Kitchen remodel

When we were house hunting in the DC metro area last summer, my wife, Carissa, made a list of our “must haves.” No. 1?  Finished kitchen. To Carissa, this meant a recently remodeled, modern kitchen with shiny appliances, open floor plan, solidly constructed cabinets with ample storage and deep drawers, and countertops made from a visually appealing hard stone. A finished kitchen was at the top of our “must have” list because we had just lived through remodeling the kitchen in our 1970s-era ranch-style home in Boise a few months prior to moving east. We enjoyed the new kitchen a lot. We did not enjoy living through a kitchen remodel one bit and vowed that we would never endure that pain again. No fucking way.

Anyway, the 1960s-era ranch-style house we bought in Bethesda last summer came with vintage avocado green appliances, greenish-yellowish wallpaper, and linoleum flooring that was nice back when people sat at kitchen tables talking about the Cuban Missile Crisis. The kitchen was small and enclosed on all four sides. My occasional Sunday afternoon hobby of cooking a monster batch of chili verde became a stint in solitary confinement (assuming solitary confinement smells like garlic, onions, and peppers sautéing in extra virgin olive oil and you get to drink beer).

Remodeling a kitchen can test a marriage. First, it’s a financial drain. We could have sent one of our kids to a fancy college for a semester or two (including text books) for what we paid the contractor. Second, it’s tremendously inconvenient. Not inconvenient like living in a hut in an underdeveloped country without safe drinking water. But for dual-income professional couples living in the suburbs, it’s pretty bad. Work crews camped out in your house, subsisting on whatever you can cook on or in a toaster, crock pot, outdoor grill, or microwave oven that sits on top of the avocado green refrigerator that now sits in the dining room. Ensuring contractors show up. Makes you appreciate what our pioneering ancestors went through. We were this close to sending the kids out to scavenge the plains for dried buffalo dung for so we could cook stew in a Dutch oven.

Two kitchen remodels within twelve months is a lot to expect from any relationship. I am a lawyer and I adhere to advice that I frequently give clients: hope for the best, plan for the worst. So I maintained a journal of our remodeling journey in case, you know, I ever needed a contemporaneous record of who did what to whom for some future child custody hearing or something. Thanks to the extraordinary planning and organization skills of Carissa (and her ability to make hard-edged contractors tremble with fear), the project came in on time and on budget. So our marriage survived. The attached video clip, created by the talented Carissa, documents the project (here's a link to YouTube if it's not showing up on your device).

Nonetheless, we had our moments. On Day One, Luis and his crew tore out cabinets, countertops, and stripped two walls and part of the ceiling to the studs as part of our plan to open up the kitchen to the rest of the house. And Carissa and I had our first fight. Over whether to wash the plastic utensils we used in our makeshift kitchen. Carissa wants to toss them after one use. I said go ahead and trash the planet, what do I care? Too bad our children will have to find another planet to colonize because their mother couldn’t be bothered to wash a plastic fork in the utility sink in the laundry room in the basement. I was confident she got the message.

The food situation remained less than ideal. The remodel happened in the winter so there were limits to grilling. And crock pot, as I understand it, is a German phrase that means slow-cooking flavor and texture from food. Within days, no excuse was too small to prompt us to go out for pizza or sushi or Subway sandwiches. Hey look, we got an application for a new credit card in the mail! Maybe we should go out for a burger!

On Day Five, I was feeling sentimental as the sturdy, dependable, avocado green stove and refrigerator were hauled away to make way for shiny, sleek stainless steel replacements. Carissa was giddy. I tried not to draw comparisons about old giving way to new. Meanwhile, I continued to find plastics forks, spoons, and knives in the trash. It was like some unnamed members of the family were comfortable trashing the planet. Then somewhere around Day Eight, I threw my plastic spoon from breakfast in the trash with my paper bowl because I was in a hurry to get out the door and didn’t want to deal with dishes. Only once. No big deal.

Same thing happened a few days later. But, again, it wasn’t all the time and I could stop any time I wanted. By Day Twelve, though, I was not only throwing away plastic utensils, but Tupperware containers as well. Think about it: who knows what all the utility room sink in the basement has been used for? Cleaning muddy boots? Rinsing paintbrushes? Scrubbing grass stains? Blood stains? Shit stains? Screw it. The planet can be saved after the kitchen is finished.

Twenty-five days in, progress was excellent. All that was left was putting down the countertop, connecting the sink, moving appliances into place, and then the backsplash. The countertop guys didn’t come the next day, as promised. Or the next. On the next day, Carissa made a phone call and calmly explained that they needed to get their collective asses over to our kitchen and install our mother-fucking countertop as they had agreed. Thirty minutes later the countertop guys were on site and by the end of the day the countertops were installed, the sink was connected, and appliances were in place. We stood in the kitchen and a warm glow enveloped us. We basked. Then Carissa noticed the sink. Warm glow goes away. Countertop guys had cut hole for sink too small and contractor had installed a smaller sink than ordered and as appeared in specs. Carissa is back on phone. I say a quiet prayer for the countertop guys.

And then it was done. Two days later, countertop and sink replaced. Backsplash done. On time and on budget. It’s over. Stick a plastic fork in it. And then throw it in the trash. 

As a veteran of two kitchen remodels, this is the advice I would give to anyone asking. Rent a furnished apartment and move out of the house for the duration of the remodel and keep Carissa on retainer to throw down on any contractor who forgets to show up as scheduled. And hope for the best while planning for the worst.