Last year we did a lot of renovations on our house. We did the entire upstairs, including finishing the room we added over the garage. We had hardwood floors put in, we made the big bathroom an en suite and put in a big shower, we redid the downstairs bathroom, we even added a nook bed, a la northern Europe. We did not, however, touch the kitchen, the dining room, or the living room.
Well, time has passed, and now it's their turn. The living room and dining room were relatively easy. Take out all the furniture, take up the old laminate flooring, and put in new hardwood that looks almost exactly like the old flooring, which I was was sorry to see go because I liked it. Then came the painters, whom we had before and so are used to my rather strange color choices.
And then came the fun part. We're redoing the kitchen, 30 years after my father built and installed it. The room is a galley, and there's no real way to change that. The cabinets are ash, built by him from lumber he dried in his own kiln, so I'm not getting better quality than that. The counters are Corian, which was state of the art in those days, and which have held up well, so they're not changing, either. The ceiling was (because as of yesterday, it's gone) was old, and textured, and showed where we had torn out walls, etc. So that came down, and the floor came up, which was pretty good sheet linoleum in its day, but it was only meant to last 20 years, and that ended 10 years ago. So that came up. The backsplash, which matched the floor, came down. The room is stripped now. It is one long expanse. The cabinets will be painted and retrofitted with soft-close hardware, which hadn't been invented 30 years ago. The floor will be luxury vinyl plank, a name that always strikes me funny.
For the moment, we have a makeshift kitchen in the FROG. There's a hot plate, a toaster oven, there will be a microwave. The uninsulated storage closet (it was my idea to have it at all) makes good cold storage. There's a whole little sitting room up here, so it makes a good escape from the banging, etc, downstairs. There are worse ways to survive a renovation.
So, in the news lately, to put it mildly, there's been a lot of talk about rape and coercion and where is the line between the two. Also talk about when women just give in so the persuasion ("persuasion") stops. This morning I had a real life example that had nothing to do with sex, and made me see how pervasive persuasion can be. My husband works from home. I could write ten blogs about this, and I may, but that's not the point today. Today the point is this: we are in the very slow process of renovating our house (very slow, again, another blog) and not all things are in the places they will end up. Also, my father built a lot, really a lot, of furniture in his life, and really a lot of it ended up at my house. (He did as well, but again--another blog for another day). So, in my dining room is what is in fact a TV stand, from the days of not flat-screen TVs. It's very nice, black walnut, with a space for a VCR, and storage underneath. It has fetched ...
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