We've reached the grumpy stage in our kitchen make-over where we wonder what possessed us to begin. I shuffled through our old pictures to remind myself, but actually the old kitchen looks okay compared to what we have been living with. The hole in the ceiling surrounded be water stains still makes me shudder, but it would be so nice to have an intact kitchen once again.
I think back to the first time we saw this house, after it had been uninhabited for three years. The whole house was in sad shape, but the kitchen was the worst. The roof leaked everywhere, and big black streaks of what looked like tar had dripped down the front of the cabinets and on to the counter. Every cupboard and drawer contained mouse poop and spiders had colonized the corners. The ceiling tiles were stained and sagging. In one corner a part of the main fireplace was exposed, with a vent that was meant to deliver warm air to the kitchen, now a major mouse highway. It was unbelievably filthy. We scrubbed everything down with bleach, sealed what cabinets we could with duct tape to keep out the mice, and started to use it on weekends. When we moved in permanently we scrubbed it again, but it was impossible to make it feel clean.
The part of the house that 
contains the kitchen was built in 1942 and was lightly remodeled in 1970. The raw plywood cabinets were mostly original, including a cold cabinet with holes to the outside for keeping food cool. They were very neatly built, but as plain as could be, stained and battered. The floor was and will remain concrete. It isn't level or even enough to cover with something else. We meant from the start to keep everything as simple as possible and re-use what we could, but we have had to remove every single thing, starting with the fireplace. It is a serious thing to remove the hearth from a house, but when we had a week-long power outage this winter and couldn't use the fireplace without filling the place with smoke we decided it was useless as well as dirty. We tried to save the cabinets, but they were built onto the wall with so many nails that they couldn't be removed without breaking the wood. The stove had such a bad thermostat that I had to watch anything I baked for fear of sudden incineration, there was an insect entombed in the non-working clock and mice partied in the drawer underneath. No one would want to save anything about the ceiling, and the light fixtures were mostly broken. In the end, our complete disassembly of the room has allowed us to fix previously hidden carpenter ant damage, re-do the plumbing and wiring, and add ducting for a range hood that actually works, but it has taken many weeks to do all of this, and I am tired. Writing this has reminded me that I don't really want my old kitchen back, but I am very impatient
for the new one.
When choosing the lighting for our kitchen, my main criteria were using compact fluorescents and (of course) price. Track lighting answered for both, if we chose the clunky seventies-style fixtures. I could live with that, I thought, and congratulated myself on being green. Then, with tracks adhered to the ceiling and fixtures ready to go I inserted one of the R20 fluorescent floods and flipped the switch. Yuck. The light was so harsh and cold I shuddered. It was supposedly a soft white bulb too. I am so disapointed. I dragged my feet on switching to fluorescent bulbs because I absolutely hate the quality of fluorescent light. After reading that warmer bulbs were available, I finally gave them a try in my table lamps and was really pleased with the effect, including the rosy glow I got from doing my part for the environment. I chose that feeling over aesthetics for the kitchen (a rare victory for function) and now I just don't know if I can stand it. I'm thinking of using both compact fluorescents and incandescents on the tracks, but it seems like such a failure.
