Clueless

Some mornings it all goes so smoothly. Today was one of those mornings. I got up and did yoga and then Michael and I threw the ball for Perry in the park right next to our new house (high tide, big waves so no beach today). When Michael left for work, I got the kids up and got us all ready to go. We were a little late but all so cheerful about it and everyone helping everyone else to get out the door. Rushing up the hill, we told each other how much we loved each other, and promised to have lovely days, and it was a delight. There are mornings that are so unlike this you’d almost imagine that I am two women living inside two different families. And there’s some real truth to that, I suppose.

It was a seriously mixed weekend. Friday was Michael’s NZ birthday and the kids were off school for a teacher work day. So we went into town and wandered from kitchen store to bathroom store and looked at fixtures and cabinets and toilets. And then we had a lovely dinner with the last of the Rob gift certificates and came home on the train with a magnificent sunrise following us. Saturday (on Michael’s actual, US birthday—you have to celebrate for two days if you move across the international date line), we went to the Lamb and Calf fair at a local school. Then more kitchen and bathroom studies. Here’s what we learnt about New Zealand this weekend.

We discovered, at the lamb and calf show, that lambs are every bit as cute as you might think they are. We’ve seen them scampering in the fields, we’ve held and fed them, and so we knew this was true. But this was a school fair where the local farm kids could bring their pet lambs to the fair with them, on short ribbon leads. These pet lambs, washed and brushed and like walking cotton balls, were so beautiful that Naomi announced firmly that she was now a vegetarian. Only she’d still eat chicken. But no mammals, she decided. Not ever. This new promise was sorely tested by the fact that the only non-mammal choices at the fair were fish cakes (yum!) or some kind of egg or salad dish. So she had a steak sandwich for lunch. But other than that, she’s a vegetarian for sure!

The other main lesson—and this one was new to us—is that there is apparently some statute in New Zealand that prohibits the useful exchange of information around kitchen renovation projects. This must be a serious and long-standing law with firm penalties, because it was followed so stringently by every person we dealt with. We were impressed with the consistency of our experience in wildly different shops.

So, at the first store, a custom cabinet place. We told the English kitchen designer that we were new to this whole world and just wanting to gather some information.

“Yeah,” he agreed, “it’s really different here.”

We communed for a few minutes on the immigrant experience and moved on to cabinets. He showed us the different grades and offered a variety of rationales for why one grade was better than another. “What’s the difference in cost between these?” we asked.

“Ah, I couldn’t answer that,” he said. “It just depends.”

How about a rough measure—nothing we’d hold him to—was one twice as expensive as another? Three times? And were we talking $10,000 in cabinets or $100,000?

“Impossible to know,” he explained sadly.

To give us even a rough, within 40k guess, he told us, he’d have to come and measure our kitchen and then design it and then we could talk. “I couldn’t possibly estimate,” he assured us. “I wouldn’t have a clue about how to do that.”

Store 2. Italian cabinets.

Me: “These look seriously expensive.”

Cute Sales Guy: “Yes, they are a bit dear.”

Me: “How much does a typical kitchen cost?”

CSG: “Well, there’s no such thing as a ‘typical kitchen’ really.”

Me. “How much would THIS model kitchen cost?”

CSG: “About $80,000 give or take.”

Ah, we have a number at last! Glorious precision!

Me: “Waaaaaay too much for us, I’m afraid.”

CSG: “We are trialling a new line—nearly as good but much less expensive. Would you be interested in that?”

Me: “Yeah, if it were enough less expensive. How much less are you talking—50%? 10%? 75%?”

CSG: “Oh, I couldn’t begin to estimate.”

Store 3. Inexpensive, off the rack cabinets store (Home Depot like).

Me: “Can you tell me the difference between these different benchtop materials?”

Sales guy with many missing teeth: “Those are a hell of a lot of money!”

Me: “Do you have any idea how much they are—like by the metre?”

SGWMMT: “I don’t think that’s how they’re priced—I think they have to come out and measure and then give you a quote. I don't think it's by the metre--they just figure it out somehow. I don't know how they do it--I just know they’re a hell of a lot.”

Me: “Do you have any idea of the relative price of them—like which is more expensive than any other?”

SGWMMT: “Expensive? They’re all more expensive!”

Me: “So are they all about the same price?”

SGWMMT: “I don’t have a clue. I just know they’re expensive.”

Me: “Who here in the store might have more information about these benchtops?”

SGWMMT, looking around, helplessly: “I don’t have a clue.”

This, by the way, is not the end of this pattern. We met with three other people and had three other conversations that went like this. No estimates, no baseline price per metre, no sense of this kitchen is 30k and that one is 65k as we would have known in the US. No sense of this store does cabinets with a 15k average kitchen and this store does them with a 150k average kitchen. In every case, you design the kitchen first—getting all the details right—and then and only then do you get any sense of what this kitchen might cost. This seems like a lot of extra work for them and a lot of extra work for us if the cabinets might be totally outside our price range. I found myself achingly missing those little two pagers you can get at every kitchen place in the US with the baseline price of the cabinets (by the running foot) and the top range price if you got all the extras. Clearly the law that prohibits the exchange of this information in New Zealand is protecting someone (me?) from information overload. I’m impressed to be in a country of such law-abiding citizens.

So, after two days and dozens of kitchen drawers opened, benchtops felt, colours flipped through, the New Zealand kitchen scene is totally clear: it turns out, we don’t have a clue.

(pics today from the fair and M's birthday and also the back of our house with the back porch and woodshed knocked off.)