Month: July 2016

it may be time to bite the bullet and buy new cabinets

I’ve been wanting a nice kitchen for some time, but I am practical, thrifty, and don’t want to be like those people on HGTV who tear out working kitchens just so they can replace them with whatever is now in vogue, like a certain grade of wood cupboard or a farm sink.images cabinet

I have a working kitchen. I cook almost every night–I’d say at least 350 days a year–yet I have a kitchen smaller than the size of most modern homes’ bathrooms or walk-in closets. That’s no exaggeration. And because it’s so small and so used, it’s showing signs of wear and tear. Heck, at forty-two years old, it showed signs of wear and tear long before I moved in over twenty years ago.

I’ve Band-Aided the poor thing over the years, gluing the microwave door handle on when it pulled halfway off, inching the extremely heavy trash compactor out the door when it stomped its last load of trash and wouldn’t open back up, making my own ice using trays when the automatic ice-maker broke (it’s still broken). I finally gave in and bought a new stove the third time it shocked the bejesus out of me while stirring spaghetti. And I did end up getting other appliances (on sale and low-end models anyway) when they were on their last legs, but only then.

Whatever the opposite of a conspicuous consumer is, I’m that. I put off buying until it’s absolutely necessary. I came from a thrifty family on a low income whose patriarch fixed everything whether he was an expert at it or not. My mom put up with battered furniture (as I do) and old, nonfunctioning appliances until they were no longer reparable. And that’s what I do too.

Our fence was falling over this spring, so we contacted our neighbor, who called on his contractor, and had it replaced. It was double what I had thought it would cost, but we were able to afford it after moving money around and scrimping for a while longer. Same thing with our floors last summer. We had a leak in the wall and, well, not right away but five months later, I was on my hands and knees laying down vinyl plank in the dining room, ripping out more sections of carpet, and laying down more planks. It’s not the best-quality flooring, but it looks OK, and, best of all, I was able to lay it myself. A plus too is that when I decide to change out the rest of the carpet, I’ll at least have done half the work.

Next I thought I’d tackle a longtime problem: painting the cabinets in the kitchen. Painting would cost a fraction of having the cabinets replaced, and I’d get the color I want and not have to have workmen in my house. I knew it was a lot of work–I even heard that from a licensed painter who told me he didn’t want to paint them because of what a big job it is. Still, last summer I spent a couple days meticulously painting the backside of the cabinets, the side that faces the family room. I liked how it turned out and thought I’d tackle the big job of all the fronts of the cabinets this summer. But just as I was about to start the project, I found myself waffling, something I do when I fear making the wrong decision with long-term consequences. I waffled about the color (should I stick with the linen, which looks a bit drab, or change it to antique white, a more popular shade?), and I waffled about whether I should keep them unpainted and just apply a deeper color of stain. That’s an easier job, especially if I use gel stain, but I like the cottagy look of painted cabinets much more.

Now I’m questioning the appearance of the painting I did last summer and whether it even looks that good. I’m looking closely at the polyurethane I used, noticing it’s turning yellow. I had thought it looked great last summer but am thinking it may make the cabinets look old and dingy and is that the look I’m going for if it’s going to take so much effort?

Then when my husband asked me last night why one of the cabinets sticks out near the hinges and doesn’t close properly, I realized that the doors and drawers are nowhere near in good enough shape to simply paint. Painting would be yet another Band-Aid effect, like putting lipstick on a pig, and the cabinets might look a bit better but still wouldn’t function so great.  The real solution is new cabinets. I’m guessing nine out of ten people would agree, if not all ten.

I have company coming in another month and before that we are taking a family vacation that even after I use my airline miles will cost a couple thousand dollars. I’d love to get a new kitchen by mid-August so my best friend of forty years doesn’t doubt why she’s friends with such a schmuck as me, but spending that money now on new cabinets is not going to be easy.  Still, for the first time my mind has concluded that the cabinets must go.

Or so I currently am rationalizing. Give me a couple more days with little or no freelance work and I might pick up my paint brush and begin transforming the cupboards and drawers as best I can on my own. Time will only tell whether I stick with my plan to buy new (which adds even more complications like should we bother putting the cabinets where they are or opening up the entire kitchen) or whether I paint. Yes, time will tell.

 

 

post-graduation dreams: to never leave home?

Used to be when kids went off to college they never returned home again because waiting for them on the other side of the commencement dais was a good-paying job,  one that would sustain them until they got married (soon after graduating), had a family, and raised their own kids until they too went off to college, got married, etc., etc.boomerang-kids

But with 55 percent of college students now living at home as opposed to 43 percent in 2010, a lot of those kids don’t leave home to attend school in the first place and then they stay on at home even after getting their diploma. Jobs for college grads are not nearly as plentiful these days, and getting on in the world is too expensive. These kids are no dummies. Why live on a shoestring when you can live in the lap of luxury for little to nothing?

And so it is in our house. My third born, a son, graduated in May but has yet to move out. He’s still working the same hourly job he had throughout college, and even though I send him job postings from the websites I see online (is that the  whirring of helicopter blades I hear?), he’s still not applying in earnest for work in his major. Why? I think he’s got it too good. And I’m partially to blame.

Kids have it harder today in a lot of ways. For one, competition for jobs is fierce. The kid with the decent grade point average who worked throughout school to make some money is going up against the kid who excelled in college, took internships, and went into debt to get a leg up on the competition. Those kids are the ones getting hired after graduating while Mediocre Manny is struggling to keep his head above water in the vast resume pools forming in employers’ inboxes.

Also, kids have it harder today because they have had it easier their whole lives. How so? Their parents, we, did much more for these kids than our parents ever did for us. Their whole lives they heard such things as, “You want to play a sport? Sure, I’ll put my career on hold and drive you to games and pay for all the accoutrements that go with that sport even though I haven’t had a pair of new shoes in six years. Hungry? Here’s a burger and a Coke coming to you through this magical drive-through window. Or better yet, sit down and I’ll whip up your favorite dinner, leaving out the greens that you don’t like. Have nothing to wear? No problem, I’ll throw a load of wash in for you right now and not only that, I’ll fold it and put it in your room. Or if those clothes won’t do because they’re not the latest trend, I’ll run to the Macy’s and get something that will. Oh, Macy’s is not cool enough? Just name the store. You want your license? Well, sure. You don’t have as much as a part-time job flipping burgers to pay for gas, but I’ll not only pay for that gas, I’ll throw in the car and the insurance too.” And so it went. No wonder kids can’t get on on their own.

Now our kids are coming out of college and not knowing where to start to get their lives going because Mom isn’t doing all the stuff she used to do to make it all happen. Call ours the enabling generation. According to a recent Forbes report, close to 60 percent of parents provide financial support of some kind to their adult children. That’s six out of ten of us. What’s wrong with us and, more importantly, what do we do now that Jay and Robin won’t leave the nest?

Parents’ motives are noble: they just want to help out their kids. The same motives people have to provide food, shelter, and clothing for their babies and young children are in play when they allow adult children to live at home. It’s a loving gesture, not maliciousness,  but it can go too far and the new graduate can turn into the adult kid who keeps hanging on and never grows up. I mean, who wouldn’t want a life that’s easy as opposed to one that’s not?

But experts say people need to set boundaries and make those boundaries clear as day, especially if the adult child isn’t contributing enough and the parents prolong retirement or put aside their own needs and wants because they are helping out the kids (and helping out can include paying all the utilities, providing an automobile, buying all the groceries, cooking them, and cleaning up afterward).

I plan to set out a manifesto of sorts and make it not so easy for my son to rely on his parents for help. Hopefully, that will motivate him to move on in life the way his two sisters did. Sure it’s been just a month and a half since college graduation, but I want to set the tone now before I’m driving him around to geriatric appointments and senior day care.