Eat + Drink + Be Merry

There are a lot of things not to like about my kitchen. In fact, there are several things to flat out hate about it. In this essay, I will...

This is what my kitchen looked like at the time of my divorce (2022).

To begin with the obvious, it's so damn small. It's what we call in my family "a one-butt kitchen." When I was married, I nearly gutted my husband with a butcher knife because every evening I'd go in there to cook his dinner and he'd show up looking for a snack or some shit.

Next, we move to the biggest offender: that damn double corner sink. This is literally the worst thing ever designed and I would bet my next paycheck it was designed by a man. Water gets everywhere; there's no way to avoid it. And anyway, why in the world, in this technological day and age, does anyone need a double sink?

And then there's the placement of the dishwasher next to said corner sink...gods help you if you're more than petite sized because you're not going to fit into that tiny space we've been allotted to rinse and load the dishes.

By the way, with the dishwasher open, you cannot reach the disposal switch from the sink.

I'm telling you -- 100% designed by a man who never spent a single minute in an actual working kitchen.

Now let's move on to the giant drawers, that, ironically, aren't built to hold any weight. I keep my empty tupperware in there and still they constantly fall off the tracks.

I don't even have a pantry.

Nothing is trued up and the cabinet doors aren't level. The crazy folding corner cabinet doors popped off the hinges so many times I tore those bitches down.

The cabinets were dark wood, which I personally would never choose, but especially in such a small kitchen. The countertops were some dated 1990s tile bricks.

The glass corner shelves didn't actually fit into the brackets and had to be custom cut for replacement when they fell out (twice) and broke. It was super-expensive.

The kitchen was the first thing I redecorated after my husband left and I started to create a home of my own. I hated it that much.

I painted the top cabinets white and the lower cabinets what I thought might be a seaside blue but my niece getting her masters at UNC informed me was Tar Heel Blue.

It being my first attempt at home redecorating, my results were only mid. Paint chipped off around the drawer pulls. The corner doors fell off completely. The truth of my working kitchen was a lot more items being stored on the countertops. During the second week into my 2025 holiday PTO, I suddenly decided, "I should paint my kitchen."

Truth be told, all this was instigated by my neighbors Hannah & Elliot because I ended up in their house for a minute over the holidays and saw how they'd painted their kitchen a deep forest green - both the cabinets and the walls - and that's all it took. I was off and rolling.

I kept my top cabinets white. I painted my bottom cabinets a deep blue, the one I used on my kitchen chairs. And I painted the walls that same dark blue. Then I really got ambitious I painted my countertops white. I put up curtains over the corner cabinets where the doors were gone. I replaced the glass corner shelves.

It's certainly not my dream kitchen, but at least it's one I'm no longer embarrassed for people to see. My little French country kitchen.