Toilet Tea and a Kitchen Build

Toilet Tea is what I called our morning brew while on a kitchen build...not a nice or inviting name, I know! The kitchen remodeling was for our son. Hubby made the oak cabinets at home, and we drove the wooden cabinets four hours to the bungalow where son had stripped walls down to the studs. Insulation, sheet rocking, no water, no sink—well, you can imagine.


But I had an electric hot pot for boiling water, some Red Rose tea bags along with some Charleston Plantation Peach tea bags, and some hot cups that all sufficed for our morning tea. I had to get water from the bathroom and then plug it in there or the bedroom...thus our Toilet Tea. Son does not understand our need for this morning ritual, but it is better than nothing at all right now. Once I slipped away to Chelmsford Teas where I bought a Caramel Rooibos loose tea, some peach apricot tea bags, and a new Brown Betty tea pot. I waited until we returned home to savor them both, but I continued for a few days more brewing our daily Toilet Tea!


Watching my son work with his dad reminded me of many things. It was bittersweet how he did so many things like my own dad did years ago. Son never worked with his grandfather so it was not a learned behavior, more of a gene he inherited. When he stripped his old kitchen out, he was neat as a pin. He cleaned up and sorted boards to size, bagged up sheetrock, piled old cabinet drawers neatly. His tools were tidy and organized and he was frenzied by his own dad’s random tossing of screw drivers, nails, and levels and such. My son could eye a eighth of an inch discrepancy in straightness, and when it was time to cut the vinyl flooring, his own dad was nervous he might make a mistake in front of his own son! My dad has been gone for nine years and on this kitchen build, the missing him was freshly renewed watching his grandson radiate his mannerisms.

Son’s house is a yellow brick bungalow of early 1950’s vintage. While it shows some wear in the corners, this post WWII house is solid as a rock. The kitchen was dated and worn. Son chose dark colors, pewter accents, and modern granite sink. It is an inviting place now or soon will be when he finished the tiny details that will make the room his own. I wonder if he would consider a new black tea pot for the counter???