When our contractor Wally happily announced "The worst of it is over!" after the initial demolition (the one where they knocked down the walls and moved the door), he was wrong. 
Since then, Geoff and I completed the demolition of the kitchen by applying skills sharply honed in medical school (determination, persistence and extreme anal retentiveness). Wally was shocked the next day to find we had finished it on our own - he expected to have to do the hard parts for us. He had no idea that medical school, like boot camp, shapes a young person's constitution, making one perfectly-suited to conquer tasks like "Tear your kitchen apart." Maybe the biggest nuance that med school engendered (as opposed to boot camp) is that, instead of smashing the kitchen to bits like Ozzie Osbourne with a guitar, we carefully removed each cabinet, sorted and stored every screw, then put them aside neatly, where they will stay until we are ready to reinstall the cabinets in our garage for our next act of anal retention: the Garage Organizing System.
(Why were WE demoing the kitchen, you might ask? Well, partly it was because we were still uncertain whether we were going to get the relocation money promised to us by Geoff's employer (that has been a nightmare) and partly because Wally realized we were chomping at the bit to do something, so he threw us this bone.)
Anyway, at this point, there is a sheet of plastic bisecting the house (thankfully because the dry wall dust was settling on every surface), and we have only one functioning appliance in the kitchen proper: the fridge. Last night, I came home late to find Geoff jumping gingerly through a tiny opening in the plastic, back and forth to fetch the supplies strewn in various nooks throughout the house (salt? oh, that's in the dresser drawer...spatula? did you check the paper bag on the floor?). I followed him through the rabbit hole onto the back deck, where he had set up a make-shift kitchen on the ground consisting of a toaster oven (thanks Beta and Abebi for the wedding gift)
and the $15 grill that we bought to take on the beach. With these tools, he made a lovely dinner of Asian BBQ chicken, fresh corn on the cob, and roasted red peppers with fennel. He even handed me a bloody mary when I walked in the door.
We may be living like gypsies, but Geoff is making sure these gypsies eat gourmet.
Since then, Geoff and I completed the demolition of the kitchen by applying skills sharply honed in medical school (determination, persistence and extreme anal retentiveness). Wally was shocked the next day to find we had finished it on our own - he expected to have to do the hard parts for us. He had no idea that medical school, like boot camp, shapes a young person's constitution, making one perfectly-suited to conquer tasks like "Tear your kitchen apart." Maybe the biggest nuance that med school engendered (as opposed to boot camp) is that, instead of smashing the kitchen to bits like Ozzie Osbourne with a guitar, we carefully removed each cabinet, sorted and stored every screw, then put them aside neatly, where they will stay until we are ready to reinstall the cabinets in our garage for our next act of anal retention: the Garage Organizing System.
(Why were WE demoing the kitchen, you might ask? Well, partly it was because we were still uncertain whether we were going to get the relocation money promised to us by Geoff's employer (that has been a nightmare) and partly because Wally realized we were chomping at the bit to do something, so he threw us this bone.)
Anyway, at this point, there is a sheet of plastic bisecting the house (thankfully because the dry wall dust was settling on every surface), and we have only one functioning appliance in the kitchen proper: the fridge. Last night, I came home late to find Geoff jumping gingerly through a tiny opening in the plastic, back and forth to fetch the supplies strewn in various nooks throughout the house (salt? oh, that's in the dresser drawer...spatula? did you check the paper bag on the floor?). I followed him through the rabbit hole onto the back deck, where he had set up a make-shift kitchen on the ground consisting of a toaster oven (thanks Beta and Abebi for the wedding gift)
and the $15 grill that we bought to take on the beach. With these tools, he made a lovely dinner of Asian BBQ chicken, fresh corn on the cob, and roasted red peppers with fennel. He even handed me a bloody mary when I walked in the door. We may be living like gypsies, but Geoff is making sure these gypsies eat gourmet.
2 comments:
glad to know the wedding gift is being put to good use ;)
heck yeah
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