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| On July 16th 2003 I put up the track lighting and connected it to the dimmer switch. |
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The Conclusion |
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Okay, so the kitchen's not
actually done and it's not likely to be done this week, there are a
few things that remain -- the lights on the wall (Maria convinced me that
track lighting would be better than a sofit because i'm liable to be
changing what's on the wall from time to time -- it's simply more
adaptable), the replacement of the crown molding, the installation of the
cabinet, and a new fridge. But the hard work is over and the daily grind of
coming home to a mess every day and working until I fall asleep is over. So,
with that in mind, I will draw this to a conclusion of sorts. In 2000, writer and commentator David Brooks penned Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There in which he looks at the rise of an educated elite in America who replaced old money in the dot com boom and even before that in the era of college scholarships based on merit rather than social status. Brooks' Bobos (for Bourgeoisie Bohemians) feel the need to apologize for their wealth by spending it on things that seem useful. Kitchens being one of these things. While an upper-middle-class woman of the 1970's spent as little time in the kitchen as possible, her counterpart today likes to come home from a day at the law firm and cook and she likes to show her friends that she's not so out of touch with her roots that she doesn't get pots dirty. While reading the book I found an awful lot of myself. It's shocking to think how easily i am stereotyped. Brooks notes: : "As for kitchen equipment, today's Bobo kitchen is like a culinary playground providing its owners with a series of top-of-the-line peak experiences. The first thing you see, covering yards and yards of one wall, is an object that looks like a nickel-plated nuclear reactor but is really the stove. No more flimsy cooking cans with glorified Bunsen burners on top for today's domestic enthusiasts. Today's gourmet Bobos want a 48-inch-wide, six burner, dual fuel, 20,000 Btu range that sends up heat like a space shuttle rocket booster turned upside down. Furthermore ... they want an oven capacity of 8 cubic feet ... just to show they are the sort of people who could roast a bison if necessary." pp 87-88i couldn't read this book without thinking over and over "i need that" whatever that may be, whether a titanium spatula or a slate floor for my bathroom, i seem to have somehow become swallowed by this style i hadn't even known existed. i learned a few valuable lessons from this project -- one of them is that i have more moxie than i'd thought. If i had known how difficult it was going to be, i never would have attempted it. "Refinishing hardwood floors" is one of the very few things listed as "hard" in the Home Dept 1-2-3 home repair book (which I didn't get until after I'd already done the floor). And not only did i refinish a hardwood floor, i exposed a brick wall and carted off dozens of trash bags filled with things. So now installing a garage door (difficulty listed as "medium") seems like such a simple task. Initially this had been something that i'd hoped would bond me with the house, the only entity with which i've promised to spend any chunk of time over the years, and it has. i've learned things about how it was built and rebuilt. i know where the joists are and how far apart the studs are. i can venture a guess when what was added.... i'll be sixty-six years old when the house is paid off and i wonder now what it will look like then. And the stories it will have by the time the last coat of paint is dry .... Kyle Cassidy |
Finished Kitchen Pix will go here when it happens:
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| On July 16th 2003 I put up the track lighting and connected it to the dimmer switch. |
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...
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