Lessons from a Kitchen continued...
You can't always get what you want. The RStones immortalized those words but no matter who spoke/sang/wrote them, they are at the crux of the matter ~ life isn't about "I want, therefore I get." It's a lesson we learn at a very early age, think two-year-old temper tantrums, but I guess I wasn't thinking that it applied to my new kitchen. With visions of kitchen fairies dancing in my head, I envisioned the kitchen of my dreams. It had to be practical, check, functional, check, beautiful, check, realistic, uh uncheck, and completely different, artsy and unlike anyone else's kitchen, uncheck, uncheck, uncheck. Yep, it's the "unchecks" held in check by financial considerations that brought my wants back down to earth.
I've given up just about every special design feature that I wanted once I butted heads with the reality of what it was going to cost us (and mind you, I have a small kitchen). The one thing I desperately wanted to hold onto ~ recycled glass counter tops ~ bit the dust today when I discovered their cost would add a full 30% more to the cost of the entire remodel. I was completely chagrined. Do I throw budget to the wind and spend, or rethink, revise and being very honest, settle again for something that isn't my first choice?
I know kitchens last a really long time and if I amortize the costs over the lifespan of the kitchen, the big bucks probably pencil out to make sense. But I just can't bring myself to pitching that kind of money at one room in my house.
So I will go back to the drawing boards and create a kitchen that fulfills our needs. But I will put our signature on it somehow, and I may even get recycled glass somewhere.
(blogmeister note: there is a Biblical lesson in this but I'm too busy having a pity-party right now to look up the verse)
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