Historical September–October 1999 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
Well, we did it.
After a score of years living In our clock-laden, shoestrewn home on Kingsbury Avenue, WE RE-DID THE KITCHEN.
I know, gentle reader, you’re probably asking the most logical and fundamental question, especially if you know us: WHY? Indeedy, that’s a question I’ve asked myself many times. Many, many times.
It would be like me buying new golf clubs knowing that I haven’t played golf, don’t presently play golf, and don’t want to play golf in the future. You see, the first wife (f.w.) and I redoing our kitchen is a bit like the NASA spending money to improve the terrain on Jupiter, a place where humans have never been and don’t plan to go. It’s like the Illinois government putting even newer technology in the airport they just built in Mascoutah, 35 miles east of St. Louis, the one that has no planes landing or taking off and no prospects for any either.
I mean, huh? How did this journey down the crooked path begin?
A few months ago the f.w. said, “I think we need to redo the kitchen.” I looked up from my newspaper, knocking some ashes from my cigar into my lap and spilling a bit of my Diet Coke there, too. “What kitchen?” I responded.
She replied while gently polishing a pair of shoes she had just purchased, “You know, that room on the first floor that has a stove and sink in it!” “Oh, that room,” I said, putting down my newspaper and grabbing my trusty dictionary, “but if you look up the definition of ‘kitchen,’ it says that it’s a room where food is prepared.
We haven’t prepared food there for years unless you count using the kitchen phone to call Domino’s.” “HA!” she retorted, “What about when we have bagels for breakfast?” Knowing she had caught me, she began buffing another pair of new shoes furiously in her excitement.
There was a pause, then I nodded and continued, “but if you exclude using the microwave and toaster for morning bagels, and if you don’t count using the kitchen phone for ordering food, and if you eliminate warming our holiday store-bought Turkeys, when is the last time we actually, you know, prepared food there?” There was a long pause. Finally the f.w. said, “But if the kitchen was renovated, then we would prepare food there!” (Yeah, I thought, and if the terrain was better on Jupiter, maybe we’d go there for picnics.) It was hard to argue with this logic, at least publicly. Our kitchen has been underused for so long that, to be fair, it is difficult to imagine it being inviting to any chef, cook. or hamburger-flipper.
The phrase “use it or lose it” applies to our kitchen; it’s not used and been lost! How lost? Years ago after our annual frantic hunt for the personal property tax receipt so that we could take it to AAA and get our auto licenses renewed, we decided we needed one place for storing all of our personal records and documents, somewhere secure where papers would be safe. Yep, we decided to use the oven to store important papers.
It was a stroke of genius. Since then we know right where every valuable tax receipt and file is! And for years we kept a portable mini-billiard ball table mounted over the stove. That was great fun but, realistically, it made it hard to cook.
It was such a hassle to remove the billiard table and then reinstall it the next morning. Realistically, the stove didn’t appear for months. So maybe the f.w. is correct. Maybe it’s time, I thought, to bite the biscuit, I mean bullet, and redo the kitchen.
I pulled at my beard, trying to look wise, for a moment and then said, “Let’s do it.” She jumped for glee, dropping two or three pairs of her new shoes.
I asked how long this would take, foolishly figuring that it was maybe a month’s worth of work. “Oh, they should be out by the fourth of July,” she responded. Older but not wiser, I failed to ask her which Fourth of July, Many moons, sports seasons, and MetroLink debates have passed since that initial discussion and the start of work.
The workmen are gone, as I write in summer 1999.
We celebrated four birthdays with them and two national holidays. Granted, the four birthdays were divided among three people, and granted, the two national holidays included the final game of the NBA playoffs, but lemme tell you, they were here a l000000ng time.
The dogs came to view them as friends, the post office delivered their mail here, and twice I awakened to find a worker downstairs in his pajamas, making coffee while installing a cabinet. One worker was married, divorced, and remarried during our renovation. Even though the second marriage was a quickee — they met at the bowling alley when her ball wound up going down his lane — this represented a long time.
The project that took only a little less time and money than the building of the Panama Canal.
To be fair to the f.w , the renovated kitchen is a marvel.
The new microwave actually talks! in a robotic Disneyesque voice it announces, “Your coffee is warmed” and “the bagels are de-thawed.” I’m sure it would say other things too, but I don’t know how to work it.
There are all these buttons! It’s a bit intimidating, so thus far I’ve only pushed the BEVERAGE WARM and PASTRY DE-THAW buttons. (Actually, it’s pretty versatile. I’ve learned that you can do a Weight Watchers meal by pushing BEVERAGE WARM three times in a row.) Our old kitchen was sort of dark; you could always identify the north side of the room by the moss growing on the wall next to the refrigerator.
The new kitchen has so much light that I have to put on tanning lotion if I’m going to be there more than 30 minutes or so.
But at least I no longer have to put on my glasses to dial Domino’s.
We also have a new sink that is really deep. It’s so deep, in fact, that we have been able to stack eight days worth of dirty dishes in it. That’s pretty cool.
But what I like most about our renovation is that we have moved the stove and the refrigerator so that there’s a lot more room in the kitchen.
I don’t know what we’ll do with all this extra space but I saw an ad for a combination snooker ball and shuffleboard table that doubles as a roulette wheel.
I need to measure it but it looks like it might sit quite nicely on top of our new stove.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, September–October 1999.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times1999_09.pdf, printed page(s) 20; PDF page(s) 20.
