over the top.

Cook on high for about 2-3 hours.  Reduce to low and cook for another 2 hours or so.  Or just cook on low for 6-8 hours.  When the chicken is fully cooked, shred it with two forks.  You can do this right in the crockpot, in which case you will miss some of the chicken and end up with a large chicken chunk here and there.  If you want it to be uniformly shredded, remove to a plate, shred, and return to crockpot.  Stir to distribute the chicken throughout the dish.

Cook on low for another hour if you have time, to let the flavors thoroughly permeate the chicken.  This is a nice but non-crucial step.

Serve hot with shredded cheese and sour cream or plain Greek yogurt.

If you are not camping out in an upstairs bedroom with only a crockpot and very limited cooking supplies (while your kitchen is torn out for a remodel), you can substitute your own seasoning for the chili seasoning mix.  Try mixing these and dividing into two piles to use in place of the two envelopes:

2 tsp. salt

2 tsp. cumin

2 tsp. granulated garlic or garlic powder

1 Tbsp. minced onion

1 tsp. crushed red pepper flakes

2 tsp. oregano

chili powder or paprika as desired

OBSERVATIONS:

• If Jon and DJ had been home, this would have made one meal.
• It was tasty, but I'm not sure I would have liked it without the cheese and sour cream.
• Stress causes lupus flares, and I am in one.
• It is virtually impossible to write poetry on MSWord, and even though nobody likes to read poetry, sometimes it is the only thing I want to write.
• Bwahahahaha.  No.  I do not write for an audience.
• I am having failures in life lately.  It feels like getting a math exam back, and seeing that I've failed, totally messed up the problem and gotten it wrong, wrong, wrong.  But.  Even though I know I failed, got it wrong, have a red slash and no points...I can't specifically figure out what my mistake was or how to fix it.  Not a good feeling.
• However, we ate plentifully and fairly nutritiously last night, so maybe I get some points for that?

Kitchen Project. Day 13.

Day 13.  Well, Day 7 was not particularly impressively good**, and Day 13 (today) was not particularly impressively bad.

I didn't take any photos today.  I'm just tired.  My back went out after I went to bed last night (yes, after I cuddled down beneath the quilts).  I spent from 11:00 p.m. to 2:44 a.m. in blinding pain, but it was the dark of night, so I guess it didn't matter that much.  Finally, at 2:44 poor Shawn got up and brought me 600 mg of Advil, and after that I slept until 6:45.

If you were to look at my kitchen today, it wouldn't look that different from yesterday.  There is more sub-flooring down on the floor, and much of the sub-flooring is covered with some sort of brown paper, taped down with blue tape.  In the corner with the bay window, all the appliances stand clustered, or at least the washing machine and the refrigerator.  Perhaps the dryer is in the garage.  The laundry room is empty now, and its floor is partially covered with sub-flooring as well.

It is progress.  It just feels slow, and photographically uninteresting, which probably means that it is more-boring-than-tap-water to read about.

We are in the midst of quite a winter storm, with 6-12 inches of snow predicted, and what looks like 5 inches already fallen, and the state has already used up its stores of road salt for the year.  This may mean that nobody will be able to make it to the work site tomorrow, and it probably means that the workers will be called out on emergencies on Thursday and Friday once the storm passes.  We had chicken patties in the toaster oven tonight, and they were fine, plenty filling.

The fragment of something more interesting to say flitted through my mind and escaped, dissolved, evaporated.***

So I will end for the day and hope for more dramatic progress to report soon.




** Actually, in retrospect, Day 7 was probably our hardest day so far.  It was tremendously loud, long and dirty, dirty, dirty.  I am still finding clumps of pink fiberglass insulation hither and yon, despite cleaning efforts that may have prolapsed all my remaining internal organs.  If it hadn't been for the lights they put into my bathroom, that day would surely have driven me over the brink.

*** Oh dear.  I remembered.  Today, Shawn noticed that our laundry room heat vent was not putting forth any heat.  Upon close inspection, he discovered that the heat duct that runs from the furnace through the basement crawlspace to the laundry room is full of water, blocking the flow of warm air.   Apparently on the day of the flood, a bunch of water ran down the heat vent into the duct, and stayed there.  It's bowed down, curved like a drain pipe with a trap.  We have to figure out how to get the water out, but we have to be able to do it with what we have, because we can't drive to a hardware store in this weather.  It's pretty low, so it's going to be hard to get gravity on our side.  Ideas appreciated. 

Kitchen Project. Day 12.

They are still here, but I'm going to start this post.

I spent most of the day out of the house today.  In the morning I babysat for a Bible Study Fellowship leadership meeting.  It was a very easy gig, two workers and two little baby boys.  One of the babies got fussy, so maybe it wasn't as easy as it sounds.

After that, I went to Meijer.  My plan was to buy more coffee for Shawn, and to try to get a cheap manicure, because two of my fingernails had torn and I wondered if they could be saved.  I arrived at the store, and the nail salon was closed.  So I walked through the aisles and bought kefir, yogurt, salad fixings and ingredients for crockpot-chicken-lentil-chili.  Upon arriving home, I realized that I had forgotten Shawn's coffee.  So I failed to complete either of my original goals.

Sigh.

Then, this afternoon, I had to take Piper to the vet.  Unwisely, I also took Schubert, not wanting to leave him home alone with the workers.  If you have ever struggled with a screaming, miserable infant for hours while waiting to see your pediatrician, you have some idea what I went through with these dogs at the vet today.  If they could do a surgical "bark"-ectomy, I would take Shubert in for the procedure immediately.

When we had finally finished the vet-appointment-of-eternal-punishment, we went out to pay.  Just as we entered the waiting area from the exam room, another lady, a Model Dog Owner, entered from outdoors.  Her dog was perfectly groomed and perfectly behaved.  It pranced on delicate feet and looked haughtily away from us as Schubert embarked on another frenzy of skull-shattering yelps.  Piper joined with his harsh monotone expectoration of noise (he's mostly deaf).  I tried to apologize to the Model Dog Owner, and she gave me a look that said, "Some people.  Why do you even have a dog, if you aren't going to train him and control him?"  She took her dog outdoors to avoid us.

I waited yet another eardrum-blasting eternity for the receptionist to get off the phone.  Finally she looked up at me and, over the din of my dogs, asked my name.  Lip reading ensued: How do you spell it?  What is the dog's name?  Do you have an appointment?  She could not find me in the system.  Finally she asked with annoyance, "What are we trying to do here, anyway?" 

A feeling rather akin to hatred welled up in me, and I cast pretenses of civility aside.

"I am trying to pay," I said, biting my lip and (surprisingly) choking back tears, "so we can go home."

Piper, however, has up-to-date shots and two new heart medications.

I missed most of the work at home today.  The muscles in my head, neck shoulders and upper arms are rather tight.

There is one carpenter, a very tall, lanky guy, who seems to head up a lot of the work.  He is young and polite, and he listens to country music, singing along (on tune).  I don't know much country music, but just now the radio was crooning out "Can I Have this Dance for the Rest of my Life?" by Anne Murray.  It brought a little grin to the corners of my mouth.

They are working on the floor.  Right now they are placing sub-floor, not the actual floor.

But they have not mudded the new ceilings and walls that they patched and hung last week.  I really, really wish they would finish the drywall work before they lay the floor.  I know how messy this gets.  I don't want the mess on my brand new floor!

I am in agony.  I don't know whether to say something, or if I would just annoy them.  "Stupid woman," they might think. "When has she ever done any of this kind of work?  What does she know about it?  How come she thinks she can tell us how to do our job?"

Also, it is getting to the point where soon I will be afraid to post pictures because I fear that people will think the elements I have chosen for my kitchen are dumb and ugly.  I feel self-conscious and insecure.

Kitchen Project. Day 9.

Oh wait.

Yes.  It was Day 9... in the same respect that tomorrow (Saturday) will be Day 10 and Sunday will be Day 11.  Meaning: nobody came to work today.  Lots of pipes are bursting in and around central Illinois, creating lots of emergencies to draw constructions workers in many directions.

Of course, this means that we are another day behind schedule, which prolongs the agony, but at the same time it mitigates the agony.

If they had come to work today, they would have put the sheathing down on the floor, the whole floor, including the laundry room floor.  And to do that, they would have taken my washer and dryer out of the laundry room.  Right before the weekend.  Right after the electricians got insulation on everything in my closet, and my insulation-contaminated pajamas made it into my bed, also contaminating my sheets.

In other words, it will be very nice to be able to do laundry this weekend.

Also, Shawn came home and vacuumed like a champion last night, and... his vacuuming has stood firm!  Tomorrow, we can start from where he left off, rather than starting all over.

I am also happy because I was able to leave the house today, which felt even better than I expected.  It was tremendous.  I'd not realized how wearing it is to hunker upstairs during the construction process, sheltering two insecure and traumatized little dogs.  During the work hours I don't clean, because that would be like trying to staunch Niagara Falls with a bath towel.  I can't do laundry, because I'd get in their way.  I can't cook, because obviously.  After I shower and make my bed, there isn't much to do besides write, read a library book, peruse Facebook, and occasionally duck outside with the dogs (as quickly as possible when the temperature is below zero).

But.

It will be OK.

Kitchen Project. Day 8.

One week ago, we started the demo.

Today things started to look a little like they are going back together again.

Yesterday, I hurt myself trying to vacuum all the insulation that workmen tracked all over my home.  When I had my surgery, the doctor told me no shoveling, no vacuuming.  She said, "You are a new car."

But chunks of pink insulation taunted me from all over my floors.  Pink insulation isn't something I can let lie.  When they went through my bedroom closet to get to the attic to put the lights in my bathroom, they got a lot of insulation in there too.  I vacuumed it three times, but I still went to bed with insulation all over my pajamas (I realized too late), and I found yet more insulation behind the closet door this morning.
I did a great deal of necessary vacuuming yesterday, and then I told Shawn, "I think I have dented the new car."

Today, I laid low, in hopes of avoiding the need for surgical reconstruction. 

I wrote 4323 words on a book I will never publish and nobody will ever read (or maybe I wrote half of those words yesterday).  As the sky turned pink with sunset, Microsoft Word cursed my formatting and the margins mutinied, so I did a "save" and "close."

I gave up on nutrition , sloshing a can of chicken and dumplings into the crockpot with some token cans of mixed vegetables, a feeble attempt to shore up a meal based on carbs, gluten and MSG, three things I try to avoid, but my heart is just plumb-wore-out.  Licked.

Oh.  And the guys doing the work said their boss's timeline is not realistic.  The cabinets will not be installed by Tuesday.  Seems reasonable, based on what I can see.

Our old refrigerator lurks uncomfortably in the midst of a changing world, holding just enough food to beckon us down when we are desperate.

The lights, switches, outlets and sheet-rock are in place, over plumbing and duct-work, which are also in place.

The dust is heavy, but I am lying low.  If I clean tomorrow, it will last all weekend.

Kitchen Project. Day 7.

Today they did electrical.

I went down this morning to get a light bulb out of the laundry room (don’t ask).  There were approximately 329 workers standing on short stepladders in my kitchen, sawing at the ceiling with power jigsaws (I made that up; I have no idea what tools they were sawing with, and also I am using hyperbole; there were less than 329 workers, perhaps 73).  A six-foot pile of pieces of putrefied pink insulation loomed in the center of the floor; they were pulling chunks of it out of the rafters.  They had arrived a full hour earlier than expected.  I am trying to look on this as a good thing.

It is very cold in here today, on this 7 degree day when all the insulation has been extracted from my kitchen ceiling.  There is so much dust in the air, my eyes sting and my throat is sore.  The dogs sit with their front feet splayed, looking up at me, their faces a mixture of perplexity and terror as the floor beneath them in this upstairs bunker goes, “Boom, boom, boom!”

Usually, as soon as the workers leave, I get out the vacuum.  But today, in this haze, I wonder if there will be a point.  Most of the dust hasn’t even settled out of the air to a surface from which it could be suctioned up.

[Aside]  I wish I could go to my sister’s house, sit in her beautiful kitchen and look at her beautiful things.  A pear.  A piece of driftwood.  A rustic wooden box.  I would like to sit with a hot mug of coffee garnished with steamed milk (because she has a Nespresso milk steamer), and not hear rough voices, bangs, crashes, drills, saws, thumps and a radio station not-of-my-choice.  Or, I would like to go to my parents’ house and eat dinner, real dinner, a hot casserole pulled from a working oven, served with salad made of vegetables that were washed in the sink and sliced on the counter, in a house where there is almost no dust, ever. But wishes aren’t fishes and fishes can’t fly.

I spoke with the contractor today.  He thinks the cabinets will be installed by next Tuesday (February 4).  Then the countertop people come and measure, and it takes a week for the countertops to be manufactured.  So a week later, on February 11, we might get countertops.  After that there are a few more things:  the backsplash, installing the appliances.  The contractor said, “Unless we run into any hitches…”  Unless we run into any hitches we might be done by February 17 or 18?

Dare I hope?

Eleven years ago, when we did our other kitchen, it took three months.  However, it was never like this.  I can’t remember clearly, but it was almost as if that guy took out one cabinet at a time and replaced it, allowing me to move my stuff as he went along.  I do remember that there was only one day that I didn’t have a kitchen sink, and that he literally cut the old counters out a strip at a time so I always had at least some countertop to work on until the old cabinets were all gone.  But then, it took three months.  The old band-aid analogy may apply here.  I hope this is the quick rip. 

I hope the fluster, flying dust, flurried activity, racket, booms and crashes will pay off here.

It was a very long day.  In fact, they are still cleaning up downstairs, and the sun is setting.  I won’t be able to get pictures of the kitchen, but mostly their work involved repositioning the old can lights and changing around the light switches.  It was a long day, and messy, loud and difficult.

HOWEVER.

They put lights in my bathroom!!!

There is still a gash in the wall where the original light was.  The carpenter will fix that on the day he does drywall in the kitchen.  But in the meantime, I have lights in my bathroom for the first time in six months!

So, I am happy.  Overwhelmed with dust, but happy.