Someone's in the Kitchen with Liza

It's time. I am going to boldly go where I have not gone before. Well maybe not so boldly. Not exactly peeing my pants, but not at all confidently.

I am going to get my kitchen redone.

Gasp.

My house is about 100 years old. It has all the charming features that an old house has, and even a few modern upgrades. I have beautiful mahogany inlay floors. But I have reached the maximum roof capacity and when I go to have it replaced, they will have to strip them all off...right down to and including the cedar shake, which is not even an approved roof material anymore. I have marvelous radiator heat, but I also have high velocity central air conditioning. When I stripped (some of the most uncommonly ugly) wallpaper from every wall in the house, we got down to the original unpainted plaster. I put the first coats of paint on the 80 year old virgin walls. However my kitchen was last remodeled in 1980 and so was the bathroom. And even though I have dutifully replaced appliances and the toilet and the bathroom sink, both rooms desperately need an upgrade.

I even have a very good idea about what I'd like the finished rooms to look like. I've torn out pictures from magazines and learned about what features appeal to me and can even articulate some of it quite competently.

The problem is, I have no idea where to begin. I don't know who to articulate it to. And am having an inferiority complex about it. And a general sense of mistrust about contractors.

Is it wrong to have a firm budget for something like this? I imagine myself talking to a contractor and him shaking his head like I am an idiot when I say I'd prefer to go with the subway tile backsplash instead of the individually hand-cast Aztec artifact-inspired tiles. Or refuse to have the window that faces the patio removed and replaced with a smaller, better positioned one to give me more counter top mileage, because my budget doesn't have room for reconstruction of a window space and plastering and stucco and exterior paint and a whole new window to replace the relatively new window that's there, just so I can roll out gingerbread men with room to spare at Christmas. Will he think I'm a silly little numbskull when I don't want to change the footprint of the room, when really, it is smaller than my office, or I want to keep my 10 year old appliances, because they work and they fit and I can't begin to imagine knocking down walls and expanding into God-only-knows-where? If I had the money to do all of these things, wouldn't they be done by now, or wouldn't I have moved? I imagine the contractor walking away muttering obscenities to himself and swearing at me for wasting his time.

This scares me. I don't want anyone thinking I am a cheapskate or stupid.

But before anyone can even have an opportunity to think those things I have to get started. And I have absolutely no idea where to start to even begin to invite the insults. But I do have an idea where where the warm-up circle is.

Charlotte.

Charlotte has redone every room in her house. Some of them twice. She's even remodeled her laundry room, for Christ's sake. And I am fairly certain she didn't start out with more to go on than I have at the moment.

She probably just had a vision. Just like I have a vision. I will call her to see if she knows how I can begin to give my vision wings.

If I am to make my vision come to life, my super hero Charlotte needs to pay a visit. I'll invite her for wine. Nothing makes a vision come to life better than wine.

Now we're getting somewhere.