Thursday, April 13, 2006

"Beam me up, Scotty!"

One of the many eyesores of the old kitchen was a very strange hanging ceiling beam. Once upon a time, the space had been a narrow galley kitchen and a separate dining room (the mirror-image house next door to us is still this way). In that misguided '80s renovation that brought us the kelly-green monstrosity, the beam was left behind even when the wall was removed. Everyone who saw it -- including everyone I talked to about the kitchen -- assumed it was a structural beam. In fact, the new kitchen was designed taking this long, thin wart into consideration.

Surprise! It's not structural. All it housed was that cable above (which hasn't been used, even). Wayne, our carpenter, gave the former owners the benefit of the doubt when he guessed that they may have kept it up for aesthetic reasons -- to create a bit of a divide between the kitchen and dining room once they opened up the space. I know in my heart it was left because they were serious cheapskates.

This means we'll get a nice, smooth, even ceiling over the whole space. Good thing we decided to spring for both smoothing the popcorn ceiling in the dining room and for the upgraded lighting, now that we have this attractive overhead palette to work with.

(4/14/06: John just read this entry and e-mailed me his opinion: "I think the beam was left as a place from which to hang the cabinets. Running the wire inside it was a coincidence." He's entitled to his opinion; I still think they were just cheapskates.)

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