Finito

by Trebor Snillor


FINITO!
My kitchen was officially finished as of Wednesday April 22. My new refrigerator with French doors completed the appliance installs. There are some very minor glitches which I’ll let pass – am wanting to end on an up note and have it behind me. Counting from the first bids and negotiations, it’s been a full 3 month process. My designer said, “It’ll feel like extremely rude cousins have moved in with you for 8 weeks”. She was right about that. We had serious bad weather while the kitchen was built and that added to the overall experience.

I’m a private person and I like a clean house, so one can imagine how far this took me from my comfort zone. It was extremely trying. But the contractor was sensitive to that – he had the house professionally cleaned as soon as the major rebuild was done.

WHY A KITCHEN NOW?
I’ve been in the house 24 years – just now doing a kitchen. I honestly didn’t want the predictable upset of a remodel. Here are the lovely features of kitchen past (built in 1945) which compelled me to take the risk:

o Cabinet doors breaking apart, falling off hinges
o Tiny dented refrigerator with tall ugly cabinets overhead
o Holes in cabinet wall, allowing rats an entry
o One drawer – exactly 1 drawer for silverware.
o Cracked, stained sink
o Ceiling sagging from water damage
o Cheap light fixtures, non-grounded outlets

I won't go on – that's enough! A short time prior to the remodel, I was watching the 70's sitcom “Good Times” which depicts Chicago projects on the south side. Esther Rolle had a nicer kitchen than me! My 1945 kitchen didn’t even measure up to the ghetto. It was a call to action. My remodel cost a lot, I’ll admit. But here are some things to note.. It’s technically a transfer of assets, I should get the money back on resale. I’m in a primo East Dallas area – a new home purchase would’ve cost me 10 times what a kitchen remodel cost me. (To stay in this area, which I do like). In retrospect it’s an easy decision to make.

On closing, and maybe to make the reader envious I will list some features of Kitchen 2015:

o 60 /40 Sink
o All new wiring, pvc pipes, insulation, sheetrock, floor joists
o Canned lighting in ceiling
o Custom pot/pan drawers
o Glass front cabinets on north wall
o Italian quartz counter - Torrone Lucido
o New stainless Whirlpool appliances
o Porcelain tile floor
o Solid maple cabinets / dark walnut stain
o Under cabinet illumination

Come visit Chez Robert and check out the kitchen.

© 2015 Snillor Productions

Come Toward the Light

The light beckons.. - Pic courtesy of Wikipedia

by Trebor Snillor
LIGHT AT THE END OF THE TUNNEL

My kitchen is now about 90% complete. It lacks faucet, refrigerator and tile backsplash. I’ve actually started moving back in – have unpacked 7 of 11 boxes. The kitchen has a few glitches that I’ll probably let slide.. I want it to be over that badly. It’s @ 10 days past schedule right now; my eagerness to finish it doesn’t translate to anyone else’s eagerness to complete it. I created part of the delay myself.. I thought all full-sized refrigerators were a “standard” size. They are not. The model I chose was 36” deep and would’ve consumed half my kitchen space. Had to trade it for a slender model that’s more even with my cabinets. The faucet is no less tricky – I ordered a Kohler “Evoke” which is a foot high and may well collide with the window sill. Care must be taken at every turn!

COME INTO THE LIGHT

Speaking of light, I’m now thinking of several publicized accounts of people having near-death experiences. A couple of these stories have involved preteen children and one involved an agnostic medical doctor in his 40’s. These stories are always interesting to me, and there are some common threads that run through them. Frequently the subject is being called toward a bright light, and is greeted by deceased relatives, even pets. There are also out-of-body visualizations where the subject hovers over his own ER table while medical recovery proceeds.

One of these was actually turned into a movie, Heaven is for Real and starred Greg Kinnear as Todd Burpo, father of the Heaven-tripping boy. I watched this movie and decided that nothing was overwhelming or convincing at all. The boy’s observations could all have been heard while partially conscious or could’ve been seen earlier in family photo albums. (He described a dead grandfather accurately). Furthermore the story was twice retold by the father and then by the screen-writer – a lot of nuance can suffer through that translation. A teen girl was a focus of yet another near death travelogue – she fessed up that hers was not real. (She did it for attention).

The 40-something doctor published his story in a national news magazine and his story was bizarre. His experience took him to a realm of “pure love” where sentient beings had no bodies and communicated with telepathic feelings but not spoken words. I have to say I didn’t embrace his bodiless heaven – somehow grim, colorless and silent. Was also impressed that his version was different from the others.

I’m a little bugged by the “step-toward-the-light, meet-your-dead-relatives” version that is so oft repeated. I hope that my dead relatives have more and better things to do than be greeters at the Pearly Gates. Furthermore, I don’t want to be a young healthy me in Heaven. There are enough things wrong with this unit (sorry, God) – I want to be an overhauled, vastly improved me. Let me pull out that list – there are THOUSANDS of corrections needed. 23-year old me is still a mess!

I do think there is a superior intelligence and possibly an after-existence. But the events told by these people seem more like near-death hallucinations -- mind games of a brain that is distressed but not deceased. On the next go-round let’s wipe the board clean. I want a new release of me not just a maintenance update. . resetting of the odometer will not be enough. I guess I’m out of anymore cynical observations here .. and my Chai Latte is nearly empty. Therefore I will step toward the light – the afternoon April sun that peeks from behind the clouds momentarily.

© 2015 Snillor Productions