A gentle insanity

I had had a long day at the computer working my online job.

Afterward, since Older Daughter had made lunch and left the kitchen a mess, as usual, I tackled the dishes.

While my hands were in the dishwater, Don came over and kissed me on the back of the neck. "I'll say it again," he said. "If you ever want me to do the dishes, just say so."

His offer was just the latest in a long, long, long line of offers from family members to take over the dishes. And each and every time, I've refused.

Cleaning the kitchen, it seems, is one of the most hated of domestic chores. Endless women have spilled endless quantities of ink on how unfair it is that they have to do the washing up rather than someone else.

Not me. I will push everyone else out of the kitchen when it comes time to clean up, so I can clean up by myself. Why? Well, two reasons.

One, I realized decades ago that I'm very territorial in the kitchen. I don't like anyone else involved in the cleanup process. And two – heresy to admit it – I like doing dishes. Honestly, I do. I think it's for the same reasons I like weeding. It's mindless, I can take my time and work at a steady pace, it feels good to move around after sitting at the computer for so long, and it gives me satisfaction to tidy a messy area. I feel relaxed after I'm done.

That's why family members are often leery about offering to help clean up. They know I'll refuse.

"Well, it's a gentle insanity," Don hedged with a smile. He, too, thinks I'm a little crazy that I don't mind washing dishes.

"If you want to take over a chore," I suggested, rinsing a plate, "how about the bathroom?"

Because here's the thing: Don cleans our bathroom far better than I do. Under his industry, it comes out positively sparkling.

He agreed to give the bathroom a deep cleaning once a week – Friday was his day of choice. As I finished wiping down the kitchen, I thought with satisfaction that the distribution of chores in the Lewis household is just about perfect right now.

Seriously. Older Daughter does the cooking – something she's good at and enjoys far more than I do – and she can make a mess to her heart's content. (I've given her full permission to trash the place in whatever capacity it takes to creates those incredible meals she makes.) Don has taken over a chore I will only tackle at reluctant and too-distant intervals.

And I get the kitchen cleanup to myself, just as I've always like it. Whatever works.

Cross-traffic in the kitchen

Today was one of those days when all three of us had projects in the kitchen.

Don was making bread. I was frying down bacon bits. Older Daughter was making lunch as well as working on tankards. By the end of this, the kitchen was absolutely – almost comically – trashed.

Thankfully a little elbow grease went a long way.

Bonus photo: Don's bread.

The "smartest" room in the house

Since moving into our new (to us) home, we've had issues with the appliances that came with the house, something we're slowly addressing. We were fortunate to find a simpler washing machine so we could finally off-load the beastly massive and modern Maytag that I'm convinced never properly cleaned the clothes.

Our new (to us) washer is a marvel of simplicity and efficiency. It works like a champ and takes one-third the time to clean a load than the old machine.

In tracing water leaks under the house during our recent plumbing woes, Don removed the unused dishwasher, which spent at least the last two years quietly leaking (I prefer to wash dishes by hand anyway), so that's another appliance we no longer have to worry about.

We've been looking to replace the propane range/oven, since the durn thing has an electronic ignition, which means the oven can't be used during power outages. Did you know they don't make ovens with pilot lights any longer? That's what we had in our old home and loved it. We've been searching for a range with a pilot light, to no avail. The best we can find is a very pricey battery-ignition range. We may not have an option except to invest in one of these.

We're also looking to replace the fancy refrigerator with a plainer model. Not only did this refrigerator leak (because of its fancy ice/water feature), but frankly it has a very poor inside layout, without the option to rearrange the shelves for more efficiency. Grrr. Who designs these things?

Anyway, this litany of appliance woes underscores our determination to KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) our kitchen. Anything that requires complicated hookups – or worse, monitors everything we do – is a no-no in our book. The idea of a "smart" kitchen gives me the shudders.

This is all a lead-up to an article I just saw on the subject of "smart" kitchens. Are you ready for this?

Based on the "kitchen of the future" from the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, it seems the newest generation of appliances are not only part of the Internet of  Things, but are "smarter" than ever.

From the article:

"Samsung is bringing us the ability to peek-a-boo at any temperature every time you bake. They are debuting their new Bespoke Lineup kitchen appliances, including this smart oven with a camera inside, so you no longer have to open the door and let out the heat to check how the food is looking as it cooks.

The AI Oven includes a pro cooking system that uses a camera inside of it to tell when your food is burning or ready to be taken out. You can also integrate your oven with the Samsung SmartThings Cooking app to get recipes recommended based on your diet goals or the ingredients you have at home, making cooking even more of a breeze."

I'm sure this appeals to some people, but not me. Essentially it means your oven is hackable. Can you imagine some guy across the planet, sitting in a darkened room in front of his computer and informing me my casserole will be held hostage unless I fork over my bank account?

They're also putting out a "smart" mixer: "The mixer has a built-in smart scale so you can get the precise weight of ingredients to ensure your measurements are exact. The Auto Sense technology can not only tell when your measurements are precise – it can also tell exactly how long to mix the ingredients." 

I have two mixers. One looks like this:

And the other looks like this:

But wait, there's more! How about a mood fridge? "LG's MoodUP color-changing fridge can boldly jump out or fade into the background. LG wants to not only change your kitchen's aesthetic, but they are also hoping to change your mood at the same time. The fridge has 4 panels you can select the colors for or choose a theme like 'season' or 'healing.'"

If having a colorful fridge is not your style, "you can opt for the Lux Grey/Lux White combo instead and just use the fridge for its features, like the built-in Bluetooth speaker or voice recognition. The colors are a way more fun option, though, if you want them to change along with the beat of the music playing from your fridge through the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connections.

The fridge's lights also allow fun features like blinking when someone enters the kitchen or alerting you with flashing lights if the fridge door was left open accidentally. The MoodUP name pays homage to the soothing colors you can choose to change the ambiance of your kitchen to a more relaxing vibe. And speaking of vibe, the fridge comes with LG's craft ice maker, so you can cool down your cocktail with a perfectly round, large ice cube."

Maybe it's just me, but all I can think of (besides how unnecessary all this is) is how much more likely these kinds of appliances will break down. Then what? How much will it cost to get them repaired?

It can get worse. Last year, a reader commented: "A friend of mine is separating from an abusive husband. We've had a bit of a rush to disconnect various devices from the internet. For a time he seemed able to surveil his abused wife and kids through the television, or just to turn up the volume remotely. He enjoyed turning on the sprinklers while the wife was mowing the lawn through the IoT sprinkler controller. Had the 'smart oven' not fortuitously decided it needed its entire brain replaced, he could theoretically have turned it on remotely. I'll take the dumb devices any day."

Doesn't this just give you the shudders?

See, this is something that puzzles me. Why do people want this kind of stuff? Are they so helpless or clueless that "smart" technology is superior to human intelligence? I don't get it. I honestly don't get it.

Of course, the ultimate test of a kitchen is how functional it still is during a power outage. That's one of the reasons I loved our old propane range with the pilot light – it worked just fine without power. And a deep-down part of me longs to get an old-fashioned ice box, even as I recognize we would either have to purchase blocks of ice, or go down an entire rabbit hole of building an ice house and freezing our own ice.

It's funny: the "smarter" technology gets, the more I push back against it. As I write this, for example, our wood cookstove is purring along, heating a kettle of water for tea. My kind of stove.

I know I'm a Luddite at heart. Don't get me wrong – technology has its place. I'm using technology to post to this blog, of course. I make my living on a computer. But at what point does technology take over?

After the battle we've had for the past two years with modern appliances, I'm more convinced than ever that low-tech is the way to go. The "smartest" room in the house is one where the cook controls the appliances, not the other way around.

Okay, rant over.

Kitchen humor

Don saw this meme and thought of me right away.

I'm well known for my ability to absolutely trash a kitchen when engaged in a cooking project. What can I say.

A new kitchen countertop

When we first bought our house back in 2003, one of the only breathtaking aspects of its construction was the kitchen cabinets and countertop.

I say "only," because the man who built our house was an excellent rough carpenter but not the best finish carpenter. Over the years Don's had to correct a lot of issues.

But the cabinets and countertop were hand-crafted wood and quite lovely. Most homes have wood cabinets, but wooden countertops are less common. People (mostly, I'll admit, women) would often walk into our kitchen and gasp in admiration. It was such an earthy, lovely combination.

But, true to the nature of the guy who built the countertop, he misunderstood certain principles of wood, i.e. shrinkage. The countertop was beautiful, but the boards from which it was constructed had shrunk over time, resulting in gaps (sometimes very wide gaps) between the boards.

For sixteen years, we've dealt with debris falling through the cracks. (One time I defrosted some bags of garden strawberries on the countertop but neglected to put the bags in bowls. Sticky strawberry juice leaked between the gaps and dripped all over my spices, which I keep on a lazy Susan in the cabinet below. What a mess.)

In the last couple months, Don tackled a major home improvement project: making a new countertop. Talented man that he is, he worked hard to retain the best parts about the original countertop (the lustrous beauty of the wood) while eliminating the bad parts (the gaps between the boards).

He carefully planned everything on paper first, measuring and re-measuring and re-measuring again.

He used the same type of wood for the new counter, Spanish cedar. Here it is, my kitchen countertop in the raw!

This is a dowel jig, which spaces dowel holes exactly to measurement.

Use of this jig allows long boards to be matched up and joined together using dowels.

Once the holes were drilled, he used wood glue to hold the dowels...

...and added extra glue the length of the board as well.

Here are the dowels which join the boards together.

They're inserted into the pre-drilled holes, then hammered down.

Joining two boards together.

Clamps draw the boards together and hold them firmly in place until the glue dries.

He uses a bit of pipe for extra torque when tightening the clamps.

This sat overnight to let the glue dry.

Using the same procedure, he added the L-shaped wing where the countertop bends around a corner near the stove.

We got a new sink for the occasion. Despite his careful measurements, Don took the precaution of making a cardboard cutout of the sink's dimensions before cutting the hole in the countertop where the sink will go. This is the part he really really didn't want to screw up.

Armed with both the measurements and the cardboard piece, he measured yet again and then cut.

The sink hole is smaller than the sink's lip that fits over the edge of the countertop.

He trimmed things to size using a circular saw with a fine-tooth blade.

Whew -- it fits!

Looking good so far!

And then the sanding started. He sanded and sanded and sanded, staring with 60 grit and ending with 220 grit. He sanded multiple times with the belt sander.

He used a palm sander to remove any scratches made by the belt sander. (The belt sander does a fast but sometimes rough job, and the palm sander cleans up any issues left over by the belt sander.)

After all the sanding was done, he used the shop vac to vacuum up all the sawdust.

Then it was time to coat. He started with three coats of wood hardener. This is a liquid plastic that's easily absorbed into the wood, then hardens. This step could be skipped with hard woods such as oak; but because he was using a relative soft wood (Spanish cedar), it was necessary to toughen the countertop.

Now the beauty of the wood emerges.

The first of three coats.

As helpful as wood hardener is, and no matter how well it does its job, it's something of a pain in the patookus. No matter how quickly or how smoothly it's applied, it tends to clump and get stringy as it dries. Then afterward, the wood surface needs to be sanded again, and the hardener residue gums up the sander. (Don used a lot of palm sander sandpaper during this process.) Additional rough spots needed to be scraped by hand.

Here, a portion of the wood is scraped, the rest is not scraped. The difference is dramatic.

Don let the hardener dry eight hours between coats of hardener. After the last coat was applied, he let the countertop dry for 48 hours.

Then it was time to apply varnish, the same Minwax high gloss varnish we use for our tankards.

He put on nine coats of varnish, letting the countertop dry between coats. After each coat dried, we rubbed the countertop down with xxx-grade steel wool (the slight scratching this causes helps the next coat of varnish stick better).

He used a spray gun for applying the varnish, same as with our tankards.

He also gave two coats of varnish to the underside of the countertop, just to seal things in. Since this didn't have to be as smooth, he used a brush instead of a spray gun.

Then the unit was complete. We brought it into the house and leaned it against the kitchen wall for a day or two, to let the wood adapt to ambient house temperature.

Then came the messy task of removing the old countertop and sink.

Naked kitchen!

When all the prep work was done, we lifted the new unit into place. It. Fit. Perfectly.

Look at that! Just look at it! No gaps!

Next step, the wood backsplash. While Don worked the wood, I scraped off the icky grungy silicon grout from the old backsplash.

For the backsplash, Don used half-inch oak to match the rest of the trim in the kitchen. He varnished the side facing out, and applied adhesive caulk on the side facing the wall.

He used a nail gun powered by the air compressor to fasten the backsplash in place.

To seal and waterproof the joint between the countertop and the backsplash, he used a line of dark brown latex caulk.

(And yes, I later touched up the paint.)

He also learned the excess latex caulk can be removed without smearing by dipping his finger in rubbing alcohol and wiping away the extra. He also used a cloth dipped in rubbing alcohol to remove any smears on the wood.

Beautiful, no?

After Don was finished with the wood parts, I ran masking tape and touched up the paint.

The result, folks, is the most beautiful kitchen countertop I've ever seen. Glorious! All thanks to my clever woodworking husband.

And best of all ... no gaps!