There's a nakedness about it: Grills are built for the out-of-doors. This was a house pet, a kitchen-dweller, yanked from its counter as cleanly as a tooth.

There is no kitchen anymore. Not for more than a month. We have a "project" instead, as in construction project.

You get into these things all gung-ho, and then, oops, the floor can't be leveled. The house dates to the 1920s: The sub-floor has to come out.

Oops, and then out come the aching joists, one by one. Then you've got pipes to rejigger; you get the picture.

It's easy going in, not so easy getting out.

You improvise in the living room. The chicken paprikash gets simmered in the ancient avocado-colored electric frying pan. And on some mornings, so does the steel-cut oatmeal.

The hideaway microwave elbows to center stage. You embrace every other shortcut you sneered at - paper plates and cups, plastic forks and spoons. Pre-grated Parmesan!

You get yourself invited to Thanksgiving at your son and daughter-in-law's. You dine out on the kindness of neighbors - regale them with kitchen confidentials over their filet and mushroom risotto, their Magic Chicken, their baked egg-and-fennel-sausage casserole, and pork with carrot-sweet-potato puree.

On Ninth Street, Vietnamese barbecue plates stand by for rescue. And at the Happy Rooster, the coq au vin. Or hot-and-sour soup procured from Ardmore.

But there is no kitchen as refuge, no comfort cooking, nowhere to braise, nowhere to fry: I try carrot soup one day. Had to track down the vegetable peeler in a box in the garage. Chop the onions on the picnic table out back.

I took a shower with dirty pots and bowls and - though it probably violates OSHA in word and spirit - the paring knife, soaping them down and hosing them off.

If the times were in joint, this might be chalked up to inconvenience. But these have been weeks of draining irresolution - a war bleeding on, jobs in jeopardy, even the weather torn between a last summer fling and the curtain-down sobriety of December.

We cook hot dogs in the fireplace. It would be nice to make a kettle of sauerkraut and pork. Where'd I hide the caraway?

We have been stymied in kommercial kitchenland, confronted with choices we didn't know existed. Who knew Ikea was the place for drawer pulls? Who knew there were Web sites devoted to ventilator hoods? Or that they had sexy Italian names? (We're settling on "Savona. ")

Who knew that good, old-fashioned subway tile suddenly came in dozens of colors, and finishes of glass (clear or frosted), even chrome - in large, medium and small?

Should the dishwasher disappear behind front panels? Have a built-in disposal? Flip-down racks?

We've signed off on nearly everything but the kitchen sink. At last polling, the apron-fronted, English farmhouse sink was losing ground. The Brazilian soapstone baby from the workshop in Quakertown was leading by a nose, its rolled antique lip and scoop neck proving hard as a new puppy to resist.

We've found a new definition of stress - having to make decisions you feel totally unsure and ambivalent about, knowing that the consequences will be instantly costly, and literally set in stone.

It is an unsettling business, plaster dust spritzing every surface, cracks yawning over the door jamb, circuit breakers flipping each time the microwave and toaster play in unison.