Why I Almost Sold Our New House

It was 8:30 Friday evening.

I was sitting cross-legged in the middle of the sawdust covered future living floor of our new house. Flood lights were glaring obnoxiously into the room and I was staring dejectedly into the future kitchen of our new house. In the kitchen was a taped outline of a prospective layout. Beside me lay a nearly empty roll of masking tape and a pile of the balled up used tape was near by. I was cold and my brain hurt.

I felt tears ready to spill over.

Trevor and I were trying to determine a workable design for our kitchen. My original idea was long ago tossed out since it didn’t fit with the actual size and shape of the area. At that point I felt like we had tried everything and nothing was working.

How could this be?

This was supposed to be my dream house with my dream kitchen (within financial limitations of course). I had high expectations and I hated the current possibilities. Maybe I wanted too much. I just wanted to go home and think about this a different day. Unfortunately we couldn’t put this aside since we were meeting with our cabinet maker the next day.

What next?

Then our carpenter, John, showed up to retrieve a forgotten hoodie and Trevor, out of desperation, asked John his opinion. John had built many houses and seen many kitchens so Trevor figured maybe he would have the solution. I expected John to shrug and mumble something about doing whatever the plans said, or some sort of typically male response. He actually stopped and thoughtfully gazed at our future kitchen.

“Well,” he said, “my kitchen is like this (proceeded to describe it) so you could do yours similar.”

Hmmmm, that was a thought.

After he left we went back at it, measuring and taping and then stepped back and looked and discussed the arrangement.

This didn’t work either.

To avoid a sure tantrum from me, Trevor quickly suggested we reverse the design. The tape became another shape yet again. We studied the result.

I liked it.

After almost 2/12 hours we had victory.

I wouldn’t have to sell my house.