Monday, December 03, 2007

She picked me

It's important in a relationship to celebrate your differences... or at least learn to laugh about them.

Whenever I get particularly neurotic - I simply remind my fraught wife that she picked me.

And I of course ...picked her.

~~

We have decided to redecorate our bedroom.
Let me give you some background on the project.

A dozen years or so ago we enlarged our room by creating an opening into an adjoining bedroom. That room had been Ferris'. We moved him to the ever so slightly smaller back bedroom. He was not particularly pleased... but I image now that he lives in a dorm room he has probably gotten over it, or perhaps he can begin therapy early... anywhoo...
When we took up the rug in there the wood floors underneath were in a sorry state of shellac and paint and who knows what.
We decided it would be very 'Pottery Barn' to paint the floors black. We were such Pottery Barn lesbians. The floor came out good and it was a striking look with our dark sage walls with crisp cream trim. When the black paint started to chip and show the reddened shellac underneath we considered it rustic... cool.

It finally got to a point where 'cool' got old.
That point was sometime last week.
So we knew we needed to address the floor as part of this makeover. Refinishing the oak floors would be the right thing to do - but really it would mean refinishing the entire second floor and, while you've got the mess going, the stairs should be done too.
This would mean moving all the furniture off the second floor and sleeping else where for a week or so - not to mention the cost.
That option was nixed early on.
Our next idea was to simply repaint the floor, perhaps a happier color.

We thought before we bought any floor paint - just for giggles we would try a little bit of stripping solution we had left over on a small inconspicuous area. Just to see.
In steps my adorable wife.

I walk into the room Saturday afternoon and there is a smallish stripped area of the floor.
Where?
Inconspicuously in the middle of the room.

by the time I grabbed the camera she had already started removing baseboards and stripping more floor


She cracks me up.
She has about 1/4 of the floor done now.
The floor underneath has a ... lets call it a distressed look.
People pay big money for distressed these days.
It's very Pottery Barn.

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

At least it was inconspicuous. You should meet Heather at Wishful Writer and her partner April - I think they are your twins.

Kathryn said...

This project makes me cringe more than my upcoming homework! My wife would be in full blown panic mode right now if she were you!

Zoe said...

All great relationships are made up of the perfect amount of balancing one another out. Life would be dull and one sided otherwise. And then what would you blog about?

Landlady of Fat said...

What? I don't see anything. ;)

Oh no, WORD VERIFICATION!

Ok, time to go back to lurking... lol

Val said...

So good... by the time we are invited back to the house, we'll get so see not only the redone kitchen, but also the redone upstairs (though we had never seen it before, so won't have much of a comparison except for this lone pic!)... how long HAS it been anyway?!!!
Aren't I tactful???!!!

Maria said...

My whole house is distressed. I am FINALLY a fashion icon....

SassyFemme said...

Distressed is in? Very good news for our guest room floor!

Looking forward to seeing how this project evolves!

clammy said...

I like that inconspicuous is in the middle of the room. Better to see it.

Anonymous said...

Aw, that was just her way to committing herself to the task. If you strip an inconspicuous spot, you can hate it, sigh, and go watch TV.

We are reflooring most of the house right now. We took up the carpet in an inconspicuous spot (for real, inside a closet) to see for the first time what kind of shape our bare wood was in—when we moved in, the place had wall-to-wall white carpet, which is so very practical in a household with four four-legged furry things. We were pretty certain that we'd need to refinish it, but it was still like scratching off the silver latex on a game card to see if YOU MAY ALREADY BE A WINNER!

The wood wasn't in terrible shape, but it was of a type that wasn't very conducive to our overall aesthetic plan. It was, um, plywood. Who the hell built houses in 1954 with plywood floors? The rest of the carpentry is very solid and finished, then there are the floors of ply. Maybe the builder had heard the wall-to-wall-carpet gospel and never foresaw a time when people would reject the luxury of pile? Me, I'm loving seeing rolls of that crappy white carpet accumulate on the porch for hauling away.

weese said...

ooo plywood - now thats very Pottery Barn

sporksforall said...

She keeps advocating that we keep the plywood. It's SO pretty. And very Pottery Barn. Quite right.