Curmudgeon's Corner: I love my microwave.

I said I wouldn't do another political post this week, so y'all are stuck with this. 

Lynne Cantwell 2024

It has become trendy to dunk on the microwave oven -- or at least that was the sense I got when I was reading all those kitchen renovation articles last year. (I'm done with renovating my kitchen now, so you can stop showing me those, Google, kthx.) The current popular opinion is that a microwave is a big, boxy thing that takes up space on the counter or a big, boxy thing that hangs over the stove where a much more powerful range vent ought to be. People don't know how to use them. This article by Jacob Sweet in The Atlantic last year (sorry for the paywall) says, in part: "Not only are microwaves ugly, but they are not particularly user-friendly", and then talks about the "Potato" button, the "Pizza" button, the "Beverage" button, and the notoriously useless "Popcorn" button. He goes on: "After four years, I'm still not sure whether it's possible to set a cook time at an interval of fewer than 30 seconds; I just press '+30 Sec' repeatedly and watch to make sure nothing explodes."

I mean, he's right about the buttons. But a lot of the rest of his rant could be solved by reading the damned instruction manual. And as for ugly? Are you kidding me? That's like calling your dishwasher ugly! Or your refrigerator!

Although... Hmm. The trend nowadays in high-end kitchens is to hide dishwashers and fridges behind paneling to match the cabinetry. I begin to see where this is going.

Back in the mid 1980s, my in-laws gave us a microwave as a wedding gift. You want to talk about big, boxy and ugly? That thing was so gigantic that it needed its own cart. But it was a godsend for two working people, especially after the kids came along. I cooked everything in it except pasta and bread. Well, and eggs. I never mastered microwaving scrambled eggs; they would get fluffy, but they'd get all 'splodey first. Anyway, eggs were still on the "foods that will kill you" list back then, so we didn't eat very many of them.

All through school, my kids got home-cooked meals nearly every night. It was quicker to microwave a meal on busy nights than to sit in the drive-thru line at McDonald's.

That original microwave is long gone, but I still have the cookbook that came with it -- and I still use it. The guidelines for how long to cook things like winter squash (poke holes in your squash, put it on a paper towel, cook on high for about 9 minutes or until squeezy soft) and corn on the cob (leave the ears in the husk, put on the turntable on a paper towel, cook on high for 3 to 4 minutes per ear) are still pretty accurate. I even cook meat in it (on a Pampered Chef stoneware pan).

(When I told an acquaintance that I cooked meat in the microwave, she cautioned me that I should be careful because meat needed to cook to an internal temperature of 160 degrees Farenheit. I told her that I'd been doing it for years, and we'd never gotten sick from undercooked meat. Kinda blew her mind.)

Anyway. The very first appliance I replaced in my kitchen here was the microwave. Some idiot had punched through the plastic cover over the clock/timer display, so I could never tell what time it was or how long stuff still had to cook. Air fryers were all the rage at the time, but I don't cook much breaded stuff (being low carb). And besides, I didn't have room for another small appliance. 

Then I discovered this guy. It's a combination microwave and convection oven. It does all the usual microwave stuff, plus it serves as a second oven and an air fryer. I don't use the air fryer mode much, but I've made pork tenderloin and frozen pizza in it, and they have come out great.

Now granted, I had to go to the manufacturer's website and download the actual manual. At first, I couldn't figure out how to change the cooking temperature to something other than high, but the manual explained it. I also learned how to use the defrost feature by time instead of weight, which I'd never figured out on the last few microwaves I've had. And the manual has been useful for using the convection features.

Anyway, I love this appliance. I use it every day. People who trash microwaves just don't know how to use them. Read the manual, for crying out loud.

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I should mention that virtually all microwaves are made in China by one company, although you probably knew that. (Feel free to bail at the five-minute mark on that video -- the rest is a commercial for the video maker's channel.)

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These moments of bloggy cooking advice have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Make sure you're (still) registered to vote!

Kitchen progress.

Last week, I promised y'all a look at the kitchen redo. It's not 100 percent done (more on that below), but I did finish the grout. So here are a few photos.

First, the before and after (in reverse order): 

After! Lynne Cantwell 2024

Before! Lynne Cantwell 2024

I discovered when the installers took the old microwave down that the kitchen originally didn't have a microwave above the stove. Instead, it had one of those old-fashioned range hoods, as evidenced by the backsplash tile pattern -- there are two more rows of those flower tiles, one behind the stove and one behind the microwave. Once they put the old microwave up, you couldn't see the whole backsplash design. After weighing various layouts for my new tile, and realizing that the Day of the Dead tiles were 4.25" by 4.25" instead of the 4"x4" of the solid blue, I decided to just do the whole area behind the stove in the Day of the Dead tiles. I did not, however, try to pull down the microwave by myself. So someday when somebody decides they'd rather not have a microwave over the stove -- surprise!

I decided on the spur of the moment to tile the whole backsplash on the stove side of the kitchen, hence the addition of the white tiles. I also went down an extra row of tile behind the stove, because eventually I want to get an induction stove (mainly because induction is safer for old farts) and most of them are slide-in models without the panel of controls along the back.

I bought the swirly knobs and cup pulls with the antique copper finish on clearance quite some time ago. Then sometime last year, I spotted the swirly switchplate covers, also in antique copper. I was so excited that I ordered them immediately. They have been sitting in a box because the old backsplash came up about a quarter inch too high for the copper covers to fit. When I put up the new tile on the sink side, you bet I made sure the new backsplash was low enough to accommodate those switchplate covers. (Interestingly, or maybe just interesting to me, when I pulled off the plain plastic covers, I realized the bottom edge of one had been trimmed off. Something tells me the tile guy wasn't communicating with the finish guy...)

Lynne Cantwell 2024

There's an additional issue for the plug on the stove side. I need to turn off power to the plug and raise it up to be flush with the tile, using spacers called caterpillars.

All the weeks I've spent watching old episodes of Ask This Old House have paid off. I learned how to: pop old tiles off a wall, patch a wall damaged by the countertop installers when they took down my old tile, install tile, and use a table saw. I sprung for a small wet tile saw after seeing the pros use them on the show (and after the nice lady at Artesano's here in Santa Fe told me that it's about the same price to buy a little one than to rent one), and used it successfully on this project -- which is to say that the tiles that needed to be cut were cut, and I still have all my fingers.

I still have to caulk the edges along the countertop, the tops, and the sides. I also need to seal the grout lines. And at some point, I need to paint (I'm 98 percent sure that I'm going with this color). But it's close enough to done that I unfurled the runner that I got from Ruggable. 

This is the way. 
Lynne Cantwell 2024

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The details -- skip this part if you're already bored: Countertops are solid surface from Lowe's in Terrazzo Sea Glass; 50-50 split undermount sink was free with the countertops; faucet is the Ophelia by Delta; cabinet pulls and knobs were on clearance at Westwoods Cabinet Hardware; switchplate covers came from Switch Hits; Day of the Dead tiles are from La Fuente Imports. The grout is Polyblend Plus in (heh) Bone; the caulk is going to be the same color. This is the wet tile saw I bought; I'll use it again if/when I redo the bathroom. Total cost, not counting the appliances, was less than $6,500, $5,000 of which was for the countertops and plumber.

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Funny story about the grout: The nice lady at Artesano's said not to get a goofy color, but to match it to the countertop. So I dutifully took my countertop sample to the big box hardware store -- and then I had to laugh. The countertop is white with terrazzo-style flecks of light brown and light gray. It goes with everything. I finally just picked a grout color at random. Didn't even occur to me that I'd grabbed "Bone" to go with the Day of the Dead tiles 'til later.

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These moments of renovational blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

The hidden costs of redoing a kitchen.

I should be regaling y'all with a holiday ficlet today, seeing as how Yule and Christmas are both next weekend and Hanukkah just ended. It'll post one next week, I promise. 

In the meantime, let's talk about the things they don't tell you about when they're encouraging you to redo your kitchen.

Feverpitch | Deposit Photos

This is coming up, of course, because I'm kinda sorta redoing mine. That is not my kitchen in the photo, to be clear; mine is a smallish galley kitchen with zero room for an island. (Although it's about three times the size of the postage-stamp-sized kitchen I had in the apartment I rented when I first moved to Santa Fe. There, the oven was so tiny that my big cookie sheets wouldn't fit. And when you opened the fridge, you couldn't get to the sink.) Mine still has some the original '80s features: golden oak cabinets and ceramic tile countertops. It did still have the original '80s dishwasher, but I replaced that this fall. I also replaced the microwave with a microwave/convection oven this year. Somebody at some point redid the floors -- they're now Saltillo tile -- and the stove and fridge are about ten years old.

If you cruise the internet and talk to any kitchen consultants, they will give you all sorts of advice. I'm supposed to hate those cabinets; the only fixes worth talking about are replacing them, or putting new doors on them, or else sanding them down and painting them, preferably white. And any appliances over ten years old have to go. And you're going to need new countertops! And of course you want to tile your backsplash all the way to the ceiling...

It adds up in a hurry. The average cost of a kitchen remodel is about $26,000. But it could be a lot more -- maybe $41,000 or $50,000, or even more, if you're going to go really crazy. 

I am not going to go really crazy. I am not even going to spend the average, if I can help it. You see, after I thought about it, I realized I really like my oak cabinets. And it turns out that you can actually sand down the worn spots on solid wood cabinets, shove a little wood filler in any big cracks, and give the repairs a couple of coats of polyurethane, and they look great.

Why would the internet keep that info away from me? Well, just like everything else in our late-stage capitalist dystopia, you have to follow the money. Contractors and kitchen designers aren't going to be able to make a living if everybody knows they could rejuvenate their cabinets for a day's time and less than 50 bucks. (I also added fun pulls, which cost another $100 or so.)

I honestly think the whole new-appliances-every-ten-years advice is coming from the same place. See, back when I took macroeconomics in college, big home appliances were considered durable goods -- things that would last at least 20 years.  The ENERGY STAR program was expanded to include major home appliances in 1996; of course a newer model may be more energy efficient than an older one, but there's also an environmental cost to sending a working fridge to a landfill to rot, particularly if your fridge was manufactured before 1995. Back then, fridges used a chlorofluorocarbon refrigerant, which is a greenhouse gas. But the appliance sales folks don't want you to think about that. They want you to Buy Now, so you're not buying in a hurry when your elderly appliance breaks down and you miss out on features you'll later wish you had. Okay, sure. I think I'll live dangerously with my current stove and fridge for a while longer. 

The countertops, though -- those bug me. The ceramic tile is in good shape, but a tiled surface is naturally uneven. It makes it hard to roll out things like cookie dough. And items with narrow bottoms -- like spice jars and some coffee mugs -- sometimes kinda tilt when you set them down. It's unsettling. I'd like a flat surface, please.

So here we go, on another whirlwind trip full of expensive advice: The only countertop materials worth talking about, according to the "experts", are granite, marble, or quartz. Oh, there are other natural stones to consider if you're made of money: quartzite (which is not the same as quartz), soapstone, bluestone, limestone, slate, and so on. And there are, y'know, less desirable options if you have to cheap out: butcher block, laminate, tile, and solid surface (Corian is a brand name). But really, the choices that will get you the biggest bang for your buck at resale time are granite, marble, and quartz. And let's be realistic: granite and marble require upkeep. So obviously, your only choice is quartz. Everybody wants quartz, so you should, too!

Quartz countertop material is an engineered stone -- which is to say it's manmade. It consists of about 90 percent ground quartz (the other ten percent consists of resin to keep the ground stone together, plus some pigments). And quartz -- the mineral, not the manufactured countertop -- is made of silica and oxygen. 

Here is the thing that nobody selling kitchen renovations in the US is talking about yet: Workers who cut or grind quartz countertops are likely breathing in silica dust. And they may be getting sick. Silicosis is a serious disease. A lot of the people who work with engineered stone in the US are young Latinos. Some of them have died from silicosis. Others who have contracted the disease are disabled for life. 

The danger has been known for years, apparently, but it's only recently that officials are beginning to think about how to mitigate it. Australia is way ahead of us -- the government there banned quartz countertops last week. 

To be clear, consumers aren't in danger from having quartz countertops in their homes (unless the material needs to be cut or ground on site). But if it concerns you to have something in your house that may have made someone deathly ill, you have alternatives. Granite has about 45 percent silica content; marble, less than five percent. This site has a list that includes lots of other alternatives.

Conspicuous by their absence from that list are many of the less expensive options: butcher block, laminate, and solid surface. Solid surface material contains a chemical called aluminum trihydrate that can also cause health problems in people who manufacture it, but it appears to be a lot less dangerous than quartz. I had decided to go with solid surface even before learning about the dangers of quartz to workers, and now I'm glad. I'm hoping to have the counters done in the spring. I'll keep y'all posted.

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These moments of bloggy home improvement talk have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe! And happy Yule!