The Mushroom Factor

I have to admit, my husband and I usually base our house renovation decisions on budget, artistry or simple nostalgia. But living green is all the rage these days and, for the sake of appearing hip, I’m going to write about us using yellow to be green.

Southern Yellow Pine, that is.

Recently my husband dismantled our “lovely” pantry (said with great facetiousness). This was the 8×9′ room we used as our kitchen for 20 years. The cabinetry was limited. And it was falling apart. But much it was constructed with clear Southern Yellow Pine, a strong, glorious wood that, believe me, you won’t find in your neighborhood Home Depot or Menards stores.

At one time, forests of  Southern Yellow Pine were prolific all along the southeastern coasts of North America. Also known as Longleaf Pine, this resinous wood was used by 19th century craftsmen for everything from furniture, flooring, woodwork and cabinetry, to the actual building construction.

Of course, we over-harvested and under-replenished. Why do we always do that?

According to the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List of Threatened Species, the Longleaf Pine was “a once-abundant tree which has reduced in area of occupancy from 24 million ha to 1.6 million ha in 1985″ (from 59 million acres to 3.95 million acres). Thankfully, organizations such as the Longleaf Alliance are striving to restore such forests.

Nowadays, Southern Yellow Pine is a valuable treasure and we certainly don’t want to throw any out. That’s not how my husband does things anyway. Instead, he stripped the wood of it’s painted finish and used it as side and back pieces for our new kitchen cabinets.

We’re being green and we’re saving money. Best of all, we’re saving one more bit of our house’s heritage.

So, a while ago I wrote about the drawer slides we’re using as we remodel our kitchen. We’re doing a complete re-do and my husband is building the cabinetry. As he completes the project, we’re learning what we like and don’t like, and which products work and don’t work. Some of the drawer slides we chose ended up on the “don’t like” and “don’t work” list.

My husband’s dovetails are just so fine (joinery, that is…as in drawers). So fine is his craftsmanship, I felt it should be showcased with undermount drawer slides. We used the Accuride Extension Center Mount.

Well, as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. The slides are fine in quality, however they just don’t allow the drawer to open enough. It’s like you’re losing a third of your drawer space. We used the drawers for about six months and decided we’d had enough.

So now we’ve switched to the Accuride Full-Access Undermount Slide. At $35.99 a drawer, they’re a bit pricier but definitely much nicer. We now have both form and function!

But, hey! I was searching online to link my slides for your easy reference and I found even more. Accuride has come out with its Eclipse Undermount Slide with “easy-close mechanism to prevent drawer slam and tolerance-absorbing design for flawless movement.” So says Rockler. For only a mere $59.99 a drawer.

My husband would probably love these slides since he finds my habit of not fully closing drawers quite irritating. Apparently, others love them as well. They’ve gotten pretty good reviews.

Oh well. Next time.

Aaaah, the infamous pot filler. It’s one of the most hotly debated appliances on kitchen design forums. Some scoff at its frivolity, others swear by its usefulness. Interestingly, the scoffers are those that haven’t used a pot filler and the proponents are those that have.

Pot filler faucets are one of many commercial kitchen items that have worked their way into today’s family kitchen. Located on the wall or countertop near the cooktop, a pot filler dispenses cold water and saves half the work of hauling it around the kitchen. It has a heavier flow than a conventional faucet and fills large pots considerably faster.

I wanted a pot filler because we do lots of home canning in the summer and I think filling a 33-quart kettle with water and lifting it out of the sink gets rather tedious. My husband wanted a pot filler because he thinks being called in from whatever he’s doing just to carry a kettle a mere seven feet from the sink to the stovetop gets rather tedious.

Turns out we both love our Danze Opulence pot filler. And not just for filling the canning kettle. We use it for cooking pasta, soup, vegetables and for measuring that one cup of water called for in a recipe. You name it, we use it every day. What’s especially nice is that it eliminates traffic jams at the sink when multiple people are cooking together, an activity our whole family does now that we have a large kitchen.

So what’s the debate with pot fillers?

Aside from cost, which varies greatly, the biggest concern people have is that the pot filler might leak—there is no sink beneath the faucet, after all. However, most pot filler faucets on today’s market have a double shut off valve, one at either end, and this serves to minimize damaging drips.

Aesthetics are another concern. People are doing some pretty artistic backsplashes these days and don’t like the idea of a wall-mount faucet interrupting the design. A perfect solution for this is the deck-mount, which also works well for islands and kitchen remodels where a wall-mount is impractical. In my opinion, the articulated extensions in both the wall and deck-mounts are art forms in themselves and look very, very cool.

And for those with technical concerns: there’s always the installation. I’m fortunate to have a handy husband that can do it all. He plumbed the one-half inch water line during our renovation process when the walls were completely gutted. He did the final installation and hook-up after we completed the backsplash. If your plumber or contractor is professional, he or she will certainly be qualified to install a pot filler in a variety of design situations.

Convenience. Safety. Cool factor. And most important: family togetherness.

I say there’s no debate at all!

Aside from a new sink, perhaps the most life-altering event in our kitchen renovation was the completion of my spice drawer. I realize this sounds a bit dramatic but, in reality, there’s a lot of truth to this statement.

Historically, cooking has not been my greatest forté. I’d like to be a good cook and sometimes I even put a little effort into it. But for the most part, cooking is a chore I try to finish as quickly as I can. Obviously.

If you look back at our original kitchen floor plan, you’ll see for 20 years we operated basically out of a 9′ x 7′ pantry. Needless to say, there wasn’t much room for efficiency and organization, two things that also are not my forté. So, like many people, I jammed all my spices together in miscellaneous plastic containers and shoved them in one of the few cupboards available. They were always a mess. A huge mess. A meal I should’ve been able to throw together in five minutes usually took 20 because 15 of them were spent rummaging through a gazillion spices (other people in our family actually get into cooking things that take longer than five minutes—thus the large collection of spices).

Enter the Universal Spice Tray by Ovis Online!

This simple piece of molded plastic has transformed my cooking and my organization! Note the fairly tidy and semi-alphabetized arrangement of spice jars in the heading photo. I lovingly refer to this as stadium seating. What used to be a gazillion jars are now only 30-40 because we assess our inventory and don’t buy spices we already have. And best of all, cooking is actually becoming fun! I pull open the drawer and easily choose a spice that will creatively enhance the culinary delights I’ve now mastered.

Okay, well, now maybe I’m over-dramatizing. But someday…

I subscribe to the wise adage that says the sign of a good marriage is a well-bitten tongue. My husband probably doesn’t agree that I subscribe to this, but, oh, I really do. I think I do even more when it comes to home renovation.

My husband and I have been married for almost thirty years. He is my soul mate. But, yes, we are different people and, no, we don’t always agree on how things should be done. Of course, I’m always right. And, of course, he never listens.

And so I bite my tongue. Well, I try to.

Here’s an example.

We’re working on this kitchen renovation project. We’ve been at it for more than a year and it’s coming along great. When I say “we’re working on it,” I mean I’m the creative brain and my husband is the mechanical brawn. In other words, I tell him what to do and he does it. How can it get any better than that?

So, the latest phase is cabinetry, specifically some cool cubbies customized to fit at 45-degree angles around the microwave positioned in the corner (not exactly calculation-free construction). My husband’s first response is, “No, that’s not going to work.” I come back with, “Sure, we’ll just do this and we’ll just do that…” We, meaning he. He obligingly builds the cabinets, hoists them into place, stains and varnishes them.

My contribution to this project, beyond the creative instruction? Not much…aside from gleefully filling the cubbies with cute little apothecary jars that, when all totaled, will probably cost more than the oak wood for the cabinetry because my husband cut down the trees himself and planed the wood. Are you getting the picture here just how much of this kitchen he’s actually doing?

So, when he inadvertently slathers polyurethane on my new microwave because five minutes of prep work seems unreasonable, should I say anything? Or, if his idea of a finely sanded finish is slightly rougher than mine, dare I criticize? Not if I want this cool kitchen project to continue.

Instead, while he’s off to his day job, I whip out the 800-grit paper for a few extra buffs and I apply protective masking tape before the next coat of finish. And I bite my tongue.

Finally, I write about it here, because as private as the Internet is, I doubt he’ll ever see it.

Ah, relief for the well-bitten tongue.