You can’t have it.
Went to Home Depot yesterday, in this adventure called our Project Kitchen Remodel. They have this service, for free, that allows you to sit down with a designer, and a CAD program, and dream up all of your wildest kitchen fantasies. Well, the ones they sell. The designer whips out her handy dandy Book o’ Dreams, plugs in all your kitchen coordinates and poof! Behold your kitchen. Glorious organization. Special nooks and crannies for each and every tiny knick knack you could possibly collect. Stainless appliances (of which we’ll need a range/oven). Rice paper glass front cabinets. Silestone countertops, in Stellar Black. Like that extra deep drawer with proper corresponding size pegs for your plates? It’s yours. The Super Base Organizer with space for every spice and every lid to every pot you own? Presto. There it is, right on the computer screen. Wine storage, glass storage, built in desk with file storage and printer cabinet? Yep, yep, yep. I’m loving it. Super duper deep pantry will roll out shelving? Oh, yes. Exclusive utensil drawer base with pull out cutting board and 2 extra drawers? Yes, please. And add that wall cabinet specially designed for cookbooks and built in pull out cubbies for recipe cards. Love it, love it, love it.
After 3 hours, much brain damage in critical decision making, and many back and forths on the correct stain color on our beautiful new cabinets-to-be, the designer hit the “Caculate Cost” button. (clickety, clickety, click click, print) We glance at the screen. Wow. $1200. Well, that’s kind of high, but we do have some gift money. Whew. Um, noooo, designer lady says slowly, that’s $12,000. Twelve thousand dollars. Not twelve hundred.
For a minute, the Kitchen Showroom area goes black. Our heads spin. I might have tried to say something. I can’t remember. I just heard that figure, over and over and over and over, reverberating in my brain. Twelve thousand, twelve thousand, twelve thousand. And it doesn’t include hardware, the range or the counter tops. Just the cabinetry. Plain. Base price of our dream design. Then she chirps something about how this is the way to do it. Start big. Dream big. Then pare down where we need to, to fit our budget. Fit our budget? The Super Base Organizer is, alone, $800, we find out as she prints out the list. The pantry with smooth roll out deep drawers? $1250. The 2 way access storage for a piece of the island? $525. And on and on it went. Why did no one mention these prices as we added extravagance upon extravagance? Wouldn’t it have made more sense for her to say something like, I dunno, how much can we spend??? But noooooo, you start with the stuff you drool over, hear some vague pitch about their limited time offer, like ending in the next 3 days, 12 months, same as cash, and refinancing, home equity and interest rates, and then get your little kitchen dreaming heart ripped out.
Deflated, but wiser, we lumber back out to the truck. You know, if I hadn’t taken our old cabinets to the dump already, I just put’em back up, says Mr. Tango. What were we thinking? Exclusive utensil organizational drawer, our arses. Hey, the only thing we really need is a range, some storage baskets and the wine organization. That’d cost what, a grand? That, we can handle. Paint it all one color, turn the lights low, and leave up the Christmas lights, and it’ll be perfect. Romantic even. Who needs all that other stuff? Not us. Then we’d just have to keep it clean, and organized. This way, we can just dump most of our stuff in a few baskets, and voila’! A perfectly adequate kitchen. If I have more counter space, I’ll just be expected to use it. Plate drawer? I’d have to keep the plates neat. Silly, silly idea.
When short on cash, that kind of cash at least, you have to get creative. And afterall, in the end, then it’s unique. Right? More us. At least, that’s what we’re telling ourselves this morning, in our 2x2 feet of counter space. And the oven that turns itself off in the middle of cooking something. And the holes in the flooring left after ripping out the old cabinets. It’s kind of grown on me. I kinda like it this way. No one else has a kitchen like it.
