I've never been a trendsetter. You can tell by my wardrobe that I've never put much store in trying to impress people with my personal style. (I had a short-term boyfriend in high school who commented on the new skirt and sweater that my grandparents had bought me for helping them out at the farm, by saying, "You look nice. Usually, you dress like somebody's grandmother." Ouch! That's one of the reasons Doug Knighton was only short term!) Well, now I AM somebody's grandmother, and guess what? I DO dress like that!
I watch a lot of television shows about people remodeling and/or flipping houses (most of which take place in high-end neighborhoods in California). Many "flippers" just decide to gut the kitchens and throw out what look like perfectly good cabinets to me. "Too dated," they say. What is dated about wooden cabinets?? And I ask myself what is wrong with me that I can't see throwing out something that expensive and that useful when you could make them work. Put that money to use somewhere else! But this is what I've noticed about the modern trends in kitchens:
1. Everybody who's anybody is "upgrading" to stainless steel appliances. (I don't like stainless steel. It shows every fingerprint and water mark.)
2. You just HAVE to have granite countertops. (Granite countertops are extremely expensive, heavy, and require a lot of solid cabinets underneath in order to support them...plus they need special care.)
3. No one has vinyl sheet flooring anymore. Travertine tile, complete with grout, is all the rage. (Tiles break if something is dropped on them. Hard to keep clean, too...not to mention all of the kitchen dirt that collects in the grout lines.) If you don't have tiles, you have laminate flooring or hardwood. Sorry--not practical for a kitchen!
As should be obvious by now, I don't have a high-end house, and I won't be having a modern-looking kitchen!
Okay...so what am I getting at? My dishwasher gave up the ghost the other day. This afternoon, I went shopping for a new one. My kitchen cabinets are painted beige. All of my appliances, including the dishwasher, are beige. Now, after the 16 years since my dishwasher was installed, my color choices are stainless steel, stainless steel, stainless steel, white, or black. Some of the more expensive ones come in bisque (the new beige). Since I can't afford to replace all of my appliances at once, I had to consider my pocketbook and how things would look with a hodge-podge of colors. So I chose black. Thus, my kitchen with it's relatively new sheet vinyl flooring and beige appliances will continue to be "dated" and out of step with the modern world. Unless I win the lottery, who is going to really care???
The new 'shwasher arrives tomorrow. I'm clearing a path under the sink and around the stove so it can all be moved easily. This house didn't have a dishwasher when I bought it. I had to have a carpenter come in and move things around a bit to make room for one. I'd been doing dishes since I was about five-years-old and figured that in my OWN house, I could have a dishwasher! (My sister Shari was the washer and I was the dryer. I also had to put the dishes away, which I thought was much more to do than Shari. I think we fought all the time we were doing them those many years, but I don't think we ever broke a dish. I hated doing dishes! I begged my mother to buy a dishwasher--which were pretty primitive in those days. Her response was, "I already have one! I didn't think it was particularly funny....)
So there you have it. My outdated kitchen is outdated by choice!
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