Almost Gothic

More than two years ago, I saw a remodeling magazine that featured a white kitchen with glass cabinet and Gothic muntins (or windowpane dividers). It was a design epiphany.

It was also the kitchen of two doctors, which should have clued me in that my aspirations were about to get the better of my budget.

Our front door has always been one of my favorite things about the house—why not carry that design into the kitchen cabinets? The kitchen cabinets led to a new Gothic door for the dining room corner cabinet (one of Cynthia's brainstorms). And then I got the idea to make the vaulted ceiling into a Gothic arch too. It was all Gothic, all the time around here.

Today, the three long-awaited glass kitchen doors arrived. Each door took these meticulous craftsmen ten hours to build. They are a true feat of woodworking. And they are not quite right.

I saw at first glance that the curves looked too round and not steep enough, and my heart sank. Here they sat, the kitchen's focal point, after years of planning, months of waiting, and dozens of work hours, and they just weren't right.

What's amazing about this unfortunate and very frustrating development is that Nelson and I were able to talk it over and figure out what happened, without any rancor on either side. (He used the exact proportions of the cabinets in the photo, but since our cabinets aren't as tall, those proportions led to rounder curves.)

They are completely beautiful. They just aren't quite Gothic. And knowing how much labor went into them, I felt awful beyond words.

"This is not something to lose sleep over," Nelson said. "I don't want you to fret about it. We want you to be happy." He apologized for not doing a layout first for us to look over, and I apologized for not asking for one.

I asked for time to think it over, thinking they might look all right to me in the morning, and he said it was fine to think about it as long as I didn't worry about it.

"We'll make this the way you want," he said firmly, as we looked at three doors that had taken his son Joe the better part of a week to make—time I'm sure was not fully covered by the cabinet bid in the first place.

By the end of the conversation, we were both laughing. And after Doyle left Nelson a message that we did want to try again on the doors, but that we would pay for the extra labor, Nelson called us back to tell me again not to worry about it, that they would get it right, and that all was well between us.

I appreciate that more than I can say. And rather than look back on what happened, I'm already looking forward to the next door design. I'm pretty sure it will be perfect.