When Long Suffering Spouse and I bought our current house, some 30 years ago now, the kitchen was fairly new. The people we'd bought from had bought the house to fix it and flip it, and they spared nearly every expense in getting the necessary work done. If it wasn't for show, it was a no-go.
And it did look nice enough. Also, Long Suffering Spouse and I had plans for an addition that we would build off the back of the kitchen, and that was our initial focus. We had an architect that was recommended by Long Suffering Spouse's younger sister, Josephine, and the architect had a general contractor all lined up to handle the project....
Only it turned out he had not actually been a general contractor before, but he was a really talented carpenter, the architect said....
And neither the architect nor the general contractor listened to me, the guy who was footing the bill. I wanted one thing in particular: A full basement beneath the addition. They had to dig a foundation anyway -- it was going to be a concrete crawl space -- so why not go the extra few feet and make it a real basement? Yes, I know you can't open up the entire back wall of the existing house to make it all one big room -- do I look stupid? -- but there was already a window that could be lengthened into a doorway without compromising the structural integrity of the existing house -- and we could make the new basement room the laundry room and have easy venting for the gas dryer -- but, no, we had to do it their way, and thereafter, for over 20 years, until 2018, when she could no longer do it physically without really risking injury, Long Suffering Spouse would have to climb up on the washing machine, crawl through the window opening that was of course still there, partially blocked now by dryer vents, into the crawl space, and unclog the 'flexible' venting tube or rehang it or both. And, no, I could never do it -- I could not fit through the opening -- never could.
(In 2018 we bought an electric dryer. We had only recently discovered that such things exist. Apparently they are quite common in Europe -- but I don't remember ever even seen one in Chicago much before 2018.)
Anyway, they refused to finish digging out the basement -- told me it was impossible -- and then the architect was gone, never to be heard from again....
That was apparently the last time anyone looked at the blueprints....
Long Suffering Spouse caught the electrician trying to rout the electric for the addition into the closet at the midpoint of the existing house -- where the addition would join a preexisting porch -- which would have made both the closet and the backyard unusuable. And, of course, this was entirely contrary to the now-ignored plans....
It was around this time that the first-time general contractor began to have second, third, and fourth thoughts about his newly chosen career. He made himself scarce... and eventually invisible... and, just as we were about to get to the lawsuit phase of the contract, we heard that he'd had a heart attack....
Long Suffering Spouse took over as GC -- got her own plumber, for one -- and saw the project to completion. Of course, we wound up paying the other guy all or most of the contract price....
Good times....
This was how we spent the first several of the 14 months that we owned both this house and our old house, on the other side of the parish. Because I was stupid and stubborn. And I didn't understand that banks lie. But that's another story....
I set out to tell you about the forthcoming kitchen project. But, when I start recounting the background information, I get a little intense. Crazed might be another applicable word.
Do you know how hard is it to type with clenched fists?
Anyway, if you browse the archives here for any length of time, you will quickly see that I have always been chronically short of funds. So we never upgraded the kitchen. When the refrigerator died -- I think it was about 20 years ago -- we replaced it. When the dishwasher died -- maybe 10 years ago -- we replaced it.
Like Big Julie, in Guys and Dolls (pictured here), who could remember where the spots "formerly were" on his "special dice," Long Suffering Spouse can remember where the temperature settings on her oven formerly were. She did use a red Sharpie to draw a line where the 350-degree setting used to be. Of course, that line has also almost faded away entirely. And, yes, she actually uses the oven: We are coming into Christmas cookie season. She doesn't make as many specialty breads as she used to (most of which she would donate to the local monastery, which closed some years back), but her 20+ varieties of Christmas cookies and bar cookies and brownies are eagerly awaited by friends and family. We have to order a couple of cartons of tins from the Atlantic Can Company every couple of years to meet the demand.... but, again, that yet another story.
There was a drawer in the cabinet to the left of the stove that stopped working several years. As long as no one tries to open it, it does not collapse on the pots and pans stored beneath. But now the cabinet doors are falling off. And there was another drawer, left of the sink, that we haven't been able to use for some years because mice got in it.
No, really. Mice. From the wall -- the exterior wall of the house as it existed when we bought it -- behind the cabinets somehow.
I used to have to check the trap in the drawer regularly. The traps succeeded on a number of occasions. Other times I would have to re-bait the trap because the mouse managed to get the peanut butter off the trigger mechanism without springing the device. (Does anyone really use cheese?)
I think those mice came up from a different crawl space -- my house was expanded before our addition 30 years ago -- probably 40 or 50 years before that -- some time after World War II -- and the original kitchen was lengthed, a powder room installed in part of the original kitchen, and a garage was built off the side of the house, in front of the extended kitchen. That was a two-story addition, which added two small bedrooms upstairs. Anyway, we attended to the problem. With extreme prejudice. We haven't had mice in some years.
You know something? As hard as it is to type with balled fists, it is at least equally difficult to type with crossed fingers....
And the floor has worn through to the subfloor in front of the sink... and some of the shelves in the cabinets that still work are positively swaybacked... I could go on awhile yet, but I think you get the basic picture: I have stalled as long as I possibly could. Probably a decade longer than I should have.
Long Suffering Spouse indeed.
And the den -- the addition we put on 30 years ago -- isn't in much better shape. The floor is worn out, the drywall tape is visible on an interior wall -- we had an ice dam a few years back and it caused damage to an exterior wall, too.
So it's not that I didn't know this day was coming. Obviously, I knew. I've been saving for it for some time. I think I have enough to get this done... if everything goes well.
IF.
We'll talk about this more next time.
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