Everyone is Entitled to an Opinion

We had our weekly visit from our neighbor this morning. He comes over most Saturdays to survey the progress on our renovation. He’s not shy about voicing his opinions (when you reach 93 you are pretty much allowed to say what you want). On the one hand he is effusive with praise for our architectural decisions and product choices. On the other hand he argues with our decisions and choices. 🙂 Things he loves: the new doorway, the appliances, the cabinets, the floor, the pocket door, how we’ve made small rooms feel open and spacious, and, new this week, the cabinet hardware (last time he informed me that my choice was too ornate and over-done for a kitchen. 🙂 ). Things he dislikes (or at least this week): our bay window seat in the breakfast room (“it’s horrendous – get rid of it”), my (brand-new) white blinds in the kitchen bay window (“they’re horrible, no one uses blinds anymore, get rid of them”), self-closing cabinet doors/drawers (“wait til they break”), our ceiling fan (he only saw the picture but didn’t like it), our bistro table (only saw the picture but doesn’t like it – too dark, won’t go), our chestnut wood trim (“it’s too dark”), and something on which we can agree: “how will you ever reach the top shelves of the cabinets?”.

He also has some great insights, things that we had not considered. It was his idea to look into using the counter material on the bay window seat. That won’t be happening, but he got me thinking of other options for that seat. Today he had ideas on what we should investigate with the cabinets – to use either stops mounted very high and very low to keep the doors from hitting walls or to see if the contractors can limit the swing of the doors so they cannot open far enough to hit the walls. Those are great ideas. I hadn’t thought much beyond putting felt on the walls to protect them from the cabinet knobs. His ideas are better. 🙂

Trying to explain our plans for the broom closet this morning was, however, an epic fail. I don’t think he’s going to appreciate what we plan until he sees it executed. *laughing* One of his suggestions was for us to cut down the broom and mop handles. Once he finally seemed to get the idea of the cutout on the shelf to fit the handles, he started telling me not to divide the bottom of the cabinet because I’d need a wide space for buckets, etc. *smile* It doesn’t matter that I said I don’t keep things like that with the brooms – that’s what I NEED to do. *grin*

He’s our neighbor, our friend, my husband’s BFF, and we should only be as sharp and as healthy as he is when we reach his age. At least his parting words are always “you’re doing a fantastic job, I can’t wait to see it next week”.