">HomeOwnerNut

There are times when I can expound upon the virtues, the drawbacks, or the utter insanity of home improvement projects. And then there are times when words absolutely fail me.

For example, when a homeowner goes to the effort of sawing a piece of PVC pipe in half to use as a homemade gutter.

Really? I just don’t even know… I mean…. what do you say about this?

Hey look, it also serves as a handy storage place for spare PVC parts!

The effort involved in doing this the wrong way is absolutely astounding.

But you have to give this homeowner credit for trying to spruce up their back yard with a little outdoor lighting. That’s a selling point if I’ve ever seen one. (Look about half-way up the tree.)

Wow. Okay. Now I need to go sit in the corner for an hour and ponder the meaning of life and homeownership.

Right after the garage and basement –places where power tools live, of course– the kitchen is the most utilized space of my house. I cook there, I eat there, and every once in a while I stumble in from a hard day at work and lay splayed out on that hardwood floor hoping one of my cats will grow opposable thumbs and bring me a big glass of wine.

And wow, I’m now officially the crazy cat lady.

Not only have both of those little furry demons failed to grow the proper appendages to keep me buried under a case of Shiraz, but the first decade of the twenty-first century has come and gone without anyone inventing a forklift that folds out of the wall to hoist me off the ground, cook me dinner, and tuck me into bed. I am thoroughly disappointed.

To make up for it though, there have been a few kitchen innovations in the last couple of years that boggle the mind. In good ways and… well, they can’t all be winners.

The Good

In-line Cooktops

Please don’t make me explain to you in graphic detail the number of times I have singed all of the hair off my arms reaching to the back burner of my stove. Its a little bit shocking that it took this long for the lightbulb to click on over someone’s head. Bing! Let’s put them all in a line! Good idea guys, my arm-hair thanks you.

This one is from Kuppersbusch.

Delta Touch2O

I spent 3 seconds wondering why they’d even make a faucet you had to touch to turn on when those nifty little faucet sensors have been in public restrooms for years. And then I remembered how often I have to flap my hands around as if I’m putting on a deranged puppet show to make the water turn on, and this actually started to look like a really awesome idea. Good one, Delta Faucets.

The Questionable

Induction Cooking

Call me old-fashioned, but I like to see a nice flame under my pot when I’m cooking. (Perhaps I should refer myself to the reason I liked the in-line cooktops again.) However, these save a decent amount of energy and might keep little fingers from getting burned. They jury is still out for me.

Cooking by Fire

On the whole other end of the spectrum, I suppose, is the CookCook by Ruegg. So instead of singing off a few arm hairs I can be sans-eyebrows for the next, oh, ten to fifteen years. I’ve gotta admit, I kind of love this thing, but practically speaking lighting a full-on fire every time I want to boil some water? Eh… maybe not so much.

There’s No Possible Way I Could Cook There

Call me a design-plebeian if you will, but I’m all about kitchens where things like my sink stay put.

Circular

The circular kitchen from Compact Concepts is all the rage, apparently. I look at this and see one big lazy-susan, where the box of cereal I need is always wedged into the back corner, necessitating a hands-and-knees approach where I wrap my upper body into a pretzel and do Lamaze breathing for six minutes to reach a measly box of cornflakes. Awesome idea if my kitchen provisions consisted of 4 bowls and 37 limes, otherwise I’ll take miles of granite to work on, thankyouverymuch.

Moveable

A winner of the Electrolux design competition. God forbid you leave a plate on the counter in this thing. You need 1600 square feet to swing it around in but you only get two cabinets. The upshot is, if my boyfriend pisses me of, I can just swing the fridge around and give him a body-slam the likes of which Wile E. Coyote has never seen before.

People, enough with your space-saving designs. Get me one of those winches with a built-in straw hooked up to my favorite keg of beer, then you’ll be on to something.