Dolores Catania from The Real Housewives of New Jersey may have home renovation PTSD after having to live in a construction zone for a year while ex-husband Frank renovated her home.
In the end, the home update was worth the wait, but it wasn’t without an endless sense of frustration on her part. “I’m furious with Frank that he couldn’t get the house done by the move-in date we all agreed on,” Catania said. RHONJ Season 12 opens. Adds: “Frank’s priorities are a little out of whack at the moment because he has a new girlfriend in Texas.”
So when it came time to update her backyard, Catania let Frank sit with this one and ended up having a completely different home update experience. She dished on the Showbiz Cheat Sheet about her new backyard and how it was very different this time.
Dolores Catania of ‘RHONJ’ added Italian flair to her new outdoor kitchen
The centerpiece of the backyard is Catania’s new outdoor kitchen. “My backyard kitchen,” she exclaimed. “So my RTA kitchen is great. I put a little Italian flair in it because I like to make my Sunday sauce.”
Catania added that she also finally got her dream pool. “Everybody wanted to play outside and I finally got a pool,” she said. “I waited 50 years to put in a pool!”
Catania then joked about who really wants to use the pool. “For the dogs, I think now they can swim,” she said.
Dolores Catania had some anxiety about creating the design, but had a different experience this time
Catania loves how she can make Sunday dinner and still be included in the outdoor fun. “I wanted to be able to cook my Italian Sunday meal and see everyone enjoying being outside,” she noted. “There’s a big burner next to my grill where I can cook my sauce, my pot of sauce. And then it just smells through the whole neighborhood. I mean, I love it so much. So [son] Frankie and all his big man friends come over and sit and eat.”
She described the interior of the outdoor kitchen. “It’s like a big, huge square. It’s really amazing. It is a design that was from Germany.”
Catania worked with designers to achieve the right look and feel. “So RTA and Coyote work together. You make a Zoom call and you pick things,” Catania recalled. “I’m not technically good at this. Like I actually had a little bit of anxiety the night before I had to have this meeting and put my kitchen together.”
“But it was so easy,” she said. “I felt really cool that I was able to do that. I was able to pick out all my own stuff, my design, exactly how I want it. It’s so custom for me and it is so efficient that it’s exactly what I want it to be. It’s a little prefab, but it’s not. It’s custom.”
Dolores said this ‘RHONJ’ home update was on a very different timeline
One of the best parts of the whole experience? Unlike her house renovation, this one took an afternoon to complete. “I think it took a couple of hours. No one in my neighborhood has a kitchen like mine. It’s unbelievable. It’s so efficient. The business is on point. [Boyfriend] Paul [Connell] liked it so much. He put it out [his] also the backyard.”
Catania loves her kitchen so much that her designs go up against designs by HGTV’s Mike Pyle Inside out and Kevin Lenhart, Design Director at Yardzen. Check out each kitchen design and vote at rtaoutdoorliving.com/choose-our-next-design-contest/.
Consumers who choose the winning design will be eligible to win prizes including grills, a pizza oven and more. Anyone who votes will also get early access to the new design and exclusive discounts.
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