Home repairs -- dinner included

Dana Reichman and her husband Seth Gitell have a brand new kitchen. It's nothing fancy, no Viking range or Sub-Zero vegetable drawers, just a really nice space. There are white tile backsplashes behind the sink, traditional window and door moldings, a wood laminate floor, a pot rack for the handsome All-Clad cookware they received as wedding gifts, a stainless steel range with a built-in microwave, and soft lighting.

Tonight, in this new setting, Reichman and Gitell are sitting down to dinner at home. But they're not cooking. Neither of the home owners is behind the stove. Instead, it's the guys who built the kitchen.

Hiring contractors to do home improvement is rife with struggles. Often the owners can't afford to do what they really want and everyone knows about a project that went so far over budget the figures became astounding. In this case, Reichman and Gitell lived through six weeks of construction dust and hammering by Josh Levine and Henry Yglesias, and they all still like each other. Over the course of the renovation , the kitchen turned into a demolished room filled with tools and wood scraps. The clients ate take-out most nights in front of the TV. When it was all done, the couple are delighted with their contractors, who came in under budget, the room is way more posh than they ever thought it would be, and now they're being treated to dinner in their own home -- courtesy of their work crew.

"The relationship between us and them becomes very intimate," says Levine. "Really we invade the home, so it helps if we can all get along."

Gitell says that it was originally his wife who had the new kitchen vision. "All I wanted was a dishwasher, but Dana knew that would just be the beginning," he says. They asked around and were referred to Levine and Yglesias by friends from work.

But two days before the work was set to begin, Gitell broke his right foot. He was stuck at home while Reichman went off to O'Neill and Associates, the public relations and lobbying firm where she works. Gitell had some unexpected help. When the contractors went out in the morning to get their own coffee, they brought some back for him. Same with sandwiches or sushi for lunch. "They were my lifeline," says Gitell.

One morning Gitell overheard Yglesias and Levine talking about restaurants and wine. "That's when I realized that they were a couple of foodies," he says. "We ended up becoming good friends."

On the night of the dinner, Levine, 36, sits at the head of the table. A career carpenter, he grew up in Jamaica Plain and met Yglesias at Boston Latin School. The two are best friends. Yglesias, also 36, grew up in Allston. As a student he worked as a dishwasher and eventually a cook at the Sisters of St. Joseph Motherhouse in Brighton, and at Mount Saint Joseph Academy next door. Later, when he became serious about cooking, he worked on the line at Isabella in Dedham, and then as a sous chef at Mistral in the South End. A few years ago, he took a break from the kitchen to work for Levine. Now he wants to pound nails during the day and moonlight as a personal chef.

A few months ago, the builders decided that at the end of a project, if everything had gone well, they would cook for their clients. "If we get along with the people, we cook them dinner when the job is done," says Yglesias. "The dinner is definitely Henry's thing though," says Levine. If it wasn't for him I would just give out some cigars or a gift certificate to Delfino."

Yglesias pours Rioja all around and passes the first course -- seared and sliced duck breasts, cooked until rare, and served with pomegranate sauce, duck egg rolls, and a baby arugula and citrus salad. "These are my favorite flavors," says Reichman. "I can't believe that this food was made in our home," says Gitell.

Reichman, 30, is very pregnant; a baby boy is due in May. She grew up in Pittsburgh and met Gitell in Washington. Gitell, 38, is from Hull. He was press secretary for Mayor Menino from 2003 to 2006. Now he's a freelance writer with an op-ed column in the New York Sun and he writes a political blog with regular posts about local restaurants (gitell.com). He knows where to get a good burger or fried clams, and he comments on restaurants he's just visited. The couple moved to Roslindale three years ago from a student area in Brighton. They liked the new neighborhood immediately. "There are people walking dogs, babies, old people, young people, an Italian butcher, a Middle Eastern bakery, some good yuppie restaurants," says Gitell.

The house is a standard three-decker from the 1920s. Reichman and Gitell's apartment is on the first floor. When they bought the condo, it was pretty clean and open, with high ceilings and hardwood floors, except for the kitchen. The kitchen had suffered from a cheap '60s renovation. "We never wanted to hang out in here," he says. She adds, "The kitchen should feel like center of the house and now it does."

Yglesias serves the second course, cumin-crusted tilapia with saffron risotto studded with peas and roasted bell peppers. He calls this a kind of paella-risotto. Gitell is excited. "I can't even believe how good this is -- this is awesome," he says. Everybody eats and talks about the kitchen's before and after.

"The walls were covered in really awful fake-wood paneling," says Reichman. "The drop ceilings with fluorescent lights made it look more like an orthodontist's office than a house." The builders installed recessed lighting and a pendant light over the table. Levine and Yglesias turned some steam pipes and a damp broom closet that looked like an old cuckoo clock into a sleek bookshelf now packed with the couple's favorite cookbooks.

Levine was able to work with the original cabinets. "They were well built but ugly, stained dark walnut and topped with archaic hardware," he says. "We cleaned them up and painted them white. That saved a lot of money."

"I would discuss knobs all day long with Josh," says Reichman. "Glass knobs vs. metal knobs, pulls vs. V-shaped handles. It was so much fun."

They replaced the yellow 1970 s stove with a stainless steel Whirlpool with more powerful gas burners. Gitell wasn't really interested in the renovation process until they started talking about stoves. "I wanted something that could really crank," he says.

Now when they get together at the end of the day to enjoy dinner, the couple sit at a table that belonged to Gitell's grandmother. At first, Reichman wanted to throw it out, but Levine convinced her that it simply needed an overhaul and showed her how to clean it with lemon oil.

"I'm so glad about the table," says Gitell. "My grandparents were Jews from Mattapan. The table came from their triple-decker, where the kitchen was probably the exact same size and same shape as ours. It's perfect."

After a cheese course of aged Gouda, Manchego, and Gruyere, accompanied by port, Reichman pours herself a glass of orange juice, looks around, and sighs. "My plan was not for a dream kitchen," she says, "But look, it really ended up that way."