Michelle Blanchard Ardillo

Today is my younger daughter’s 25^th birthday. Any other July 13th, I would have been busy baking her a beautiful birthday cake and cooking one of her favorite meals. I would have spent all day in the kitchen, making everything from scratch, chopping, dicing, slicing, and mixing away while watching my favorite cooking shows on TV. I’m pretty sure I know what she would ask for as her birthday dinner: Aunt Kay’s Sesame Chicken with white rice and steamed green beans.

But, this is not a normal July 13^th. First of all, my daughter lives in Los Angeles now, where she works for a film company that makes movie trailers and other marketing tools.

And secondly, the real reason why I am not in my kitchen today, though, is because technically I don’t actually have a kitchen right now. I mean, the room is there, but as of Tuesday, July 11^th, none of the components of a kitchen is in there.

This is Day 3 of a full kitchen renovation, a gut-job as they call it on all the home improvement television shows. New floor, new cabinets, new countertops, and new appliances. A brand-new kitchen.

On Tuesday, Day 1, my contractor ripped out some of the cabinets and the white appliances, including the electric double wall ovens and “built-in” microwave original to the house when we purchased it in 2004. The dishwasher and gas stove-top were things we replaced, and they are gone, too. The new-ish stainless steel fridge with French doors is the only thing that is staying in place. It is currently playing musical chairs in the kitchen space, moving from corner to corner as the contractor works around it, because it is too big to move out of the kitchen. When it was delivered two years ago, the delivery men had to take off the back door of the kitchen to get it inside.

On Wednesday, Day 2, out came the rest of the cabinets and some of the soffits above the cabinets. The new cabinets are going all the way to the ceiling, giving me more storage, and thankfully, less wall space to hang knickknacks and my crazy collection of vintage and reproduction copper molds.

Dragged to the contractor’s trailer with the cabinets were the countertops, light gray Formica with tiny charcoal speckles. I think they were masquerading as granite, which is what will be their replacement. Although those countertops saw their fair share of dripped Kool-Aid and Crystal Light, I always managed to clean any stains with the Magic Eraser. I never cut anything directly on the Formica so there were no chips or scratches either. The only blemish was from the cooking of a very large pot of French onion soup, which I left to simmer on the back burner in a pot really too large for the burner. Boy, was I surprised when it came time to serve the soup: the large black “smirk” on the Formica backsplash has mocked me ever since. The soup was a welcome home meal for my older daughter, who had brought a friend home from college for the weekend.

Today, Day 3, started with him smashing to smithereens the white ceramic tile floor. GOOD-BYE FLOOR. I am so happy to never walk on you again! I have hated that floor since we moved in. What were they thinking, a white floor in a kitchen? Every crumb, every drop, every speck, it all showed up on that white floor. That floor has seen it all: drops of plum jam as I filled Mason jars for canning, chocolate cake batter as I filled cupcake tins for church bake sales, Italian bread crumbs as I dredged chicken strips or pork chops for frying. We even bought one of those steam mops to try to keep that stupid floor clean. On top of all that, the tiles were not set evenly so if you walked barefoot in the kitchen your toes would inevitably get caught on the lip of a tile sticking up higher than the rest.

My daughter and I had a lovely chat this morning as she was walking to work in West Hollywood. She told me of her birthday dinner plans with a group of friends at a trendy dim sum restaurant. She was happy, doing her thing out there on the west coast. My contractor is busy doing his thing, tearing my kitchen down to bare walls and floor. Even though I didn’t spend the day baking and cooking, this July 13^th turned out pretty good. And, in honor of my daughter’s favorite birthday dinner, I leave you with the recipe for Aunt Kay’s Sesame Chicken (or Beef)!