Design Intervention
“Really?” I asked. “What does your kitchen look like?”
“It really needs some updating” he admitted. “It has brown or tannish cabinets.”
I really started quizzing. “What color is the floor?”
“Brown or tannish, I think.” He looked confused.
“What is the countertop?” I asked
His voice sort of trailed off…..”Brown or tannish, I think.”
We sort of looked at each other as if we were from different planets. “Sounds lovely,” I said.
“Do you think she will like it?” He sounded a little worried.
“I’m not sure this pink marble will go behind a brown or tannish backsplash, cabinets and floor. Maybe you should ask her first.”
“But I don’t want to spoil the surprise,” he said.
I quickly added that women can be kind of picky when it comes to decorating their kitchen and he should consider spoiling the surprise.
He conceded that he bought her some kitchen towels one Christmas and for some reason she never used them. When I asked him what color they were, he told me they were brown or tannish or something like that.
I told him I would be happy to talk to her when he came back to put the new marble in my floors. Maybe she would like to see my backsplash first and see if she thinks that pink marble would work on her backsplash.
Two days later he called and said he would be there to work on my new marble and could he bring his wife. I told him I would be there to meet her.
She brought a picture of her kitchen. Her cabinets were a pickled wood with green countertops and a gold floor. In 20 minutes, we decided that instead of putting in a pink marble backsplash they could paint the cabinets a golden brown, get new hardware and change out the countertops to a laminate that had a granite look and lay new tile in the kitchen, after all I knew a good tile layer.
“Hey, I think I might have enough left over from another job,” he said.
“NO!” His wife and I said in unison.
“I’ll go pick something out and I’ll run it by you before he installs it,” she said to me. Sounds like a plan!
As they walked out she turned around behind his back and mouthed, thank you, thank you, thank you.
I just smiled. Another design intervention.