Remodeling Connections

"All things are connected," observed the Victorian author E.M. Forester.

Clearly he had remodeled a kitchen.

When my husband and I embarked on our kitchen remodel we decided to do it on the cheap, which was a win-win situation: Mr. Wonderful liked my frugality and after "redoing" our guestroom together, I liked that he still liked me.  DIY home remodels had fractured stronger relationships than ours, so I was thrilled he was game to tackle the hardest room in the house on my bare-bones budget.

Our planned remodel consisted of painting the cabinets, replacing their hardware and installing a backsplash (that was both practical and gorgeous; another win-win!)  And that was where we planned to finish the remodel.  But plans are things you make before your kitchen collapses around you.  What we didn't plan for was Forester's insight: "All things are connected".   Let me tell you, the bookish Brit wasn't kidding.

A kitchen is connected to a stove, so we bought one.  A stove is connected to an overhead hood, so we purchased one.  A hood is connected to a ceiling vent, so we busted through to the roof and made one.  A ceiling hole is connected to repair work, so we insulated and replastered.  Hoods are connected to symmetry, so once our narrow stove was centered under the hood it produced gaps on either side of it... and gaps as wide as the Grand Canyon aren't connected to anything but needed to be, so we made two cabinets to fill them in.  New cabinets are connected to finding things easily or why else would you bother installing the darn things in the first place?  So we built pull-out drawers.  Pull-out drawers are connected to special parts, so we special ordered their specialness despite their extra special arrival delay.  All of this stuff is connected to our money, which was in shorter supply now than when we'd started this %&#@$ DIY project, which was all your cheap, frickin' idea!

The money, the stress of cooking in a lumberyard, the constant scrapping-and-making of plans, this gentle readers, was why relationships broke during DIY projects!

E.M. recognized the ugly truth of remodels but he also gave me the solution.  I walked out to Mr. Wonderful's work bench.  Sawdust covered his dark hair, band-aids were wrapped around three of his fingers.  He set his drill down.

"I'm making steak for dinner," I said.
"Great I'm starving..." he said giving me the first smile of the day.  "Crap, then I have to hook up the stove again."
"Nope.  We're grilling out."
"Yes" he said high-fiving me.

It's connections, people.  With all the kitchen, stuff, crap in a remodel don't forget to connect to the people.  Because... all things are connected.

Kitchen Remodel: Handle Photos

The next step in our kitchen remodel was to update the cabinets by giving them a modern, ergonomic handle and matching hinges.

Here's a close up view of the old copper kitchen handles and hinges.  They were too small to put our fat 21^st century hands through.  Plus, the handles were so thin and sharp if I grabbed them the wrong way I gave myself metal “paper" cuts.  

For inspiration on what new handles to install, I let my own kitchen tell me what would work hardware-wise.  My Electrolux oven and its sturdy handle was just the look I wanted.   

At the home improvement store I found the perfect handle.  

I painted the kitchen cabinets with the turquoise-colored paint.  Mr. Wonderful installed the handles on them. Our friend, Grun, painted the "Coffee Cup" painting, which matches the cabinets perfectly!

And Voila!  Our kitchen remodel is one step closer to completion!

Next up:  To build an island… or Not?

Kitchen Redo: Step 3 Getting a Handle on It

“Can I help you?” said the smiling employee at the home improvement store.

“I’m looking for handles for my kitchen cabinets,” I said.  “Hey, do you like this one?” I asked pointing to a curvy one. 

“Uh—”

“Or this one?  Although it’s actually more of a knob.  People use knobs in their kitchens, don’t they?”

“Uh—”

“Or maybe I should get this adorable one with the apple design?   But maybe it’s too cutesy?  What do you think?”

“They’re paging me,” he said waving overhead to the speakers and ran away.  Unless his name was “Against All Odds by Phil Collins, the Muzak Version”, I was pretty sure he lied about being paged—just to get away from me. 

But I didn’t blame him. 

I was sitting on the floor of The Home Depot trying to decide which handles to buy for the kitchen cabinets.  I wanted the new hardware to be: 1) Clean; 2) Modern; and 3) More ergonomic, in other words easier for our fat hands to grab hold of.  Being blunt, our 21^st century hands were bigger than those in the 1950s.  In fact, if our old cabinet handles were anything to go by, the paws of all mid-20^th century people were downright Hobbitesque

I started my search for handles at The Home Depot so I could feel each one and be sure my fat digits could work them.  I grabbed every handle, knob, pull and grip thingy and quickly narrowed the field of acceptable handles to 47.  Maybe I could buy one of each of the 47 models and create a kitchen where every handle was unique.  Imagine the conversation starters!  Guests would come visit and I’d say, “I couldn’t decide which ergonomic handle to get so… I chose them all!”  “How clever,” guests would say testing each handle and pulling open all my cabinets.  Exposing all my Tupperware, plastic wrap and rubber bands—

No, I couldn’t invite lookey-loos to explore my kitchen and all its secrets.  Maybe ergonomic was less important than esthetic.  After all I’m a woman who still thought looks trumped comfort.

I raced home and poured over my file of inspiration kitchens.  I examined the White Kitchen, the Blue Kitchen and the Yellow.  The metal handles in the White Kitchen were mixed with well… white, which wouldn’t work in my blue kitchen.  Those in the Blue inspiration kitchen were gray metallic and would look good with grays and metals but not our turquoise paint.  The Yellow Kitchen had handles in a delicate scallop shell design that were beautiful and whispered of the ocean.  How great to live in Los Angeles’ land-locked Valley and be reminded of the ocean with every visit to the kitchen to refill the tortilla chip bowl.  I liked the shells. 

On closer inspection, the scalloped pulls were designed to shove your hand up under the shell and pull out.  This aggressive pull movement for me meant, sooner or later, chipped nail polish and jammed fingers.  I could see it now, guests would come visit and shriek “What happened to you?” upon seeing my bandaged hand.  I’d explain, “I was getting the popcorn bowl out of the kitchen cabinet, when I broke six fingers and chipped every nail.”

No, Clumsy Me couldn’t go with a handle that I couldn’t navigate well enough without going to the Emergency Room on a daily basis.  Perhaps esthetics weren’t that important after all.  But if looks and comfort didn’t matter to me, what did? 

Before embarking on the kitchen redo / kitchen remodel, Mr. Wonderful and I knew it was going to be a long-term project.  Not a 100-meter dash that was over in less than 10 seconds but a full-on 26.2 mile marathon through an alligator infested, mud-soaked bayou…  Followed by a second 26.2 mile marathon through the bone-dry,  hell-heated Mojave Desert.  Currently we were only at the first marathon’s three-mile marker and—already—I was raising the white flag in defeat.

But why?

Why was choosing kitchen cabinet handles so hard?  That day at work, I had wrangled two meetings, wrote three film synopses and answered every email in my inbox—oh, like 568 of them.   Now I sat surrounded by professional magazine clippings in total despair.  At the office I was the picture of efficient decision-making.  However with this kitchen handle decision I was a confused heap on the floor, literally.  What was my problem?  I mean, I was a college-educated, Masters degree-holding adult perfectly able to make—

Perfectly.  That’s it.  Or really, “perfect”.  Because of the time, money and enormous effort this kitchen remodel was costing us, I wanted our kitchen to be perfect.  However my desire for perfection was prohibiting me from making a simple decision.  Which isn’t to say I didn’t want to do perfect work at the office; or at least as-perfect-as-possible work at the office.  I contemplated my dilemma and teased out the differences.  At work I knew the parameters of my job.  I knew what type of synopsis to write since I knew the milieu, the company culture and the client.  I knew what kind of emails to write because I could tailor each one to the original writer of the email.  What I needed to do in my kitchen was to forget the inspiration kitchens, forget all The Home Depot options and just look.  At.  My Kitchen. 

I realized with a jolt that the answer to the handle question was before me: here in my kitchen’s milieu.  Yes!  The answer I wanted was discernable in the method and personal culture of how I used my kitchen.  I looked at the room, at the sink, the refrigerator and the gas oven.  I loved cooking and baking with our new Electrolux gas oven.  I appreciated the solid temperature knobs that my fat hands could easily grab.  I admired the oven’s straight-forward, sturdy handle that I could pull open with my bare hands or with oven mitts.  Actually the oven’s handle was… perfect!  A perfect handle for the oven, for all our kitchen cabinets and for me. 

At the home improvement store I found metal hardware handles that mimicked our oven’s sturdy handle.  I bought them all.  And I decided: they are perfectly me. 

So long Mile Three of the marathon.  Bring on Mile Four!

Kitchen Redo—Step 2 Some Kind of Blue

“After work I’m going to The Home Depot,” Mr. Wonderful said putting his empty coffee cup and saucer in the dishwasher.

“Great,” I said returning the milk to the refrigerator.

“So I can pick up whatever blue paint you want for the kitchen,” he added.

“First I need samples: in light blue, dark blue and every shade in between.”

“You don’t know what blue you want?” he said closing the dishwasher.

“I know exactly I want,” I smiled.  “Just as soon as I see it.”

In the long-term, fixer-upper project that was “The House”, Mr. Wonderful and I had decided that he was the man of tools and I was the woman of design, comfort and color.  If we’d been on the Titanic that fateful night he would have been trying to repair the hole caused by the iceberg while I would have been serving drinks to passengers, color coordinating deck chair pillows and dancing to the band as it played its final set.

Admittedly his tool skills were more valuable in solving problems than mine.  Which isn’t to say he was ignorant about color.  On the contrary as a director he made dozens—maybe hundreds—of technical and creative decisions every day so at home he was more than happy to let me decide what went with what. 

Besides, he knew color was my forte.

Speaking of, I had a skill set too, which just so happened to include decorating, designing and putting colors with… other colors.  Some people may call me and my talents frivolous; and I say: go ahead.  Frivilous c’est moi!

After work I drove to Lowe’s and the Do-It Center where I collected a select number of paint sample cards—oh, like 300.  I grabbed a little this, a bit of that, and a boatload of those.  I was like that picky, piggy person at the salad bar who loads her plate with the freshest romaine lettuce, darkest spinach, deepest ruby red tomatoes and crispiest cucumbers that still smell of the organic Central California Valley farm soil they were grown in.  I noticed the soggy Chinese fried noodles and the dried out black Mediterranean olives and steered clear.  That’s how color is for me.  Names don't matter.  I have to see it to know if I like it. 

Which isn’t to say I was clueless about what type of blue I wanted.  As part of our kitchen remodel, we’d bought and had installed a steel Electrolux oven.  The model we got was called “Gorgeous with Four Gas Burners”.  To complement this functional beauty of a piece de resistance I wanted a blue paint with some silver or gray undertones.  I snapped up the color samples named: Blue Steel, Steely Blue and Blue-Gray Steel. 

Some companies’ color labels are more descriptive than creative.  And I admire that. 

When we moved into our house there weren’t any appliances, so we brought our white refrigerator with us and plugged it in.  It still worked and looked great so we felt it was silly (read: “fiscally irresponsible”, his words not mine) to buy another.  So as far as colors went, I also wanted a blue paint that complemented white appliances.  I snatched up card samples of paints called: 0647, S-H-570 and 123456789. 

Some companies’ color labels are precise in their utter lack of creativity.  And I don’t dislike precision.

The yellow dream kitchen that was partially responsible for inspiring me included a painting in the kitchen. Whether it was an oil created by Van Gogh or a piece of lined paper scribbled on by my niece in a kindergarten class, hanging original art in the home appealed to me.  One painting that I definitely wanted to use in our kitchen was of a huge turquoise coffee cup.  A dear friend of ours, Grun, had painted it for Mr. Wonderful when my husband came home after a long directing gig of an animated feature, which had kept him too busy for Grun—and out of town—for a year longer than the production schedule had initially planned.  Our friend is that kind of gift giver.  Grun knew I loved flowers so one year for my birthday he gave me a painting of a bouquet of flowers.  I still have it and after several years, I’ve never had to freshen its water. 

Having friends who give gift paintings is a perk to having artistic friends.  Having Art Center graduate friends who work in the Art Departments of Hollywood studios on blockbuster movies who give self-made paintings is a fabulous perk of having awesomely talented artistic friends.  I wanted a blue paint to go with this coffee cup painting.

So I needed a blue to complement stainless steal, white and turquoise, which would hide the dirt and that I wouldn’t tire of looking at for the next 10 years.  Easy task, right?

So easy. 

The next day as the sun shone into the kitchen I spread out all 750 paint samples on the table much to Mr. Wonderful’s chagrin.  Then I let my eyes flit over each one briefly.  Within five minutes I narrowed my choice down to… one blue.  I held the sample card up to my oven, my refrigerator and the coffee cup painting.  Bingo. 

“This is what I want,” I said waving the card sample at Mr. Wonderful. 

“What about all the others—?”

“I know what I want: and that’s you.  And this blue.  In my kitchen.”  Then I danced across the floor twirling the paint card in front of him.   

I didn’t fix any problems; I didn’t cure cancer; but I made him comfortable enough to laugh.  Sometimes complementary colors are as important as complementary partners.  And I respect that.