Kitchen Woes

“Nobody does an eat-in kitchen any more,” said the contractor who gave us a really high estimate on redoing our kitchen.  We went into the showroom today and he showed us three possible ways to renovate. Since our kitchen is pretty old, and the cabinets are no longer inviting, and the refrigerator space is way too small, we have started to consider changing it. When I do Thanksgiving I go crazy with the lack of refrigerator space.  Even with four people for dinner, I’m fighting with the limited space. But in order to get a bigger refrigerator, you’d have to move the dishwasher over.  That would involve some significant changes, so why not update the whole kitchen.

But all this brings up life questions. “How long do you plan on living in the house?” the contractor asked.   “Three to eight years,” I answered.  He said,  “that’s ten.”  Hm… we have no real plans to move because our house is good. Everything about it is pretty good.  Good location, good proximity to the beach, good proximity to the city, good neighbors, good amount of little spaces all over - it’s all good.  It’s not great.  Someone wrote a blog post about trading good in for possible great, and how do you know how that will work out.  That’s our story.  It’s good, and we’re lucky, but maybe instead of redoing the kitchen for tons of money, why not put that money into a new place, my husband says.  But the truth is we’re really not moving.  And our track record on moving forward is poor.  We move slowly in making life decisions.

This is also not my real passion or forte.  I’m not really good at choosing backsplashes and granite countertops or knowing how a ‘peninsula’ as opposed to an island will work in our kitchen.  It’s such a tiny kitchen but we do like to eat in our kitchen, even if no one does an eat-in kitchen any more.  One of these days we’ll make a decision.  Until then, I’ll continue to fight with the refrigerator.