Kitchen Makeover Application: Part 1

Posted by kim on August 24, 2010

When my friend Nicole Facciuto (HGTV Designer) posted on Facebook that A&E TV was looking for nominations for a Kitchen Makeover show in the Chicago area, the first person that came to mind to nominate was my frustrated foodie friend, Carolyn Tang.

Here is an excerpt from our initial application submission:

Tell us why you are nominating this person. We want to hear about his/her love of cooking – favorite type of food to cook, favorite restaurants, favorite chefs – and what she/he doesn’t like about their current kitchen. The more personality/detail the better!

I am nominating Carolyn because she absolutely loves to cook and makes the most out of her cardboard kitchen. Her and her fiancé (note: now husband) just bought a beautiful Dutch Colonial home built in the 1920s. Great neighborhood, great school system, right across the street from the 11th hole of a golf course, wonderful little garden… The house is in great shape, but the kitchen could use some work. Old butcher block counter tops, not the kind with character, but the kind used when trying to skimp. White veneer cabinets, plywood molding around the doors and windows (hand-painted with little green leaves no less), and the piece de la resistance, a stained glass cabinet featuring large palm trees over the fridge. Oh but wait, that’s not stained glass, that’s stained plastic.

You know how they say “Everyone gathers in the kitchen”? Not this kitchen. It’s a sad kitchen for such a passionate foodie. She’s a farmer’s market kind of gal marrying a meat and potatoes guy, so household meals tend to stretch from a really delicate corn and fingerling potato chowder (her) to slow cooked ribs dry rubbed with a house concoction (him). She incorporates her Chinese background into her food, working wonders with tofu, and he brings his Finnish upbringing in the mix with homemade pastys. Her favorite chefs include Carrie Nahabedian of Naha in Chicago (you can see an interview Carolyn did with Carrie on her blog: Urban Vivant); Alice Waters; and Art Smith. His favorite chef, if you ask him, is probably her…but if you ask him privately, it would probably be whoever the line cook is at the closest Chipotle.

I think what both of them don’t like about their kitchen, is that it is very dated and closed off from the rest of the house. It’s not laid out right for both of them to be in the kitchen at once, which is really sad for a soon-to-be-married couple. There’s lots of room to bust down a wall, but they could really use some ingenuity and muscle to figure out how that would work. I would like to think that one day, they will have a kitchen that reflects their shared warmth and spirit. Please help me help them!

Continue on to Kitchen Makeover Application: Part Two