The Kitchen Renovation

The old kitchen had been annoying Birte and her husband for eleven years, so they were quite ready to argue about replacing it. They were not ready for how much there was to argue about. The tiles came first. Birte wanted white, and her husband wanted dark green. They brought home forty-one samples and taped them to the wall, and for two weeks they walked past them like people avoiding a debt.

Then came the layout. Birte wanted to knock down the wall between the kitchen and the living room. Her husband said that a kitchen without walls was a kitchen where every dirty pan became public property.

The fridge was the worst. He wanted it beside the door, so that he could open it the moment he came home. She wanted it at the far end, away from the stove. They discussed it for three entire evenings. "If you had your way," he said, "I would have to cross the whole room for a glass of water."

On the fourth evening, the contractor arrived to take measurements. He listened to the argument for an hour, tape measure in hand, and then he finally put it down. In thirty years of renovating kitchens, he said, he had never seen a couple truly fight about tiles. "People fight about what the room is for," he said. "So what is this room for?"

Nobody answered for a while. "For being near someone while I cook," Birte said at last. "In my parents' flat, the kitchen was a corridor, and I was always in the way. I want a room where somebody can sit and talk to me."

Her husband looked at the floor. "My father came home every evening and went straight to the fridge," he said. "My mother was always standing beside it. That's where they talked, for ten minutes, before anything else. It was where the day started."

Birte stared at him. In fourteen years of marriage, she had never heard that.

"So you want the fridge by the door," she said slowly, "and I want you in the kitchen with me. And you want to keep the wall."

"Yes," he said. "A little."

The contractor scratched his chin. "I could put a hatch in the wall," he said. "A wooden hatch at counter height, with a sliding shutter. You keep your wall, and she keeps her conversation."

"That's ridiculous," said her husband.

"It's a hole in the wall," said Birte.

They looked at each other. "I love it," they said at the same time.

The fridge went beside the door. The tiles were white, with one dark green row at the height of the hatch. The shutter was painted green too. The contractor, who had never learned to hide his opinions, wrote "client's idea" next to it on the invoice, in capital letters.

On the first evening, her husband came home, dropped his keys on the table and opened the fridge. Birte, at the stove, said hello. He stayed there for ten minutes, talking about nothing. Then he took a book to the sofa. A minute later, the shutter slid open, and a wooden spoon came through the hole.

"Taste," said Birte.

He tasted. "More salt," he said, and the shutter slid closed.