KITCHENS

CONFESSIONS OF A MODERN VICTORIAN
KITCHENS
My kitchen in Cambridge is old, and has walls which, to put it gently, are definitely not plumb. In fact, the construction of the walls leads us to believe that this part of the house, which is a wing, was built by a drunken Victorian carpenter who had lost his level and possibly his mind. We repaired and replastered them when we renovated the 1950’s metal kitchen slum it had become into a functioning (and lovely) kitchen ten years ago. It is what is loosely called an “unfitted” kitchen with wooden oak floors, an island made of IKEA cabinets of huge drawers, a maple butcher block top and ball feet so that could move it if we wanted (we never have). Part of the kitchen has built in base cabinets (all drawers) where the sink and stove and dishwasher are, but we don’t have the usual run of overhead cabinets. Instead, hanging on the wall are a glass fronted oak cabinet, a large wooden dish drying and storage rack (very British, that),and an old mantel salvaged from the basement of the house, with great stuff on it. In other parts of the kitchen are a Welsh dresser, a large and ornate Chinese cupboard, and a New England oak cupboard, as well as the previously mentioned bookshelves crammed with cookbooks and bowls.
What was going through the mind of the drunken Victorian carpenter when he studded in the walls is lost to history, but the studs are spaced at random widths. Studs are usually 16” apart, these are sometimes 12”, sometimes 10”, sometimes who knows what. A stud finder is no help at all, because there seems to be a lot of metal stashed away in there and old leftover boards from some other project tacked up between the studs. The original Black Holes and they may be the origin of the universe. This means that you may or may not be able to fasten something securely when the light goes on in the studfinder and the little beeps sound. There are a lot of plastered-over holes from screws going through the plaster to nothing at all. There’s horizontal wainscoating painted dark green with a fashionable crackle finish. I hope it stays fashionable because that what paint does on these boards. This is the real Dark Matter of the universe. The countertops, unlike the ubiquitous granite or marble ones in Cambridge, are made of black laboratory-grade Formica (like the kind in your high school chemistry lab) edged with oak. They’re stunning, and wildly practical. The top part of the walls up to the fourteen foot ceiling are painted cream color. It’s a wonderful place…full of light from large windows, French doors with a transom opening onto a Japanese garden, and I’m constantly experimenting with it…moving things around, buying stuff for it as if it were a school child who needs new clothes in the fall.

It didn’t cost us a lot to renovate . We did most of the work ourselves with the help of a construction guy who loved to tear down walls, and who installed new windows. We have Scott, our housemate, who’s really a musician, but is also a wonderful finish carpenter, who finished and trimmed the windows with wide sills for plants, installed the French doors and built a porch. Probably none of the big stuff could have happened as beautifully without him. We had floor people install the oak floor. Everything else was mine and Rudy’s labor. He built new walls where they were needed with studs 16” apart, and did the drywall and plastering. We spackled and cleaned and painted, and assembled and installed all the IKEA base cabinets and the island. Home Depot fabricated the single countertop from my measurements…and I got it right! Rudy installed the sink, the plumbers plumbed and we were in business. That was 10 years ago, and we’ve accumulated the rest of the stuff over time, including the cookbooks.

That’s the back story.

So….this week the towel holder fell off the wall near the sink (only one of the screws was actually in a stud), making two more holes in the wall, as well as a couple of others for similar reasons. Last week I saw a picture in a magazine somewhere of a child’s room with a wall which was painted with blackboard paint. I thought what a fun idea it would be to have a blackboard as a backsplash behind the black counters. We’ve never been able to tile it because it’s so uneven. I thought we could write notes and recipes and put pictures on the wall.

I cleared everything off the counters (no mean feat) and admired the uncluttered look for awhile, then headed to the paint store. I needed to know if I could apply paint over high gloss paint (yes, with sanding, washing, primer) and if it could be painted over if I hated it (phone call from the store to the manufacturer, yes). So I brought my quart home with a small new can of spackle and a new putty knife, and a box of TSP. In the corner of the basement where we keep paint cans and supplies (otherwise known as The Alternate Universe) I scrounged a can of latex primer, along with three other gallons of primer which were way old, currently residing in the barn with their tops off , drying out,awaiting recycling. I washed, spackled, sanded and primed. Still ugly, all white, but smoother. I masked off the top part the next day, where I wanted the blackboard to stop and applied the first coat of black. Oh dear, awful, and was it going to have crackle finish too? I waited overnight, and obsessively at 6:00AM I laid on the second coat. Better, but awfully shiny. By the end of breakfast thought, it had dried and was stunning. It ties the whole thing together. I put the stuff back on the counters where the black backdrop makes the Kitchen-Aid mixmaster look like a twentieth century sculpture.



Yesterday I wrote the menu next to the stove (my twenty-something granddaughter is learning how to cook) and she drew a flower and a happy cat eating her cooking.







Now about organizing the cookbooks….no, Jane, lie down until that organizing urge passes!