renovation envy

Everyone around me is renovating. Two of my many siblings, friends galore, and across the courtyard, the young childless couple just put in a new kitchen. And me? When I'm not asking my thirteen year old nephew to slow down and really describe the wedgewood blue finish on his mommy's new island cabinets, I'm spying on the neighbors' kitchen with my binoculars in the dark like a peeping Tom, muttering, "why, when you've done a complete renovation, would you bother with laminate countertops when you could have used stone and gotten an undermount sink? Are you insane?"


These usually quiet and courteous people across the way painted their walls mustardy yellow, replaced the old appliances with stainless steel (how 2005!), got a tile backsplash, halogen lighting, and god knows what else that I can't see because I don't have X-ray vision, and despite my nit-picking, it looks so good.

As Stella devours more solid food every day, Bryan and I have been talking about fixing up our own kitchen, since in addition to needing a better layout for more seating (we are blessed with an eat-in kitchen), the former occupants renovated before they moved with the cheapest and often ugliest materials they could find (faux marble laminate, anyone?) and the place is getting that depressing rickety look and I feel depressing and rickety looking at it every day, and somehow our country, myself included, has gotten it into our brains that we need state-of-the-art luxury in every corner of our homes.

So last night we made a list. Well I made a list, but I was very inspired because Bryan's been actually initiating some of these renovation conversations, which is practically like foreplay, at least I think it would be if I remembered what sex was, and so I gleefully started jotting down of the potential cost of redoing our own kitchen, using the Ikea catalog as a reference point.

Like any good American consumer-sheep-mother-woman I am salivating for a kitchen update. It doesn't matter that I prefer washing the dishes over cooking most nights, but after figuring on at least twenty grand, is it really worth it? Will an aqua glass brick tile backsplash cure my aching back? Will a carerra marble countertop keep me smiling when the kids keep us up all night coughing and nursing and demanding sippy cups of water? Will tearing up the stained linoleum floor and refinishing the original pine underneath make my thighs thinner? Will new solid wood cabinets with brushed steel hardware relax me so much that I laugh whenever I hear Lulu retching under the bed? And will a brand new side by side refrigerator make this place any bigger?

Not exactly, but we will be able to store more frozen foods, and seating for four could get us all eating at the table together, at the same time. So maybe it is worth it? I don't know.