Welcome to my hell. Soon to be yours too.

My pretty little mind has been working overtime lately thinking about a discussion that Decorno had last month on what you are willing to pay for in regards to quality for your home.  There was an especially interesting moment in the comments that was surely the highlight (for me only) of the debate - check out this sweet juxtaposition between your favorite madame and Stephen Drucker.  That would be the former editor of House Beautiful and just announced editor of Town & Country (& Fancy Shit).  Or someone posing as him.  We'll never know so let's pretend it's real.

Ahh…  we’re like birds of a feather.  So classy and refined.  Independent of each other we both commented at almost the exact same time which basically means we’re cosmically one step closer to becoming BFF like I requested in this earlier post (regardless of made up obvious political affiliation). 

Stephen is completely right of course. It's just money after all, spent on glamorous glamorous things that you get to use and enjoy every day of your life. But for those of us who live one tax bracket away from abject poverty a thousand dollar light fixture or a tulip table or gold tipped leather gloves [insert fantasy item of your choosing] are items that we might save for over the course of months, years, FOREVER!!

Or perhaps one could obtain them sooner by sacrificing a little dignity and doing unspeakable dirty things to my neighbor Mr. Meyers for money that involve a latex body suit, a jar of peanut butter and a flyswatter. He looks like he wants it. Or maybe it’s just his cataracts.  I can't really tell so I'm going to go with the scenario that I benefit from.  (MS sidebar: prostitution is my go-to jokey scenario because in my fake life I have no morals and Julia Roberts taught us all that being a hooker if really fun and sexy and you get nice things in the end. The people on Intervention just aren’t doing it right.)  However you come into possession of such luxurious items they are still singular purchases.


But in the real world when you decorate/build/renovate an entire house extravagance is pushed to the side for 'dear gawd get me a toilet that doesn't leak but all I have is $10!'. Just like 2Pac we’re trying to make a dollar out of fifteen cents. The real luxury is having the option of choosing such extravagances.  Regardless of quality I will have to buy the inexpensive option. Period. There is no choice. The luxury part will have to come solely from Madame Sunday in my polyester kaftan chugging delicately sipping a martini out of a coffee cup (it was the only vessel clean) with my false eyelashes haphazardly glued on. 

I only bring all this up because the ModernSauce ranch is getting ready for some serious renovation y'all.  And I ain't talking about no shiny hinges or painted doors.   We're gettin a new kitchen bitches!!   It'll be full of Home Depot specials and clearance bin tile but Madame Sunday will try to infuse as much style in that bitch as physically possible.  And then I'll tell you how much it cost and all the hilariously sad happenings along the way.

I think at one point my kitchen probably looked something like this:

Paneled doors, weird black gothic-esque hardware and a Stepford wife drugged into happy submission.

At one point the cabinets were painted white and the walls that horrible 60's mint-meets-snot green.  Like this:

So fresh and so clean clean.  My kitchen was spared from yellow but my bathroom wasn't.  Imagine seafoam green tile with pee yellow cabinets and walls.  Maybe we'll just save that for another time...

But 40+ years of hard living, then being abandoned for awhile, then possibly used as a site for satanic rituals and then inhabited again by a band of rogue raccoons makes for an interesting result.  Which I pay a mortgage on now.


Now I hope you're sitting down and haven't eaten recently because you're about to get a tour. And no I didn't troll the internet trying to find a vomit-inducing kitchen that looks like a methlab got into a bare-knuckle boxing match with the kitchen from Mad Men. I cook in here. I'm serious.
Brace yourself... you might want to say a little prayer.

Gawd help us all.

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!

Sssshhhhh.  I know, I know.  Don't be scared.  These are my cabinets.  Original 1960 paneled doors and hardware and stains.   Yeah that's a red laminate countertop (and matching backsplash!) edged in chrome.  Stupidest idea ever.  Do you know the filth that gets trapped under that chrome lip?  You could grow fresh herbs in there if you skip the daily scraping.  But I don't actually use any of these bottom cabinets because who the hell knows what's in that abyss of horror?!  Certainly not sweet little kitchen fairies made of cinnamon and sugar.

Here's what you see when you look up.  Do you feel a little sick?  It's okay it happens to everyone on their first time.   The fake-paneled "soffit" and window box trim were removed and this was uncovered.  I think that's a sampling of the previous paint colors of the house including that extra glamorous snot green above the window.  At one point it was all painted white which gradually turned dirty white streaked with nicotine smears of the former inhabitants.  The humans not the raccoons. 

I'm sorry I should have warned you.  After a few cocktails one night Madame Sunday had a mommie dearest-style breakdown and ripped all the doors off and tried to remove all the paint in some insane attempt to "make it clean, please gawd, make it clean".  There was a lot of crying and scraping and boiling hot water and more scraping and more crying.  I finally just admitted defeat.  Somehow the open air shelves seemed cleaner than putting the door back on and closing my cookware up in those cabinets from hell.  

And the brown shit that looks like someone rubbed dirty diapers on the wall?  Yeah the former owners had a brilliant idea to install a fabric-textured paneling on the big walls which, as fabric textures tend to do, absorbed every grease splatter and food stain over the past few decades. Between you and me, I think these people were fucking retarded or something.  Once we ripped the panels off what was left was brown glue residue.  It doesn't come off no matter how intense my mommie dearest efforts were.  FML.

Be strong.  We're almost done.

Why Gawd Why??!!!  

Yeah that's the floor. And more glue residue on the walls. Who knows what happened to the trim. I don't even care to speculate anymore. I just put on my blinders when it's time for a snack. I'm a master at ignoring the unpleasant. My friends just pretend they’re camping when they come over. That’s probably because the only things I serve guests are burnt hot dogs and s’mores.

Because of the severity of the situation and because I’m such an opportunist I figured that I might as well capitalize on my misfortune so I entered a local contest this week for ugly kitchens. The prize is $5000. That’s like 4 times my budget already!! SCORE!!!  I shall wait in giddy anticipation.

I apologize for putting you through this but it had to be done.  I hope you have a nice weekend doing something that will bleach these images from your mind - much like I would like to bleach away the stains in my ancient enamal sink.   I'll be spending my weekend dreaming of my future fantasy kitchen: useable cabinets, sanitary surfaces and me drugged into happy submission serving you a cocktail with viennna sausages and a jello mold.