The Two Cent Tour
Come on, you know you want to. And come quick, before you find out that I’m grossly overcharging you. This sure as heck is not one of those super fancy home tours where nosy curious people pay money to walk through a home, oohing and aahing at a home they wished was their own. Nope.
Sometimes, my kitchen looks like this:
That’s The Husband (who may turn out to be less than thrilled about making his debut appearance in My Kitchen, so shhhhh) doing dishes after we had friends over for New Years dinner. Good man.
But today, the kitchen is clean. Which is why this is the two cent tour instead of the penny parade. When we moved into this condo almost two years ago, the kitchen brought me unfettered joy. We moved from a 500 sq foot shoebox apartment with a kitchen that would make seasoned NYC dwellers cringe. No dishwasher, no garbage disposal, room for exactly one person at a time, non-existent counter space and a sad lack of cupboards. When I see pictures of what the condo kitchen looked like when we moved in, I shake my head and wonder how - how?! - I was excited. Exhibit one:
That, Internet, is what the kitchen looked like the day we moved in. Do you see it? The dark brown, fake wood cabinets? The white walls? The tacky lineoleum? It was ugly, internet. It was ugly.
Where the joy came from, the joy that made me want to do the newsies jump/dance, was from the counters without end, the cupboards that were really holes that dug halfway to China. Plus, things improved much six weeks after the move in, when I decided to use my spring break (former life knew me as a teacher) and take my seven-month pregnant self and decided to re-do the kitchen. I took down the cabinet doors, painted the doors, painted the hardware (huge mistake, totally should’ve replaced it), painted the cabinets, painted part of the ugly counter top, painted the carpet, painted my clothes, and called the job done. I present to you the current kitchen:
Quite a difference, isn’t it? The floor helps a ton, too. It was the second floor we have put in the kitchen since we’ve lived here, and the last one, thank goodness. You might notice that the new baseboards aren’t down yet, but you shouldn’t. It’s not polite to nitpick flaws in other peoples homes. It would really help if Home Depot would have gotten our big, huge rebate to us by now (it should’ve been here summer 2005) so we could use that to buy the materials. But you probably don’t care about that, do you, Internet? Since you paid me a whole two pennies, I’ll give you two more pictures:
Not too bad, is it? Almost cute, even. Especially if you like really ugly dishwashers and oven fronts that are especially hard to clean. Particularly if you like dark kitchens with terrible light and electrical plugs in lousy locations. And you’d love this kitchen if you like to have people over for dinner, only to have them visit without you while you’re putting the finishing touches on the food, because the kitchen kind of hides from the living room.
But really, it’s not that bad. I could be cooking on this floor every day:
It’s about looking on the bright side, people.
And with that, I’ll show you to the door. No, Internet. There are no refunds.