What the Walls Tell Us

The photographer is in the Boundary Waters this week, leaving the wordsmith (and her daughter) here, with her thoughts.

The age and character of the kitchen seem to vary depending on what is visible.  When I bought the house, it looked like a tired 80's kitchen that included wallpaper of huge paisleys and criss-crossing beams of fluorescent lights.  By removing two different wallpapers and the fluorescent lights and painting it Sugar Cookie off-white (the only color that did not make the yellowing floor look even worse), its age became less definable.

Once our remodeling began, the age has varied again. As the layers were stripped away, the kitchen varied in age, depending on which earlier wallpaper you saw.  60's?  40's?  Next, with only the wooden slats with extra plaster pushing through the cracks, it looked ancient and full of character.  As the whitish blown insulation and the pink rolls of insulation filled in along the walls, the kitchen began to resemble a cross between a snow monster and cotton candy machine run amok.

Now that the sheet rocking has begun, the kitchen looks at once timeless and generic.  It could be any house in any time period of my life.  It is both brighter and blander than before.  We will need to get a bit further alone before the character returns, along with the wooden floor and cabinets, the replica draw pulls, and the handmade tile.