Kitchens

My brother-in-law just renovated his kitchen and the former chef and caterer seemed as pleased as punch about it. They installed some sleek and handsome dark wood cabinets and apple-martini green counter tops, new range and fridge, new flooring, a new picture window waiting for the new table. It is now a sunny and efficient place to do some serious cooking.

We have given some thought to kitchen renovation, though it has mostly been, if you'll pardon the pun, on the back burner, behind other more pressing expenditures like painting the exterior. We are mostly happy with our current kitchen, which is not beautiful but very serviceable. It passed the litmus test that kitchens in other houses we looked at mostly did not of having enough storage space for the considerable batterie de cuisine resulting from the pooling of a former professional chef and a longtime hobby cook. It has a gas cook top, granite counters, adequate counter space and enough other accouterments to work comfortably. We can keep equipment like the Cuisinart, Kitchen-Aid and Vitamix ready to go. There is room for a table where we can eat meals together.

Kitchens do not a cook make. Henry whipped up fabulous meals in his old kitchen. A friend of mine in Paris used to host dinner parties for eight cooking in a kitchen where she barely had room to turn around and which Martha Stewart would not have deigned to enter.

Beyond the necessary rudiments, the pleasure in a kitchen that's shiny new is largely aesthetic. That's important, but it has less to do with food and more with overall quality of life.

That said, we would not mind improving the quality of our life by someday having a kitchen that is more aesthetically pleasing. Henry's wife, Laura, suggested starting to keep a folder of things we like because kitchen renovations famously entail a lot of choices. A quick look online resulted in a new folder for bookmarks and some appealing links.

When I was renovating the loft in Paris, I spent years planning my dream kitchen (we sold the loft before installing a permanent kitchen). It is already fun, from an aesthetic point of view, to make these plans. Our initial thought is something more rustic, or least somewhat less sleek, for cabinets and furnishings. Farmhouse style of the Provencal or Italian persuasion is a starting point. For instance, we both like the idea of a big farmhouse style sink. One of the houses we looked at when we were in the market had a very pretty Provencal style kitchen that kind of stuck with us, though the house itself had other flaws that kept us from bidding.

Perhaps the most aesthetically pleasing kitchen I've had is the one in the barn I lived in for a year in Princeton. The kitchen, like the rest of the living space, had been renovated using much of the barn's original wood. It was essentially an expanded galley kitchen, but it had a window with a nice view, lots of light, and a decidedly rustic touch.

So this will be a long-term project, but it might be nice to start thinking about it now.