You know how, to a real-estate agent's eyes, small becomes charming, old begets quaint, and every little room in your soon-to-be home is worthy of coos and aaahs and so many fabulouses?
Well, the real estate agents said nothing of the sort about our kitchen.
They said "typical 1970s kitchen." They said, "Have you seen the dining room?" They said, "Why, you can do it over."
The first thing we did was rip out the lovely fluorescent light box and put in recessed lights. I highly recommend this. In fact, if at any while you're riveted to this tale of unbridled lust and envy, demolition and despair, the emotion gets to be too much, just steady yourself by referring back to this paragraph. It will calm the nerves. It will also protect your savings, to say nothing of your relationship with everyone you hold dear.
Recessed lights and a glass of wine, perhaps two, are the greatest design tips I can offer. And, unlike every other aspect of home remodeling, they're cheap. Because when you're sitting loathing everything about it, you can dim the lights to Rembrandt/Godfather level, take a few more sips and say to yourself, Honestly, it's not that bad.
And I bet it's not. Because you haven't seen my kitchen.
The stove was purchased during the Hoover administration, and the door sort of falls off. Toll House cookies take three hours and 22 minutes to brown. The dishwasher, black in an otherwise all-white kitchen, is new but a lemon. It gets stuck on the rinse cycle and- unless you come down and move the control to precisely a 23-degeree angle- it can handily recreate the great 1889 Jonestown flood. The fridge is the second in
