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Thursday, July 06, 2006

Thursday Kitchen Blogging, or Why Am I Putting Myself Through This?
Posted by Jill | 8:22 AM
No cool photos today, folks. Looking at primer smeared on walls just isn't that exciting, and now that you've seen the floor, that's about the end of the snark factor -- at least until I can find the photos from when we moved in.

But at a time when most people in search of a nicer kitchen are taking out $75,000 or more in home equity loans to have their old kitchens gutted and completely remodeled, why on earth would a middle-aged woman go through all this? Why not just be like everyone else, take the loans, and get exactly what I want NOW?

Perhaps it has to do with the peculiar notion I have that perhaps one doesn't NEED to live up to one's financial limit. Mr. Brilliant and I are two people living in a four-bedroom, two-bath house. And as much as Maggie and Jenny like to spread out and take up as much room as possible, there's only so much space two smallish cats can occupy. So Mr. Brilliant has his "cave" that I don't touch; not even to clean; we have a guest room for overnight guests that we rarely have, and an office. Our living room largely serves as a giant entry foyer and cat lounge. We basically live in four rooms.

And yet, I've been asked when we're going to expand our upstairs dormer into a full add-a-level. Now why on earth would I want to do that? It's expensive enough to heat what we have.

Oh, sure, it would be lovely to have new custom cabinets with corners that don't involve crawling into the cabinet to get what's in the blind corner, and good task lighting and high-hats in the ceiling and Silestone countertops and a nice new stove. What wouldn't be so nice would be to have workmen in and out of the house for weeks on end, worrying about the cats getting out, inhaling plaster dust, not having a working kitchen and living on Subway for an indeterminate period. So this way I just put a nice new dress on the perfectly solid cabinets I have (saving myself about $8000 in labor costs by doing it myself), maybe install a floating laminate floor myself, and then bring in a guy to do the minor demolition of that bump-out I mentioned yesterday.

And it need not be done all at once, and we need not worry that we might not be able to afford to pay the mortgage if someone loses a job.

But these days, most Americans don't think that way. In my neighborhood of postwar capes and ranches, the teardowns and add-ons are rampant. Some of them are done quite nicely. Two blocks from here is a cape that was turned into a neo-Victorian, and it's quite lovely. But on the next block, someone took a tiny ranch and turned it into a monolith that resembles nothing so much as one of those drab 1950's vintage brick garden apartment buildings. And on my block, a developer bought a tiny ranch house, tore it down, and put up a big stucco McMansion, building to within 8' of the property line. It now looks only marginally less ridiculous now that the homeowners have replaced the stucco with vinyl siding, shutters, and some decorative trim -- which actually makes it look slightly more like it belongs here.

Why, when jobs are being outsourced and everyone is worried about the future, are homebuyers and homeowners looking for more, more, and more? Is it just a desire to believe in an upward mobility that no longer exists? Or is it something else?

When asked to speculate on why houses are getting bigger and bigger, Fergerson and her dining companions at Bobby Van's, a classic, old Bridgehampton restaurant, throw out dozens of ideas. Real estate agent Barbara Bornstein says land is so expensive, builders have no choice: They have to build big houses to make a profit.

"You know, we are very tenuous," says local architect Ann Surchin. "No one knows when the next 9/11 will happen. And these houses represent safety -- and the bigger the house, the bigger the fortress."

Town planning-board member Jacqui Lofaro says that people who work in cities see bigger homes as a source of peace of mind.

"If you have people coming out from the city, where they are bombarded by people, the tendency is to isolate themselves," Lofaro says. "Their house is their community. It is not the community's community, it is their community."

Way Beyond Keeping Up with the Joneses

Robert Frank, a professor of management and economics at Cornell University, says the growth of big houses is not really about greed. It's all about context.

If you live in a village in Africa, even a modest American house seems huge. But in the United States, there are now millions of people with lots of money, and their wealth shifts the frame of reference for those just below them.

So let's say you want to find the best school district for your child, but the houses there are huge and expensive. You might take fewer vacations, endure a much longer commute, save less. But you don't forgo the bigger house, because it means a better neighborhood and a better education. This is a deeper phenomenon, Frank says, than keeping up with the Joneses.

"This is about what we feel we need as a function of the context in which we live," he says. "We know that when everyone stands up, no one gets a better view. We know there are all sorts of situations where individual choices that are perfectly rational add up to a total outcome that none of us likes very much. This is one of those."


Sometimes I wonder about the children growing up in these McMansions. These houses are often built on the same 75 x 100 lots as the houses they replaced, so they have no backyards. Not only do children no longer ever share a bedroom, in many cases they don't even share a bathroom. There are master wings so parents and children don't need to interact, home theatres so they don't have to go to the movies, home gyms and spas so they don't have to leave home to get a workout. Given the diminished expectations these children are going to have, is it fair to them to raise them in the lap of luxury, while wallowing in debt, when they won't be able to duplicate that lifestyle?

Meanwhile, I'm going to get busy edge-priming the kitchen this morning and perhaps even start with real paint this afternoon. Because for me, right now, a nice paint job done with my own hands and aching muscles will do for a start.
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