Wednesday's Words for November 21, 2018

My husband is nearly finished the renovations he began several weeks ago on our front entrance hallway and the staircase leading to the second story.

I’m going to be glad to see the completed result. As I mentioned a couple of essays back, he went with our granddaughter’s suggestion of a satin-finish white for the trim, to match the satin-finish beige. He agrees that the two together look quite elegant. Once he has installed the trim this week, all that will remain will be to bring down the bamboo and glass shelving unit and then reinstall the coat-hooks onto the wall (this is a piece of 2x4 upon which are affixed 6 metal coat hooks).

We have a boot tray we get out once the weather turns, and a mat we put down just inside the door—far enough away from it that the mat doesn’t catch on the door, but close enough so you don’t have to walk too far with wet boots/shoes on the linoleum tile.

I need to be really careful, because that floor is very slippery when wet. But since I am careful with every step I take, that’s not a difficult thing to remember.

My husband was rubbing his hands together at the prospect of starting his next project—the living room. I asked him to please hold off for a few weeks. The truth is, I want a bit of time without things being topsy-turvy and out of place.

The fact that I am a bit nervous about how he plans to partially move things around the room as he goes (which would have him on a ladder behind the very expensive television) has nothing to do with my reticence. Honest. Well, mostly not.

I understand that at the moment, I’m being more than a little contrary. For the last several years, my husband has had travel as his priority. That began before I became a published author. Each year, that’s where his vacation pay went. A part of me wished, at the time, that we could travel a little less and engage in at least some home improvements. But I understood how difficult it was going to be for him to turn that corner. He’d begun the renovations by putting a new roof on our house—well, he didn’t do it, but he stood by and watched as our younger son, Anthony, did. Then Anthony died and that was the end of anything resembling renovations.

In the years following, David could lay a floor—and he did a couple. But he would consider nothing connected to the renovations he’d worked on with his son. I never nagged him about this, because I believed that the time would come when he’d be able to move on.

And now my husband has finally turned that corner. His priorities have shifted, and that’s a good thing…except I find the disruption of his working on renovations that have the house in upheaval puts me in upheaval. I’m suspecting, with a kind of dazed shock, that I might be one of those women I used to scorn in my thoughts—the sort who is a miserable old biddy, impossible to please no matter what.

We did have one more budding “situation” arise just a couple of days ago, with regard to a kind of trim called “corner molding”. The plan was to put this vital piece of trim over the corners, where drywall met drywall, in order to protect it from being damaged—you know, leaned against, brushed against, bumped against, etc. We went into the city to our local Lowe's to purchase all the trim. When we got home, my husband, after he organized things, sought my opinion—something for which I am very grateful.

He held a piece of this special trim where it would go in the living room….and it went just a bit above the height of the door frames. He asked me what I thought of it. I told him it would look good, and, because I know him, I added, “if you plan to install it floor to ceiling.”

He frowned at me and said, “no, I was just going to take it to the height of the door frame.” The door frame in question, by the way, is on the adjacent wall. When I just looked at him, he said, “What? I’ve seen it done like that in lots of places.”

Now, my beloved is not above telling a teeny weenie white lie on occasion. My response was to simply shake my head. Then he admitted that he had been planning to take it to the ceiling, but the darn stuff was just so expensive! If you think my husband is parsimonious, you’re on the right track, just keep going. There’s no help for it and he completely agrees: he’s cheap.

I say that here because when we went back to the store to get the rest of the trim that he would need to reach the ceiling? Yeah, that was a whole extra twenty dollars.

I’m counting down the days to project completion. All this haggling over decisions has taken a lot out of me. 

Maybe I need a vacation.

Love,
Morgan
http://www.morganashbury.com
http://www.bookstrand.com/morgan-ashbury