I’ve started my second post-retirement big project and it’s a doozy. My parents bought their little 1 1/2 story cottage in 1962 for a whopping $14,000.  They raised five of us there in three and a half bedrooms (one bedroom was actually just the landing at the top of the stairs!) and one bathroom. Eventually my brother Tim and I couldn’t walk through any of the doorways on the second floor without ducking and in the summertime we had to sleep with fans blowing directly on us because of the heat.  But it was home, and for my Mom, it still is.  Shortly after moving in Dad decided that the kitchen in the place wasn’t really working for them.  It was nowhere near the dining room and was your typical 1950 tiny thing with metal cabinets.

He and mom were out one evening at the new fangled mall and noticed that the Equitable Gas store (a local gas utility) had a “For Sale” sign on their “Kitchen of the Future” in-store display.  It had all of the latest in kitchen innovations like a stainless steel gas cooktop and fancy wall oven and state of the art cabinets.  The only problem was the configuration.  It’s actually very difficult to describe.  Let’s just say that there wasn’t one right angle in the entire thing.  As a result of the odd angles there were cabinets that were your standard 2 feet deep at one side but then tapered to 4 inches deep at the other.  It was, after all, a store display and never really intended to be used by anyone.  But dad was not deterred.  He took measurements and realized that the whole thing would fit in the house if he turned the master bedroom into the kitchen.  He hired a contractor and soon we had the “Kitchen of the Future” in our house.

We also had the oddest kitchen in the world.  Because of the shape of the thing, about a third of the room was unusable space behind the cabinets.  The contractors had to erect several walls and the lost area ended up being a, sort of, barely accessible storage room.  Decades went by and eventually the “Kitchen of the Future” became the “Normal Kitchen” and then the “Old Kitchen” and, eventually, the “Retro Kitchen”. We tried to update it with a fancy 1970s fake brick backsplash and, a dishwasher, and new paint, but time takes its toll.  The countertops began to crack and, because of the weird shape, they were impossible to replace. There wasn’t enough paint and silicone sealant in the world to salvage the room.

So, I promised mom I’d solve the problem after I retired.  I’ve gutted the entire room. I’ve removed the wall between the dining room and the kitchen, I’ve replaced the single overhead light with 6 high intensity LED recessed cans.  I’ve re-drywalled the ceiling and recaptured the lost space behind the cabinets.  I’m installing a double wall oven, a heated porcelain tile floor, an island, and quartz countertops throughout.  She loves to bake and this is going to be a bakers kitchen.  It’s going to be a whole new kitchen.  A whole fresh start.

We start our lives as “People of the Future”.  We have dreams and ambitions, things we want to be and things we want to do but somewhere along the way things get, well, messy.  Bad decisions leading to unfulfilled dreams.  Bad relationships with baggage and bitterness.  We become “Normal” people and then “Old” people and we think no amount of paint (or silicone) can make us new again. And we’re right.

But there are second chances.  There is a way to hit “Ctrl-Alt-Del” on our lives and it begins not with your son remodeling, but with God’s Son.  You just have to ask!