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To Trip
the Kitchen Fantastic By Kiersten Conner-Sax (as Susanna Jane
Pelletier) February 23,
2005 LIVES By SUSANNA JANE
PELLETIER We bought the
house even though it didn't have a Viking stove. We decided to redo the
kitchen even before we made the offer. The house was a classic Colonial,
built on half an acre in 1923, in fantastic shape. The kitchen did have new
appliances. A standard GE dishwasher, stove, and refrigerator, but the
refrigerator had ice in the door, a luxury never afforded us. The wallpaper
was covered in cherries and plums that were pink and purple and blue, with a
border of bees buzzing around their honeycombs at the top. There was no
backsplash, and the countertop was an unfortunate purple that the seller told
us was called "Merlot." We'll tear down the wallpaper and put in
granite countertops, we told each other. It was to be the kitchen of our
dreams. But dreams can
turn out to be nightmares. A kitchen isn't just a kitchen. It's the beating heart
of the home, where we would feed our baby while she sat in her highchair, and
argue about the benefits of Scarsdale over New Rochelle. It would hold the
table where we would conceive another child, if we were lucky and the flame
of our passion still burned. We didn't know, then, how much cabinets cost,
even semi-custom. When the
sellers accepted our offer, we were thrilled. We tried not to think about
paying twice what the sellers had paid when they purchased the house two
years before. That was the real estate market. Perhaps two years from now, we
thought, the house will be worth two times what we're paying. Especially with
granite countertops. So we left our
apartment on 84th Street and Central Park West and moved into the Colonial.
The baby watched us unpack boxes in the kitchen from her new highchair. That
was when we realized just how bad things were. We lovingly unwrapped the
Kosta Boda bowls and the Tiffany baby china we received when we were married
and the baby was born. We remembered those happy times. But then we
opened the cabinets and found out they were pressboard. The shelves bowed under the weight of
even our everyday china and glassware. We felt as though the bees from the
wallpaper were buzzing around us, confusing our every turn. It wasn't long
before the baby began to cry. Things got
worse. We had a dinner party for a couple my husband knew from work. After
the meal, we couldn't stop them from helping to clean up. Trying to distance
ourselves from the kitchen, we told them we were planning to replace the
Corian countertop. "That's not Corian," the wife said. "It's
Formica." I don't know if she meant to hurt us. We were so ashamed we
couldn't look at each other. But our new friends said they understood. They
had just refinished their kitchen themselves. We had been
trying. Contractors wouldn't return our calls. I did find a painter to tear
down the wretched wallpaper and paint the room a calming beige. Then we
finally found a contractor who was a friend of a friend. He still wouldn't
take the job, but he told us to visit Manor Kitchens. "They'll do a good
job for you," he fairly sneered. We visited the
showroom that weekend. The displays were dazzling. Some of the cabinets were
so distressed we thought they might
fall down at a touch. We wandered from room to room, clutching our fabric and
wallpaper swatches, lugging slabs of the granite countertops. Finally a
salesman approached us. "What are you looking for?" he asked. It
was almost closing time, but he smiled with a wolfish grin. We need new
cabinets and countertops, we told him. Nothing fancy. "Of
course!" he said, leading us on a whirlwind tour of islands and inset
doors, glazes and special finishes. We followed him, our hopes rising. When
we finally sat down in his office, I showed him a sketch we had made with the
dimensions of the kitchen. We asked how much the project would cost. "$40,000
to $60,000," he said. If he saw the shock and sadness on our faces, I
couldn't see it in his eyes. We went out into
the cold to the parking lot, dejected and afraid. "Didn't
you see someone on Martha Stewart hang beautiful cabinets using parts from
Ikea?" my husband asked, starting the car. "I did,"
I told him. "But that was before." Then we drove
home in silence. We hadn't even asked about the backsplash. |
©2005 by Kiersten Conner-Sax
From "50 Tries" at kiersten.connersax.com