Hell's Kitchen

The kitchen in my home is partially demonished.  It is literally in shambles.  It's not that a tree fell through the roof, or that it was destroyed by a tornado.  No.  It's a wreck by my own hand.  Why? you ask.

My wife and I have planned for years to improve the dodgey state of our 58-year-old kitchen.  It's original to the house and in dire need of modernization and remodeling.  The project would cost about $20,000 if we were to hire professionals to do it.  Because that exceeds the amount we have to spend, we are doing the project ourselves.  Little by little.  Many visitors might enter our home and wonder why in the world anyone would subject themselves to such a protracted mess.  And until recently, I shared that very sentiment.

I cannot count the number of times I've walked through the front door, often from a grueling four-day trip, and been met by an untidy home.  Lately, there has been an ugly, half-destroyed kitchen with stacks of boxes containing our dishes scattered about.  The wooden subflooring is partially exposed.  The decorative trim is missing from the doorways.  The seams from the newly hung sheetrock are showing.  And my mood would begin to deteriorate -- quickly.  I simply wanted to enter the place where I should find peace and comfort and relief from the frustrations and stresses of my job.  And instead, I felt as though I was stepping into Beirut.  I found it maddening.

My wife is far better equipped to handle this sort of thing.  This is due, in large part, to fact that she grew up in a house that her father remodeled room-by-room over the years.  She has experienced a house in progress many times and is able to deal with the messiness and disorder, all the while knowing that something much better awaits.  I, on the other hand, did not grow up in a house under constant construction.  In fact, my mother was -- and still is -- a neat freak.  I come by this trait honestly.  It can be said that I simply want things nice and pretty and tidy and, well, not under construction with no idea of a deadline.

I had a special way of handling this area of contention: I complained.  I griped about the mess, then about the yard, then about neighborhood, and then finally about La Grange in general.  (Truth is, living in La Grange was a compromise for me, but here we live.  So the complaints surface all too naturally.)  Blythe, gifted with the virtue of patience, would tolerate this for a while.  But only for a while.

It was brought to my attention that listening to my complaining wasn't fun for anyone in the Cone family.  I was a drag.  She told me this over coffee the morning after I came home from a trip and began griping about everything: work, house, money, yard, kitchen -- everything.  She was right.  And this discussion fueled my thoughts.  Is not one's life very much like an old fixer-upper house?

I would say most people who live in a house want it to be nice.  Some people begin with a very nice house, and some people begin with an old fixer-upper that they can turn into a nice house.  For the "fixer-upper" people, the question is whether they are willing to perform the work necessary to have the nice house.  It's certainly easier to complain.  Trust me.  But doing that makes no progress toward a nice house, nor does it improve your mood.  In fact, it's my experience that complaining often only makes you feel worse.  So, having been corrected by my patient wife.  I now make efforts to curtail my negative comments about the house.  And instead, I pick up my hammer and make progress toward something better.  One swing at a time.