Renovation Tips

Everyone loves surprises. If they didn’t, why do we keep throwing people unexpecteds birthday parties and getting our teenage girlfriends pregnant?

The greatest surprise of all, of course, is a good old fashioned dishwasher flood. Sure, it ruins your “floorboards” and “life”, but as the Chinese say, “the character for crisis is a penny earned.” So if you come downstairs one night, for example, after a family Christmas dinner, to find your dishwasher is barfing soapy water all over the linoleum, presumably disgusted by the amount of ambrosia salad caked onto the dinner plates within its rumbling sanitizing belly, don’t panic/attempt to drown yourself: Embrace your watery hellhole of a home with open arms. This is your opportunity (as the Chinese say, “the symbol for opportunity is worth two in the bush”) to renovate, to bring your wildest countertop fantasies to life, to turn a dull, functional kitchen into one full of glamorous disconnected appliances. Industrial chic is in this season, and what could be more industrial than exchanging your kitchen island for hunky geriatric Russian cabinet installers?

It isn’t always an easy road, the surprise kitchen reno. A little water on the floor may not seem like that much trouble, but it turns out that water is wet and can ruin everything you’ve ever loved. It will rot the bottoms of your kitchen cabinets and permeate your laminate flooring. And once you replace the counters, you’ll probably want to replace the tile to match. And once you replace the tile, you’ll probably need to paint. And if you’re painting this room, you may as well paint the living room and build a new fireplace and install a vaulted ceiling and replace the windows with a stained glass depiction of your family crest. (You’ll also want to design a family crest.)

It’s the same sort of grim snowballing situation depicted in the classic When You Give a Mouse a Cookie, the cautionary tale of a bleeding heart liberal and a greedy anthropomorphic mouse riding the slippery slope of fiscal socialism. One thing leads to another and another until finally, your daughter is giving up her Sunday morning to help you (brace yourself) pick out tile. What have you become!? What kind of life is this?!

But all the elbow grease will be worth it when you finally get to sit down at your kitchen table and admire your handiwork. Of course, by the time you finish the project, the year will be 2033 and cooking will have been rendered obsolete by an especially effective iPad app, but I’m sure your newly installed breakfast bar will make a handsome place to display pictures of the grandchildren whose births you missed because you had to let the plumber in.

TIPS FOR A SMOOTH RENOVATION

As the assistant editor for a magazine that often features beautiful homes I could never afford to live in, I know a thing or two about getting your house in ship-shape (or, alternatively, your ship in house-shape). Follow these easy steps to make your unexpected renovation a snap!

1.  Leave the country.

2. Buy a new house.