There’s Pride, and There’s Mill’s Pride

We did a semi-gutting on the kitchen over two years ago, leaving the bare essentials. All we’d need to upgrade it to Third World standards is a fire pit. We only notice when people want to know why the walls are filled with holes and yellow glue.

Now I’m noticing something more. When we removed the popcorn-textured ceilings, we removed the light fixtures. All that‘s left dangling from the beautifully painted ceilings are wires. Lack of light in the kitchen is a good excuse to go out. This problem is easily solved with close proximity to a sushi bar.

Sometimes, though, I like to sneak into the kitchen to make popcorn or find hidden cookies late at night. Nobody has to know. Now everybody knows. If I want to sneak cookies, I have to do it under Charlie’s super-bright 500 watt Halogen work lights. I feel very guilty.

I keep thinking how nice it would be to do the kitchen next. I’ve scheduled the back of the house and the drainage as the next project, but if it were in any way exciting we would have done it already.

Charlie set me up to paint the ceiling, then my Mom called. By the time I hung up, he painted it all. I finished up the rest of the ceilings quickly. I couldn’t wait to get my new paint on the walls. My confidence rides on how well my color choices work. If I screw up, we’re one step closer to doing everything either steel blue or Navajo white. For someone who likes color like me, that’s one step closer to hell.

I put marzipan on the walls while Charlie grouted the fireplace surround. The marzipan looked so good, I decided I couldn’t wait to paint the contrasting walls in pumpkin butter. The hungrier we get, the better looking the paint. This is probably why we ended up having lunch around four PM.

“It’s gorgeous,” Charlie says of the paint. “It’s gorgeous.” I love being right.

“Do we have to work on the outside before we start on the kitchen?” I ask when we finally break for lunch. “I’m thinking of you. Look outside.“ It’s another gray and rainy day in Oregon. It’s been like this all week.

“We can do the kitchen next if you want,” Charlie says.

“I’m trying to talk myself out of it,” I say. “If we do the kitchen now, the kids will have to keep it clean. Do you think they’re capable?”

“They stay out when it’s time to do the dishes,” he says. “We’ll just keep telling them to do the dishes until the house is sold.”

That’s how we found ourselves at Home Depot at the kitchen design desk without an appointment. We’re on a mission. We don’t have time to do things in a planned way.

We walk straight up to a sweet, unsuspecting young blonde woman at a computer. “We came here two years ago and we never ordered this kitchen,” we said, showing her an old stack of kitchen plans an inch thick. “We’re ready now.”

“I’ll have to look in the archives,” she said.

Archives? Who knew Home Depot had archives?

“Let me see what you‘ve got.”

I handed her a mess of papers. “We don’t want to do this one,” I said. “It‘s too nice.”

Charlie says, “We want real cheap, but looks good.”

Right then, it’s as if we had a three-way epiphany. “Mill’s Pride,“ we whispered in unison. “The K-Mart of kitchen cabinets,” Charlie added.

With all the weird people hounding the kitchen designers in Home Depot, all wanting cheap, good-looking kitchens, she was obviously wary. She thought she was dealing with regular people. We’re certainly not that.

To be honest, we assumed she didn’t know what she was doing at first, either. Two years ago we sat at this same desk talking to a different kitchen designer. By the time we finished our plans, we were surprised she didn’t reach over the desk and throttle the both of us.

We were surprised we didn’t throttle her, too. She couldn’t suggest anything without making us bump out walls. If the computer told her you couldn’t do it, she wasn’t about to believe us. I got to the point where I wondered if the only kitchens she’d ever been in were these fake Home Depot ones.

This new designer made suggestions well beyond the scope of her computer. Charlie whispered to me, “She can think outside the monitor.” She told us lots of tricks, like how to hide support brackets for the bar.

We were convinced she had been inside a real kitchen. We were convinced she could build one. We wish we could have convinced her to build ours.

The new designer and I worked on the floor plans, cabinet placement, and style decisions while Charlie had to take a quick trip to the tool crib. When he got back and saw the Shaker-inspired style I picked, he frowned. “What about this one?” he said, pointing to one of the fake kitchens.

“Too expensive and too ‘90’s,” I said.

“Every time I want to do something special, something nice,” Charlie says to the kitchen designer, “Jill brings me to the front window of the house. She says, ’Look around. Does this look like a “something special” neighborhood?’

“You’re right, Jill,“ he says. “I guess we’ll go with the Mill’s Pride Nantucket theme. At least we have a theme.

“We can show the house to people and say, ‘We went with the Mill’s Pride Nantucket theme. We think it fits with our white trash area of the richest town in Oregon look.

“Just down the street in our white trash side of town, you must have noticed the highlight of the area. The Plaid Pantry Mini-Mart hasn’t been remodeled since 1954. When they do remodel, I’m sure Mill’s Pride Nantucket will be their first style choice. We like to think to think of ourselves as trendsetters.”

Now she knows for sure we’re not regular people.

“I’ll go look in the archives and see if I can find your plans,” the kitchen designer said. “I’ll ask the previous designer if she knows where they are, too.”

“Don’t do that. You won’t want to see us again.”

She made an appointment with us for the next day. We were so excited to have a schedule, like regular people. I wrote the appointment down on about ten pieces of paper and left them in every room so we didn’t forget and go to Starbucks instead.

When we arrived right on time for our scheduled appointment, the kitchen designer told us, “Your plans aren’t even in the archives, they’re so old.”

“We come into Home Depot and do up a kitchen every two years,” I said. “It doesn’t mean we go through with it. We kind of skipped that step last time.”

“Good thing, “ Charlie says. “Those plans look expensive.”

She suggested a few ‘wow factor’ extras. “We don’t give gifts to strangers,” I said. “We hardly even give them to our own family.”

“We don’t need to buy fancy extras for the house. They’d stick out like a sore thumb in our neighborhood,“ Charlie added.

“I went all out with backlit frosted glass cabinets and the overhead built-in microwave,“ I said. “That’s all the ‘wow factor’ this house can handle.”

She totaled up our kitchen, then totaled it up again. “Is this right?” she said to herself. “I don’t think I’ve ever done a kitchen anywhere near this price. It’s almost half the cost of my previous lowest-priced kitchen. It’s a good-sized kitchen, too.” She looked at us and stared for a minute.

“Hey, we sprung for the heat shields, “ Charlie said.

During her push for upgrades, she suggested extravagances such as a Lazy Susan. “I had no idea Mill’s Pride was that upscale,” Charlie said. She pushed roll-outs for the lower cupboards. Charlie replied, “That’s way out of line in this neighborhood.” When she recommended heat shields for the cabinets next to the oven, she said, “You get a lifetime warranty, no matter who owns them. I’d recommend them.”

I said, “How much?”

This took her on an intensive computer search lasting upwards of five minutes or so.

“I hate warranties,” I said, since no one else was talking. “They’re useless when you sell a house within a year. The new homeowners don’t care, they’ve got the house warranty. I bought warranties on all the appliances for the first fixer I ever did. It made me go over budget and it did me no good. Never again.”

Charlie told me later, “You really went off on a warranty rant there, didn’t you?”

No one else spoke for a while after my warranty soliloquy. I decided to enjoy the quiet this time.

The kitchen designer came up with the price. “$11,” she said. “Each.”

“$22 is all it takes for a Mill’s Pride Lifetime Warranty? That’s a house seller right there,” Charlie says. His eyes light up. “We could advertise the Mill‘s Pride Lifetime Warranty in our Open House announcement. People will flock to make offers. We‘d have to hire Event Security.”

You have to pick your battles, I think. $22 isn’t a battle. I’ve spent more than that on Starbucks in a good day.

“Is that a yes, then?” the kitchen designer said.

“Oh, yes!” Charlie doesn’t get to make enough decisions.

“How accurate a carpenter are you?” she asked him.

Charlie’s too excited about the heat shields to respond right away, so I do. “Not very.”

“I know how to do just about everything around the house, just not very well,” Charlie said.

“May I make a suggestion?” She’s got enough people skills to working at the U.N.

“Please,” Charlie says.

“You might want to think about installing the cabinets first, then order the countertop. Just in case you’re off a little bit.”

“I was off more than a little bit on the last one,” Charlie says. “Luckily I know how to shave and hide. I’ve made so many mistakes I’m an expert at covering them up. It’s almost easier for me to make mistakes and cover them up rather than try to do it right. You have to go with what you do best.”

“Good idea,” I say about ordering the countertops later, so we don’t have to be perfect. “This is a whole new way of doing things for us, planning and all. What other suggestions do you have?”

She had way too much tact to answer my question honestly.

A little help? [] 4:06:18 PM