I’m a bit embarrassed of my kitchen. It’s anything but nice. Sure we have a refrigerator that matches our microwave and all the appliances work, but outside of that it’s more less just four walls that enclose those appliances. The floor is linoleum that someone spray painted moons and stars on before we bought the house. The walls have had many different versions. Currently the east and north walls are in a state of plaster repair waiting for final touches to be painted. The other two walls still have the shitty wood paneling on them from who knows when.
The first Sunday that we lived in our house, we spent the day ripping shit off the walls in the kitchen. Layers of wall paper, cork board, metal, more wall paper, some weird shit all came down. We made it almost down to the layer of wood paneling that day. We mostly stopped because the pile of shit in the middle of the floor was so big we could no longer continue to add to it without wondering how we were going to get it outside.
About a year ago, I got all motivated and made another one of those piles on the kitchen floor. I removed the wood paneling on the north and east walls exposing the final layer of wall paper that covered the plaster that was in desperate need of repair. It stayed this way till a few months ago when I finally removed the rest of the wall paper and then spent a few mornings working on the plaster.
At one point, I even sanded.
Yesterday I went snowshoeing with KB. We wanted to make another attempt at Whipple but the gate was closed at the outer perimeter of the Pine Valley Recreation Area which added about four miles of walking closed roads before we would even reach the trail head meaning that would be about 95% of the time we had to spend. Instead we backtracked to the Forsythe Canyon Trail Head, strapped tennis racquets to our feet and let the dogs run amok.
We headed up the trail and then followed a bushwacked trail for a bit before turning and breaking our own trail through the forest. After about a half hour of breaking through three feet of snow we turned and headed down toward the canyon. We could hear the creek below us. We ran back into the bushwacked trail we were on before and followed it down to the creek and then straight up the other side of the canyon. The snow was deep and the trail was iced over.
The rhythm went something like this, jam crampon into ice, gingerly step up, slide back down, repeat. After following this trail for way too long, we decided to try and traverse the canyon’s sideslope for a bit to see if we could make it back to the trail. This lasted for about thirty minutes and we made about 200 yards of progress. We turned around. Followed the bushwacked trail back to the actual trail, had some snacks and then headed back up toward the canyon following the corridor.
We went just under five miles in three hours. Snowshoeing has to be the hardest, slowest, worst form of transportation known to man. We went five miles, five fucking miles in three hours.
The problem is not that I don’t know how to work, it’s more a thing of priorities. I would much rather have a shitty kitchen and be able to walk around in the snow all day with no real destination in mind, than stay home, work on my kitchen and have a nice kitchen. The heart of the problem lies in the fact that I could think of about a million and a half activities without trying that I would rather do in lieu of having a nice kitchen. And I ended up doing any one of those items more often than I end up working on my kitchen.
I guess I’m not the best person to own an old house with intentions to “restore” it. But I guess I can add “Finding reasons to not work on my kitchen” to my list of talents. It would go right above growing a beard.
P. L. and R.