I Almost Had a Steampunk Kitchen

          One of the items we didn't possess when we moved into our new house was a kitchen table. We used the small wooden outdoor table as a temporary—and highly unsatisfactory—solution, and we started on the inevitable furniture-hunting slog.

          For K and I seldom agree on a piece of furniture, unless it's Stickley. I am captivated by handsome lines or fetching upholstery or, unfortunately, ethereal silliness, and fail entirely to notice that it doesn't go with anything we have. "It looks cool," I tell K, as though it's a good enough reason.* "It doesn't go with anything we have," K points out, and we move on to the next piece of furniture that I find captivating and K finds inappropriate.

          So imagine my surprise when we wandered into a furniture store on a whim and K pointed to a table and said, "What about that one?"

          "That one" was round and copper-topped, with three heavy iron Victorian-era** legs, and (be still my heart!) a cranked gear mechanism that raised and lowered it. I was utterly smitten, but it didn't look like K's normal style.
     
          "It looks so cool!" I said.

          "I know," K said. "It would look great in the kitchen."         

          "Are you sure?" I said. "You really want to buy a steampunk table for the kitchen?"

          "Of course I do," he said. "What's steampunk?"

See the crank? I'm in love with the crank.

          It also happened that we needed a light for over the table as well—maybe a fan/light combo. An idle perusal of some lighting websites revealed a steampunk ceiling fan. I lost my heart immediately.

          "K will never go for it," I thought, but I showed him the picture anyway. To my surprise, he didn't hate it. To my greater surprise, he allowed himself to be talked into it. He even agreed, grudgingly, that it would look über-cool hanging above the steampunk table.

          Unfortunately, it was only then that we looked at the specs and realized that the steampunk ceiling fan was too big for our kitchen. Sigh.

          I wonder if I can talk K into a steampunk sofa for the living room.

         

The fan I lost my heart to. Maybe you should buy one for your kitchen.
You can find it here.

         

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*To me, it is. K disagrees.
**The Victorian era, is not, generally speaking, K's preferred design era.