Strange Tales from the Kitchen
Hello, everyone.
I love my kitchen, and I feel so fortunate that Michael and I were able to design it. But I definitely have not always had the perfect kitchen…
My strangest apartment kitchen had to be in Vail, while I was attending cooking school. It was a ’70s-style apartment that had rust-coloured shag carpeting not just in the living spaces but in the kitchen and bathroom, too (ICK). I remember that to practise sautéing in a pan, to get the “flip” just right, my chef professor said to practise flipping raw rice in a pan. I had to vacuum that silly carpet so many times to get all the raw rice I had spilled!
I can only imagine what I would have done back then if I could have gotten a kitchen refresh. With only 3 days left, we want to hear about the Kitchen of Your Dreams! Enter a video telling us about your kitchen and why it’s ripe for a redo by this Sunday, July 8, at 11:59 pm ET and you could win a $50,000 kitchen makeover! And don’t forget to show us where you keep your Philly!
Good luck, everyone!
Anna
6 comments
-
My kitchen in my last house had tacky wallpaper which I peeled until the wee hours in the night. Then I painted the walls a light yellow. The kitchen had no island initially, the stove and cupboards were dated. The cupboards were an orangy color and were visibly wood. It was an eye sore for many years until we could afford to update. My husband painted the cupboards white and we purchased an island that had a maple wood top and white around the sides to match the cupboards. The floor went from linoleum to large tiles. When we got the island, the boys spent more time in the kitchen and so did I. -
My biggest kitchen nightmare was in an appartment I rented and lived in for seven years. The stove was really old, looked like is was from the 50's. Two of the burners didn't work, there were no nobs so I had to use pliers, the wind up clock was broke and the whole face was melted. To make matters worse, they installed it in the corner sandwiched between the wall and the counter. The oven door couldn't be opened all the way because it hit the windowledge!! Everything going in and taken out of the oven had to be tilted at an almost 90 degree angle--so anything juice or saucey was out of the question!! I hated that kitchen!! After a few years of going crazy I ended up taking a big knife and sawed off the ledge. The cupboards had also been painted so many times that the hinges were seized and the doors stuck. The couter top had so many burn marks it might as well of been all brown and the fridge was a big yellow hunk of junk with a broken freezer. Phew... Just talking about that place again gives me the willies -
My first kitchen was the bar area in my new in-laws basement which we now occupied. No electricity, just a cooler cut out in the wall. As a young bride, who knew that it was not OK to store meat there, it seemed cold. After almost poisoning my husband, I used the fridge upstairs to store all the meat and perishables. -
Heather, a friend just told me a very similar story -- only her story involved a marinating steak, not butter! And mbelisle, that kitchen certainly does sound eclectic. I think the only real oddity I've had to endure with kitchens is, living in the city, having lots of tiny ones! And I had 4 (that's right 4) kitchens in a row through the years where the bathroom was right next to the kitchen, which was no fun for water pressure! -
My strangest kitchen was in a house built in a prairie town in the 1920s. The original design was a room with a countertop and some shelves. There was a sink but it was not original plumbing by the time I got there because original plumbing would have been pulling water from a cistern below the house. Over the years electrical was added to wire in a stove which sat sort of plopped in the middle of a wall. Another wall had enough clear space for a refrigerator and we had a portable dishwasher that we made an "island". The oddest feature was that the plumbing, when it was brought in, had only one stack so the bathroom backed the kitchen sink and the washing machine had to fit in the kitchen too. It was quite the eclectic mix. -
While I have no tales of lovely red shag in the kitchen, I do have a tale about when I married my husband and moved into his house. After living there for a month with him and his great dane, I realized that butter left out on the table, with one's back turned, was just like an eye level treat for the indoor horse. To this day, I still remember to keep my butter put away, even though there is no longer any indoor dogs.
Join the Discussion!