Special Game

“Let’s Go Shopping!” exclaimed Laura Michaelides, our interior designer. What fun! There were two sets of things she needed from us:  appliances and countertops. Since we had decided that we would have the cabinets built on site, Laura needed to prepare the cabinet drawings so we could locate a finish carpenter to build them. As we prepared for a trip out to Monterey to meet with our architect and potential builders, she was working to complete the cabinet plans, but before she could draw them, she needed to know the size and numbers of appliances that we would have.

The countertops, particularly for the kitchen, she said would be the foundation upon which we would build our “color palette.” I sighed with great relief! A color palette was music to my ears. This was why you hired a professional designer. I feel much attuned to colors. If I connect with the design of a room or a house it is often the colors to which I am responding. Harry also has a strong aesthetic sense when he’s focused on something. Sometimes I think he should have been an artist instead of an engineer. I was also grateful to have Laura as an arbiter in these matters.

We began with appliances. After pouring over Consumer Reports for ratings on key factors and reading up on new designs, we selected a showroom in Houston, K&N Builder, which had a large floor area with enough room for lots of brands including European models and all types of appliances. Laura had advised us to look for a counter depth refrigerator, which would not jut out beyond the counters since our space is limited (and I had observed, too, that Laura likes things to be aligned). We knew we needed a dishwasher of course, and we wanted to splurge on a wine cooler. We probably would have a small counter top microwave/toaster because of our limited space. The big question was the size of the stove and I had decided that we needed a 48” professional range with two ovens. I honestly felt I was arguing this for Harry’s benefit since he loves to cook. I could envision myself feeling really fine, as I sipped my wine while hubs worked away on his professional stove making my dinner. He had gotten the short end of the stick when it came to our offices on the first floor of the new home, since he kindly gave me the corner office with a view while he took the middle room with the view of our neighbor’s fence.

But, Harry took one look at the 48” professional range and said it was too big for our small house. Actually, I kind of agreed with him. It did look kind of massive, but it was only with a 48” stove that we could have the second oven.  Professional stoves come with two types of power:  gas for the stove and electric for the oven; two types of baking: convection and conventional; six burners some with an extremely high heat of 15,000 BTUs and others with a low of 500 BTUs for when you want to make a beurre blanc sauce; and a griddle in the middle for hotcakes. Harry did find a salesman there with whom he bonded and they ended up with their heads together talking about an outdoor combination grill and smoker, while I wandered about and strategized to bide my time on the 48”stove. The salesman suggested we try Best Buy, which had an even bigger showroom promising he could match any of their prices.

From there we had to go straight home because I was exhausted from our first shopping exercise. Loaded with pamphlets of different models and features. I had honestly ceased caring about third racks in dishwashers and subzero refrigerators that can keep blueberries for up to four weeks.

Before looking at appliances again, we went with Laura to look for countertops. She advised that this was the place to start because it would be the focus of the Great Room and once we had the stone, we could best decide about the color of the cabinets, backsplash tiles, and flooring, which we needed to complete the building specifications and cost estimates. I worried about mining the earth’s beautiful rock for these stone counters. She reassured me saying the stone had already been quarried and was just sitting on the showroom floor, waiting for us to have some of it. I certainly agreed that stone countertops would be very beautiful. In Houston, we had our first stone countertops and they proved very functional indeed:  cold so you could work with dough directly on the service, they take the heat well too, and even with the highly polished stone never showed stains.

We met Laura at Walker Zanger where you have to shop with a “building professional.” This is an old company that specializes in world-class stone and tiles with showrooms in major cities across the country. The warehouse was enormous with huge heavy stone slabs standing up like slices of toast on a rack so buyers could walk through and examine each slab up close. The slabs magnificently portray geologic time in metamorphosis and sedimentation and volcanic eruption. They were granite, quartzite, marble, and onyx; much of it fascinatingly detailed as you looked at it up close, and others painted sweeping panoramas as well when you stepped back for the broad view. I was reminded of Van Gogh’s Starry Night; or Monet’s water-lily pond, shaded with light and darker greens. You can get lost in these, each one unique and interesting in its own right.

Harry spotted a stone he liked right away when we walked into the showroom. I was into the details searching for some element of green or, rarer still, a sea green, one of my favorite Monterey colors.  Harry’s stone was one of those with a sweeping panorama, as well as fascinating detail and, though I liked it, I did not find much green in it. Laura said we could do green countertops in the bathrooms. The name of the stone that Harry liked was Crema Oniciata, a quartzite. Laura said she really wanted me to be thrilled with the stone as well, and that we should look at another showroom. We spent more time in another part of the store looking at tiles that could go on the floor, in the bath, and on backsplashes in the kitchen and baths.  Once again, after two hours of this shopping, I was overwhelmed by all of the choices which at the end seemed fused together in a giant blur of pink granite porphyry, white phenocrysts, and labradorite adularescence.

Our second trip searching for appliances was to Best Buy where there was an enormous selection. There, suddenly, the stoves no longer looked so massive to Harry. They didn’t to me either, unless I am becoming merely his cipher. By this time he also had spoken to his sister on the phone. She had just remodeled her kitchen and, she too a fantastic cook, encouraged him in no uncertain terms to get the larger stove, particularly for the two ovens. Our eldest daughter was also encouraging him. I could see that the full court press was eventually winning the day. (Note to self for future campaigns—Go Girlfriends!)

We tried again looking for countertops at another showroom, even bigger than the last one. I tried taking photos of the slabs as a way to help me remember them, but without a map of where they stood on the lot, it was not much help in locating them afterward. On the second walk around the lot Laura began talking against having a peachy background to the stone. This was not a color she wanted in the color palette. Suddenly it seemed to me I could not find anything green, and everything seemed peachy keen. Finally I did find a beautiful piece that was sea green that I quite liked though still I was not enamored of it and it lacked that sweeping drama of Crema Oniciata (shown below).

 We were so tired we decided to go for a cup of coffee and mull over our choices. Laura said that the two of us would have to fight it out and decide between the two slabs we had found. I said that I liked the slab that Harry had selected well enough and that perhaps she should cast the tie-breaking vote. She said that though she liked both, she thought Harry’s slab was more dramatic and that the color palate would work well for us.

So, Harry won! I tried not to think of it in this way, but there it was in my very competitive heart. Even when I would chide myself that he was, after all, a geologist and that it was fitting that he should select the stone, particularly after he had capitulated to the 48” stove, still I felt I had lost. I decided to be amenable to his selection of the countertop. Even though I wasn’t wild about it, truth was, it was beginning to grow on me. One of those things that the more you see it, the better you like it.

It’s a game we play I guess. Each one has to get some and give some. You wouldn’t want a partner who was indifferent. And the teeter totter does come to balance, not with both partners’ feet suspended in air, but when each one is pushing off with their strength while the other rides down, cushioning the fall and then pushing back to keep the game going forward. If only it were as simple as teeter totter. I cannot help keeping score; I want things my way to be sure, but I also want my partner’s ideas to come to life. In this way it’s a special game we play that seems always in transition, which keeps it very interesting.