A manifesto against the tyranny of luxury kitchens.
Before the internet, you only had to keep up with the Joneses… They were real people who lived next-door and probably drove a Corvette.
And even if you might have liked their car for yourself, you knew for a fact that they wore too much cologne, misused the word Machiavellian, and were just generally unlikable people who let their dog poop in everyone’s yard.
You used to have to subscribe to Town & Country or Architectural Digest if you wanted to feel bad about your house… But then the internet came along—eradicating every shred of reality and replacing it with Christopher Peacock.
Now you can discover for FREE, any time of day or night, that your kitchen, your bathroom, your entire house… actually, your whole life is so subpar that it’s amazing you haven’t flat out died.
The internet has given the entire home-luxury-design-industry access to the inside of our minds at all times. This is extra convenient for them because they can constantly remind us that anything less than a kitchen filled with glamour and elegance and a wine refrigerator is just sad… so, so, so sad.
And the sadder your life looks, the fancier the faucet you will buy – advertising 101.
(Incase you are wondering where on the sadness-scale my life falls, apparently it is here. I am pretty sure that faucet would make me a better person.)
But eventually I will have to replace that faucet… Because it will go out of style. Because all of this is a trend.
A TREND.
The most expensive trend ever—white, white, white, white, splash of soapstone for contrast, white, white, white.
But someday Christopher Peacock will be the equivalent of the ubiquitous oak cabinetry from the 80’s. Remember country kitchens?
DON’T YOU REMEMBER?
Soon there will be a whole new trend. (Once they figure out how to make something more expensive.)
I personally think it should be THE-KITCHEN-I-HAVE-IS-FINE trend. We should all STOP redoing our kitchens. It is MADNESS people. Do you have a stove? A refrigerator? A place to rinse stuff and chop it? Then you HAVE A KITCHEN.
This is my message for the day—acceptance. Accept the kitchen you have. A new one will not bring you health or happiness. (Except, maybe the one below.)
Let us band together and KEEP the kitchen we have. Let us embrace oak cabinetry from 1980.
Let us rise up against the tyranny of stainless steel.
There is nothing wrong with your taupe electric range.
And Formica!
Let us bring Formica back!
I mean, I personally am not planning to do that. I write a blog about restoring our house… therefore I am legally obligated to bring new meaning to whimsy and creativity and a mindbogglingly giant range hood.
Infact, I will probably be required to travel to a small town in Italy to mine the marble slabs myself.
When I get home, I will do a peppy post about DIY-mining your own marble. And I will include tips about where to find delicious artisanal (gluten free!) pastries made by villagers who have been growing specialty grains for over 900 years.
I will be sure to annotate the pictures for Pinterest with captions that are overlaid with squiggles and dots and three different fonts. (So that it will appeal to both four year olds, and women who are shopping for kitchen counters.)
May 1, 2017 @ 9:32 am
All I have to say is Thank You. I’m new here, this is the second of your posts I’ve read and I couldn’t help but reply to it. I live in a 1920s farm house that has had addition after addition put on over the years and been remodeled several times, most recently in the 90s. We moved in in in 2008. My kitchen needs an update badly to redo what paint and new hardware alone cannot touch. I’ve had to back away from Pinterest many times because all it did was make me crazy. I’d forget about things like functionality and the budget and look at over the top ridiculous stuff thinking I needed it to have my “dream” kitchen. There needs to be more posts like this to put things into perspective. I don’t need to follow trends and fill my kitchen with stuff that will be outdated in a few years. I need to block out the noise and proceed with the remodel of a functional, affordable kitchen.
May 24, 2017 @ 11:26 am
I found out that Christopher Peacick cabinets are made in Wardensville, WV – not England. I grew up near that town and tried to get a tour, but they wouldn’t let me. So……..they’re not all that after all.
July 10, 2017 @ 1:32 pm
I’m slowly restoring my kitchen to how it would have looked in the 1940s. Im keeping up with Nobody.
August 19, 2017 @ 2:14 pm
You are hysterical!! What a brilliant sense of humor. I am working with a builder to design my new kitchen and you have successfully quashed my anxiety about choosing the wrong…whatever. It’s my whatever. I’m not going to mine my own marble slab. I live in georgia so I don’t even have to travel to italy!!
September 17, 2017 @ 12:07 pm
Annnd the faucet is no longer available! I’ll stop trending as soon as I apply the beadboard wallpaper and paint the cabinets (white of course). I promise.
September 18, 2017 @ 4:55 am
Cannot EVEN TELL YOU how refreshing your thoughts were to read!! I have a (Beautiful) custom HONEY OAK kitchen…not even COUNTRY, and I fight my mind that it is “dated” and “should be” painted white!
Think how hard it would be to restore them, diy if course, when the circle revolves once again.
THANKS FOR YOUR REFRESHINH WORDS!!!
September 18, 2017 @ 4:57 am
Cannot EVEN TELL YOU how refreshing your thoughts were to read!! I have a (Beautiful) custom HONEY OAK kitchen…not even COUNTRY, and I fight my mind that it is “dated” and “should be” painted white!
Think how hard it would be to restore them, diy of course, when the circle revolves once again. Plus, my husband loves them😍.
THANKS FOR YOUR REFRESHINH WORDS!!!
September 28, 2017 @ 12:50 pm
Laughing out loud , in a hospital while husband is having shoulder surgery. Love reading your blogs, seems we all suffer from this rare form of ugly kitchen syndrome. Someday, I will have Carara counter tops. I dream of the day I can lay on my Isalnd.
Thanks for sharing.
October 6, 2017 @ 5:53 pm
Not to mention the fact that those kitchens are probably larger than the entire size of the first floor of my house. Also this reminds me, the other day I was window-shopping for houses (other people do this right?), and I seriously started considering a house that was teeny tiny and in a horribly unsafe area simply because it had an original stove from the 40’s. I think you would have loved it too.
October 12, 2017 @ 4:43 pm
This is one of my favorite posts (though, admittedly I’ve enjoyed them all). When we remodeled our kitchen we went for a style that was very traditional so hopefully we won’t feel the need to remodel as soon as this trend passes.
December 17, 2017 @ 1:32 am
I personally find white kitchens boring, cold and sterile looking. Reminds me of a hospital. And you are right. It IS a trend. A bad one. If you area real cook like me, who cook everything from scratch, a white kitchen would be constantly dirty looking. It works for people who have a kitchen for show only. It is only used to microwave TV dinners and boil water for tea. I call it “the sack of flour exploded look”!
February 2, 2018 @ 3:33 pm
I want to know if the quartz countertops made to look like marble will be as dated as the cultured marble bathroom countertop I had in my last home ended up being 20 years from now.
May 1, 2018 @ 9:13 pm
Although you are probably diametrically philosophically opposed to her, Emily Henderson is looking for a FUNNY blog writer. I suggested you:
https://stylebyemilyhenderson.com/blog/were-hiring-contributors#comment-546073
June 13, 2018 @ 5:25 am
👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻
October 25, 2018 @ 1:26 pm
Its the end of 2018 and I just hit on your four year old post. I’ve been planning and gathering inspiration pics for the different parts of my 1996 kitchen upgrade. But I having this nagging feeling that this is not really a necessary change. My golden oak cabinets are in great shape and solid. The vinyl sheet flooring is okay, even if it isn’t hardwood or real tile. It’s even been pretty fully breathed out where VOCs and phthalates are concerned. The formica counters are plain but not torn, scraped or discolored. And the bisque appliances are starting to show their age and not leading the pack in energy efficiency. But the above the stove microwave has recently bit the dust and i’d like a vent fan there instead. And a new kitchen faucet. I’ve decided that’s enough to do the trick.
March 11, 2019 @ 3:46 pm
We, too, are DIY-er’s and have the same husband /wife set up. I say, “I was thinking…” and he rolls his eyes pretending he didn’t hear me. Lol. I’m a visual person, so seeing and touching is necessary in all decisions. My husband, the engineer…..not so much. Patience he has, but it is accompanied by gritted teeth.
We recently bought an older lake house re”designed” by your previous owner. Crazy shortcuts. Insane angles (see the connection?) and “decorated by his “color blind” wife. Every room a different ugly color and a lovely foyer sponge painted( yup) to look like Thanksgiving vomit.
Two years later, we are slowly winding down. Less and less projects, but always those dreaded words that strike fear in my husband, “I was thinking……..”. Lol. Married 45 years and still going strong. 💋
June 9, 2019 @ 4:00 pm
Butbutbut what if you are still designing your kitchen? How anti-tyrannical should I make it?
Love the stream of consciousness rants 😉
June 9, 2019 @ 4:01 pm
Butbutbut what if you are still designing your kitchen? How anti-tyrannical should I make it?
Love the stream of consciousness rants 😉
June 22, 2019 @ 8:27 am
Love your decorating and pictures, but my first love is your fabulous writing and humor. You slay me!
January 18, 2020 @ 10:24 am
I enjoyed this post! I think white kitchens are beautiful in photos for sure, but definitely not realistic for my family with kids. Our kitchen is from the early sixties, but still very nice. The cabinetry is simple but was custom. So it’s good quality. Just a tad bit dark. Other than that, functional and I am great-full for that. When my kids are all older maybe I will decide what to do to lighten it up a bit and replace the old beige Formica that is starting to get a few stains. It just needs a few changes to be just right. I loved the statements that the perfect photos on the internet are not reality for most of us, and the greatest satisfaction comes from doing it yourself and cooking amazing things in the space you have.