A few years ago, after much debating, my parents decided to keep the house they had lived in nearly my entire life, but renovate it throughout. They figured that in their mid-fifties it might be nice to have things like, oh, say… central air. And a fridge that wasn’t puke yellow and from 1989.
Projects like installing central air and wood floors throughout your house are a bit of a pain, but nothing is as much of a pain as knocking down a wall in your kitchen, gutting it, and putting in a new kitchen from the ground up. This I know from experience, although my parent’s budget and timeline was far different than ours. They hired an awesome contractor and over the span of several months lived in their finished basement while the kitchen was being renovated. For those many months, they referred to the room in the finished basement as “The Studio” and became well accustomed to cooking with a toaster and microwave and living out of a dorm-sized fridge.
This past weekend, we blocked off our own kitchen to finally get around to painting the wood floors. Because we didn’t want to push our luck, we decided to plan the painting with the most conservative of timelines including two full days between coats for optimal drying time. Which meant that I had 5 days worth of food to plan out in advance with a toaster oven and basement fridge as my only options.
I spent much of Friday at the grocery store and in the kitchen making up a whole host of sandwiches, cutting up cucumbers and summer squash and marinating chicken that could be grilled outside. We’re on day 4 of living without a kitchen, and I’ll be honest, the sandwiches are getting old. Same for washing our dirty dishes in the bathroom sink. And going outside and around to the back of the house to get milk from the basement fridge.
Here’s what our dining room currently looks like with a mattress blocking off the door to the kitchen and the dining room table covered with our picnic staples.
 |
| From Daily Daguerreotype |
And here’s the kitchen floor drying.
 |
| From Daily Daguerreotype |
After five days of living like this, I honestly cannot imagine how my parents lived for months on end in The Studio. But then again, our finished project is nothing like theirs.
 |
| From Daily Daguerreotype |
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that every time I go to my mom’s house I beg to cook a meal, and the entire time I talk to my pretend audience as if I’m a Food Network chef.
