January 03, 2007

If you give a mouse a cookie

It began with the carpet. Know how carpet salespeople talk about high-traffic areas of your house? Our entire house is a high traffic area. The living room carpet has been trampled on, danced on, rollerbladed on. It's been used to demonstrate snowboard moves and skateboard tricks. It's been peed on by cats and burned by sparks from the fireplace. Even though we cleverly chose carpet the color of mud, years of spills have taken their toll and even the brown is showing stains. The only part of the carpet that looks even remotely like carpeting was the part under the couch.

It was time for a new carpet.

But is it ever possible to do a single home improvement project without getting sucked into three more?

It was my husband's fault. Or perhaps, I should say, his brilliant idea. Last night, we all worked together to move everything out of the living room. The drum set, guitars, and amps got piled into my bedroom. The orange tree got shoved into my office, where it most certainly does not fit. The couch and comfy chair got piled into the kitchen area, after we moved the table and put all the kitchen chairs up in the boys' bedroom. The piano got rolled away from the wall. My daughter and I ripped up the carpet, yanking it from the floor and wrapping it into one big roll. Then, in a move which reminded me of a scene from the The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, an effort that took six of us, we shoved the whole thing out the front door.

That's when my husband looked around and said, "Hey, so long as the room is empty, maybe we should paint the walls."

Easy for him to say. He conveniently had to work today, and the younger boys were in school. Boy in Black and First Extra had other plans. But Wonderful Smart Beautiful Daughter and I decided that we could do the whole project in a day and have the room painted before the new carpet arrived tomorrow morning.

So that is all we did today. We took down curtains. We pulled up staples from the old carpeting. We spackled. We sanded. We painted.

We did nothing but slave away at this project all day. Well, maybe we took the time to go out to lunch with my parents, driving out to a nice restaurant on the lake. And perhaps we took breaks for eating and talking and writing the occasional email. I may have looked at a blog or two. But mostly, we worked together in the echoing room, congratulating ourselves as scratches, black marks, and strange stains disappeared under a new coat of cream paint. By sunset, the room looked brand new.

That's when we noticed that the kitchen area could use a little paint ....


painting at sunset

21 comments:

Anonymous said...

He's going to want a glass of milk...I know exactly how that goes! I am restoring an old house - so we have lots of this going on!

Anonymous said...

Two title home runs in a row! You. are. the. champion!

Jules said...

Your sunset looked just like ours!

APStraight said...

That is a wonderful sunset.

Anonymous said...

Did you have anything to wear while you painted the room?

Anonymous said...

Linda stole my comment.

Anonymous said...

Amazing sunset!

Anonymous said...

The paint looks great.

This reminds me...

My dad and I once went shopping and came home with a new couch. My mom loved it and decided we should get two chairs to match.

Then we decided the furniture really clashed with the hideously ugly carpet. But if we replaced the carpet, we'd need to get rid of the hideously ugly grass wallpaper and paint the living room. And as long as we were painting the living room, we should do the dining room, too, where there was hideously ugly wood paneling. And since the bedrooms also had the hideously ugly carpet, along with green and yellow wallpaper, shouldn't we change those, too, so we could use the same carpet throughout?

What started as just a new couch turned into new carpet, paint, and wallpaper in the living room, dining room, hallway, and three bedrooms.

And then we realized just how badly the new (blue) carpet clashed with the hideously ugly avocado stove...

:)

Anonymous said...

That sunset is GORGEOUS!

RageyOne said...

love the sunset in the background.

Anonymous said...

What a nice visual of you and your daughter spending the day together. Those are my hopes that someday, my daughter and I will have a decent relationship.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a great quality day, productive and memorable. Beautiful sunset.

We recently did some 'updating' so of course I decided we needed some new furniture...you know the rest of the story.

listie said...

Having recently bought a 150ish year old house, I know only too well what you're talking about. (Gee, if I tear down this wallpaper, do you think the plaster will come down with it?)

YourFireAnt said...

When did cooky become "cookie" ? Seems just kind of crept into the language when I wasn't looking.

FA

Anonymous said...

I love it! I love fresh paint and working together to get it done. We usually do a room a day, so if something happens we have our room back. How wonderful that you and your daugter got to spend the day together.

Unknown said...

Lovely color!

jo(e) said...

Linda: I had that same thought. I said to my daughter,"Oh, no! Here we are about to paint the living room, and you gave away all my clothes!" But then I found an old pair of sweatpants that had escaped somehow, and I turned a sweatshirt inside out.

Anonymous said...

I love that picture. Haven't the sunsets/sunrises been spectacular lately?

Anonymous said...

Gorgeous! Sounds like you are having a total HGTV week.

Anonymous said...

You girls rock, you did a great job!! I love the color too and the sunset photo.

Anonymous said...

And I love terminaldegree's story too. Very funny.