EDITOR’S NOTEBOOK: The kitchen, with backsplash

Dave and his crew got started on the kitchen this morning by moving the appliances and tearing down the cabinets.

They were supposed to start, incidentally, back in February, and then March. And then the coronavirus hit and every contractor in the Triad got triple-booked with people fixing up their houses, just like we are.

Though it’s an enormous extravagance for us, our remodel is a relatively simple affair: a kitchen job with new cabinetry, counters and floors, a fresh coat of paint, maybe do something about the lighting. It comes after almost 20 years living in this house, where we’ve managed to survive this entire time without a backsplash, if you can believe it.

My wife’s been watching a lot of HGTV, you understand, and so this was inevitable. But the coronavirus, which has kept us in our house to contemplate our backsplash-less kitchen, and a round of ridiculously low interest rates moved things along nicely.

We’re not doing this strictly to increase the property value of our home, though there is that. It’s more about reclaiming these spaces in which we now spend so much more of our time, reallocating our assets when we’re not consuming nearly as much, investing in our life right here, right now, because who knows what the future will hold?

Not I.

The kitchen remodel is much easier to get my head around than the next six months of American life. After the teardown, Dave and the guys will string the electrical and work on the plumbing. The cabinets will go up first, then the countertop, a new coat of paint and the floors before that fabulous tile backsplash pulls it all together.

In the meantime, we’ve built a pantry in the living room with a small refrigerator and freezer. We’ve got our coffee maker out here, and a crock pot for dinners if I remember to plan ahead, take-out if I don’t. I’ve moved my office from the kitchen table into the empty bedroom; I haven’t worked somewhere this quiet in more than 15 years.

It’s gonna suck like this for a few weeks. And then, when it’s all over, we can stand in our new kitchen, this thing we’ve made better through time, resources and will, and hope the allegory is not lost on everyone else.