Raising Roan

After spending hours and months surfing catalogs and the Web looking for a kitchen that wasn’t plastic and a company that hadn’t been caught red handed in lead paint, I thought I had finally found the most adorable, most affordable, most likely to be safe, most stylish little play kitchen on the market. After 3 of us spent 3 hours putting the thing together, we unveiled the world’s best little kitchen on his birthday the way you unveil a shiny red convertible on your spoiled brat’s 16th birthday. Unfortunately, the hip little retro red kitchen turned out out to be the most toxic smelling artifact in the entire free world. I’m talking headaches, nausea, can’t-stand-to-be-in-the-same-room sort of choking. So we left it outside for days. Still gross. Left it outside for 2 weeks. Still gross. Left it outside for over a month! Still gross. Finally took the damn thing apart and sent it back to Texas, from whence it was distributed post-China. After a frustrated call to the EPA (having been referred by the American Lung Association for info on indoor pollution), I now know more than I ever wanted to know about VOCs, formaldehyde, and off-gassing. And I never want to buy another painted toy or pressed wood product again. Our kitchen designing friends in Texas (they actually handled it quite professionally) sent us a different kitchen (seen here), which hallelujah, did not emit a single odor upon opening the box. So, Roan is back to cooking. And if you want our advice, take a page from the Europeans and the Cohen brothers (” Unpainted Arizona!”) and stick to the good old-fashioned unpainted, solid wood craftsmanship, or just give them a bunch of sticks, leaves, and stones to play with.