Of Decks, Dominoes, Dust, and De-cluttering

This is another story about dominoes. Home remodeling or repair seems to do that. You think you’re just replacing carpet, but really that’s only the first domino in asbestos abatement, floor replacement, stair reconstruction, etc. etc. I’ve written about that.

No, this time it’s about a deck. For years, we hashed and re-hashed the deck idea. If we put it off the kitchen, it wouldn’t catch maximum sun. If we put it off the living room, we’d have more sun, but we’d have to schlep from the kitchen. Over and over. No deck.

Finally, last summer, we DID THE DECK. Or rather, Lance (“I’m Your Handyman”) did. We love it. It’s beautiful. So this summer, it was the second domino’s turn: turning the window from the kitchen into a sliding glass door to the deck.

Third domino: The baseboard heater is under the window. Pipes have to be moved over so the door can be put in. Tim goes downstairs to the laundry room, moves stuff into Sophie’s room, and cuts a hole in the ceiling. After the plumber moves the pipes, Tim drywalls and paints the ceiling. (Yes, I constantly think of my mother sighing at Tim and murmuring “Oh, he’s so handy!” in adoration.)

Fourth domino: The laundry room – and all the shelves, pantry, storage – are covered in a fine layer of dust. Everywhere. Dust. This is my domino. I own it. I attack it.

Interruption: I LOVE the deck and the sliding glass door. It’s my favorite New Thing. I love how it adds more light, opens out our space as if we have another living room. I even love how global warming means it’s in the perfect location because elsewhere it would be too hot. I love how “lying on the deck” somehow means more than “just vegging out” because I’m OUTSIDE. In our Third Third, we may think we should have done this in our Second, but it’s here now.

But the deck I love came with dust. Lots of dust. This amount of dust requires a major operation: removal, scouring, organizing, replacing. And de-cluttering! I am in my element: I am The Organizer! I will Clean Things and Assign Them Their Proper Places.

I proceed shelf by shelf. First to go is the Sno-Paint set. Sophie didn’t like it; the paint froze when they went out to spray it on snow. But Dawn’s grandchildren will love it. (Easy de-cluttering: not wanted, good place to give it to). They also got the box of the bazillion bubbles and wands. (De-cluttering score: 100!)

But then, realizing the punishment I inflicted on my mother for alleged de-cluttering, I started photographing the Sophie-childhood items and texting Sophie just to be sure. Have to hold onto the Build-a-Bear bear, the remote-controlled truck, the Storyblocks.

But the easel can go to the Alaska Literacy Program preschool; art work and wine glasses to their silent auction. Record albums sold or donated. The seven celebrity waiter aprons can go to the synagogue preschool, the bowls and lids to Sarah for her potlucks, the Harry & David boxes to Irene for her art kits for kids. (De-cluttering score: 100!) The bags and bags of bags have been sorted and will be recycled. (Recycling earns only a de-cluttering score of 90.) There are still too many jars and boxes – good jars and good boxes – but I think I come in at a good 95 all around.

The dust is a challenge. The steel shelves come with little curly decorations that won’t yield to a vacuum cleaner. I have to wash each curl one by one.

But the victory! I open up so much room that I can store my dozens of bottles of ginger beer. I have all the camping food supplies in a neat tray. The crafts are all together; picnic supplies are easy to reach. Things are off the floor!

I am a de-cluttering phenomenon! I am on a roll! I have reached a new level of what I’m willing to give away or recycle. I am motoring through other rooms, other closets – I am a de-cluttering fiend!

Uh, oh. Danger, danger. There’s a reason why they say all things in moderation. Next post: Discard Remorse. Or, if they’re still in the recycling bin, do I dig in and retrieve?

Not all hands on deck

We built a deck.

Let me correct that: we had a deck built. I had nothing to do with any hammering or digging or measuring. My job was to say what I wanted and pick out colors. My job was actually to decide to go ahead and build a deck at all. After that, I was pretty useless. Tim is the hero of this story.

We’ve lived in our house for 28 years. The concrete patio has been crumbly and broken for a while, but we’ve gotten by. Mostly, we don’t use it. Tim would say, “The stairs need work. I keep repairing them, but they need more work. We have to decide what to do about the patio.” I’d look but couldn’t decide where I’d want a deck, where there’d be the most sun, what about over there, and it always got too complicated.

But this summer, after visiting a friend’s deck, I said, “I’m ready for us to build a deck.” In Barbara language, that might have meant next year (and the us is definitely an inaccurate pronoun). In Tim language, it means decide on a design tomorrow, pick out materials, hire a contractor – can he start Monday?

He’s my husband – you can’t have him!

First off, he rented a jackhammer to break up the old, crumbly patio. He and Dillon, our friend’s son, banged away and hauled the rubble to the front of the house.

Tim loaded the truck. When it was all carted off to the dump, it was 16,000 POUNDS of concrete.

I’m keeping him!

When Lance, our marvelous, master-craftsman, deck builder, dug out the Sonotubes, he unearthed giant boulders. My job was to put them on Craig’s List and wait for everyone to fight over our free rocks. They did.

The deck is mostly finished. It’s spectacular. Friends say it will change my life. My Third Third life is going to involve spending a lot of time on that deck. It’s so sturdy that I figure in an earthquake, the deck will keep the house standing.

The lawn is littered with lumber that I wouldn’t let Lance or Tim haul away because it can be recycled. My friend Connie said it would be a crime not to recycle it, but Connie and I can be a bad influence on each other that way, and it’s not lying around on her lawn. If worse comes to worst, I’ll go back on Craig’s List.

Tim sorted the lumber for me, but I’m waiting for it to dry so it won’t get my car wet. Yesterday, he said, “I’ve ordered a load of topsoil to fill in the patio hole. They’ll be here in the morning.”

“Now?!” I panicked. “What’s the rush? We’ll have a pile of dirt that’ll turn into mud. I still have to dig up the baby tree that I’m donating. Why do you have to rush things?”

“Because I have to get seeding started to put the lawn back together. I’ve already found a kid to help me move the dirt.”

Just now, I looked out the window. The topsoil is raked and spread over the torn up spots. It’s done.

I can hear my friends yelling, “Yay! We’re on Team Tim!”

Now I have my big job: planning the deck warming party. It’s a little problematic because of the forecast for rain. I’m trying to dawdle a little to see what the weather does. Eventually, I’ll have to get around to finding some deck furniture. That’ll take some research.

How odd this is! I usually think of myself as a get-it-done, make-it-happen mover (who often has to prod her husband), but I’ve clearly been just watching from the peanut gallery while Tim handles, hauls, sweats, and gets dirty. It’s good to have our identities messed with a little, to reevaluate ourselves, to let a marriage shift around and rebalance itself. A little disconcerting, but interesting. I have to hope all my laziness is just premature deck lounging, but I’m thinking each of us just has different speeds depending on our different talents. (I wonder if Tim would accept this generous analysis.)

This deck is a gift for our Third Third, and I hope it means more enjoyment, socializing, and relaxation. I hope that every time I sit on it, eat on it, or lounge on it; I’ll remember whose sweat made it possible.

A Library for ALL my Thirds

I’ve been suffering withdrawal the last couple of weeks. Library withdrawal. Our main library, Loussac Library, was closed for the big remodel, and for a library-aholic, this has been rough.

As I thought about it, I realize the library is the one institution that figures significantly in all my Thirds. From my first introduction to the little old library in New Jersey that smelled of books, to the library I inhabited through high school, to the Youth Services section Sophie and I practically lived in, the library is where you might find me if I’m not home. Even now, I’m an every-other-day-er.

I’ve had an office way in the bowels of the San Francisco Public Library, did the public information and promotion for Anchorage Public Library, and got my library cards as soon as I arrived in Manhattan and London for my months. I’m not part of a community till I’m a Friend of the Library.

The library took me through the First Third of preparing for adulthood. At midnight, when the library closed on campus, hundreds of bicycles took to the street. The library was the place where I read the reserved reading for my Human Sexuality course. When I perceived that the guy on the opposite side of the carrel was masturbating, and I was reading that I wasn’t supposed to give him the thrill of my fear, I got up and calmly walked to the desk … until a friend reached out for me and I screamed bloody murder. (Bet you didn’t expect that last little bit of history to hide in this paragraph!)

Then in my Second Third, when Sophie expressed an interest in anything, we’d race to the library to get a book on it. Amusement parks! Rocks! Gems! The discovery of very old editions of Flower Fairies of the Garden sparked years of poetry, fairies, and gardening. When there was a parenting issue (me-first-itis, big bed fears, honesty), the librarians would help me find a picture book that dealt with that issue. As the Storytime Lady in the Alaska Botanical Garden, I spent years reading every picture book on flowers, bugs, trees, gardens, vegetables, seeds, and forest animals.

And now, the library accommodates my Third Third self. I get to do the pleasure reading I want; I get to reserve and watch too many DVDs. Even the Guerrilla Knitters meet there and decorated trees there. The library is there whenever my flexible schedule puts me there.

And then it wasn’t.

The remodel has been going on for a year. Things moved around. DVDs changed floors. Elevators opened on strange territory. Visqueen and plastic decorated the walls. Nothing looked like it used to. It was so disconcerting that I gave up on hanging out there. I put holds on my requests, picked them up on the ground floor, and went home grumpy. I felt like a curmudgeon who couldn’t happily adapt to change, and the only thing worse was when the library closed totally for two weeks.

Grump, grump, grump.

But then Wednesday happened, grand re-opening day! I took my shift as a helpful volunteer, opening the main door and greeting people coming and going. What a happy day! What a happy task!

“Welcome to the new Loussac Library!”

It was rainy and gray, but Anchorage came out for the big re-opening. People were curious, happy, and just eager to get back in. The library is the place where all of Anchorage shows up: the preschoolers, the elderly, the high-schoolers, the families. The professionals, the loungers, the get-in-get-a-book-and-get-out folks. The clusters of friends, the quiet and solitary.

“Welcome to the new Loussac Library!” I was meant for this job! What a great way to spend my time. I felt like I was opening a golden door, a welcome to heaven, to a new shiny place with new spaces and new places to sit. It will take some getting used to, but that should be easy: I’ll be spending a lot of time there.

“Welcome to the new Loussac Library!” See you there.

Farewell to greeting cards

When I’d visit my mother, I’d sometimes go through her drawers and think, “Why is she saving all these greeting cards? They’re just signatures on some commercially-created sentiment.” So then I’d try to get her to throw them out, and she’d say no, she liked going through them. Her friends said the same thing.

I bet they never went through them! I bet they just sat there taking up space!

I’d think about how much room she’d have if she’d just get rid of those greeting cards. It offended my de-cluttering sensibilities!

So as the Great Carpet Nightmare has ended and I vowed not to keep anything that could be successfully de-cluttered, I came across a box. Two, in fact. I don’t know how they evaded previous de-cluttering bouts: these boxes had never even been opened.

They were full of greeting cards and theater programs! I’d be embarrassed except that it was so gratifying – so thrilling – to recycle such a huge pile.

My mother saved her Playbills from her lifetime of Broadway plays. She kept them in pristine condition, even had them framed. She saw Lauren Bacall in Applause, Zero Mostel in Fiddler. When she moved out of her home, her collection went to the local theater as a fund raising opportunity for them.

My theater programs? They’re for local theater, little regional theaters. Out North, Toast, Cyrano’s, Kokopelli Theater Company, Pier One, Alaska Rep – several of these theater companies no longer exist. As I went through the programs – hundreds of them – I had no idea what the plays were. I couldn’t tell anything from the titles. So the idea of going through them and fondly remembering each production – that was an idea I’d already ditched. The memory was already gone.

The greeting cards? They were more interesting. My sister, Allison, and I had just been laughing over the birthday card I’d sent her. Every year, we three sisters send cards with messages like, “Do your boobs hang low? Do they wiggle to and fro?” My sister Elizabeth sent me one I still laugh over; telling a shoe salesman about bunions and asking, “Is this the year you start blurting out your ailments to complete strangers?”

So this year, I sent Allison one about good sisters being ones that make you laugh, but great sisters are ones that make you laugh till you pee. She found it hilarious because Elizabeth had sent her the identical card the year before.

So there I was, going through the greeting card box, most of them from Tim. Cards from about a three-year period. Some Valentine’s Day, some anniversary cards. There was this one:

 And then there was this one:

This one:

And this one:

Notice anything? There are even more like this, and they’re from 25 years ago – when we had memories! He didn’t notice he was sending me duplicates, and I didn’t notice I was receiving them. I even saved them without realizing (which is just proof that NO ONE looks at old greeting cards).

NO ONE looks at old greeting cards. Not even to find an uncashed $150 anniversary check from my mother … from back in 1997.

So all the greeting cards have been recycled … except those lovable duplicates. They say something about us, and I’ll look at them and laugh over them at least a few more times. Maybe I’ll even notice if an identical one shows up again.

Barbara vs. the Houseplants

Last week, I was debating the fate of my houseplants: would I banish them from my Third Third? Do houseplants even belong in a Third Third? When I raised the question with friends, I was shocked – shocked! – by their chorus of “I hate houseplants!”

I thought that was just a Tim thing.

Even though I’m the one in our house who “owns” the houseplants, Tim’s the one who waters them. (I still don’t know how I managed that; it’s a miracle.) Nevertheless, I am the one in charge of clipping, tending, re-potting, and de-pesting.

Houseplants made our house a home. They added foliage, warmth, and Nature to the living room. The spider plant in particular was so successful that I’d give teachers gifts of their own spider plants.

Then things started going haywire. It started with a couple of spider plants with little brown dots and sticky goo. I learned it was called “scale,” and I washed the leaves and the problem went away. Then it didn’t. Then I washed them again.

Somehow, the gooey, sticky, scale problem found its way across the living room to the schefflera tree. It got SO sticky that when I sat in the recliner nearby, my hair stuck to the chair from the goo that had dripped onto it. I took a leaf from the schefflera in to Cooperative Extension, where Julie-the-horticulturist told me that was the WORST infestation of scale she’d ever seen in her WHOLE LIFE and the plants just had to be tossed. She saved it as a specimen, and I ran home to toss the tree in the trash.

But I kept washing the spider plants. We had history together; I couldn’t get rid of them. They were a major anchor in the living room landscape. They were a pain in the neck.

Then the new carpet guys showed up. Yes, they did! Months of living like a nomad in our own home with furniture crammed every which way, eagerly awaiting the carpet guys, and they finally made an appearance. So, of course, more furniture had to be moved around in the overnight room-to-room scramble. You can only move crap so many times before you know it as crap. It was the plants’ turn to be de-cluttered.

This spelled doom for the palm tree. For the twisted philodendron that had a weird, unattractive shape. For the plants that just looked old, ugly, and too late into their Third Thirds. The spiders? Like Felix Unger’s linguine, they’re now garbage. I’m not spending my Third Third washing goo and trying to rescue difficult plants! Marie Kondo, I felt joy getting rid of those plants! Every plant in the trash meant a surge of freedom and pleasure.

I was on a roll: get rid of them all! They just take maintenance. Who needs their dirt, their re-potting demands? But then I read NASA’s research about how valuable they are for cleaning indoor air and some have been with me for years, so instead I put them on probation.

Only happy, easy, pretty things get to live in our living room now. It’s survival of the fittest, and only the healthy endure. If they start causing trouble – if they’re not Olympic material – they’re out!

Tim and the carpet guys surveyed the empty living room. Empty except for the ivy that climbs up the walls of the fireplace to the ceiling and the philodendron that climbs up another wall.

“They gotta be moved.”

“No,” I said. “They can’t! They’re attached. They’ll break.”

So that is how I spent time with the carpet guys, holding planters and balancing plants. As they laid carpet around me, I moved a little to the left, a little to the right, a little forward, a little back. I’ll dance with my houseplants now, but I make no promises. We’ll see how this new relationship goes.

When the dust settles

Let’s talk about dust. As in, how much dust is socially acceptable? Or, how much dust is acceptable by health standards? Or, how much dust can you get away with and still feel … civilized?

I’m not talking allergies or asthma. I’m talking plain old dust tolerance. What’s okay in the world of dust levels? Like, does everyone have to blow on the tops of books they remove from their bookcases?

Way back in my First Third, I was in my first apartment with my first job, and I called my mother. “How did you manage to clean a house, hold a job, raise four kids? This is killing me, and I don’t have kids.”

“It’s easy,” she said. “Get a dust mop. Every morning, swish it around under the bed and around the floors. It will make your weekly vacuuming much easier.”

There were so many things in that conversation that just didn’t compute: Daily anything? What would be left to vacuum if you dusted daily? And who vacuums weekly; I was already moving from monthly to quarterly. I’m pretty sure my mother didn’t have to blow on the tops of books on her bookshelves. I know she complained about the dust bunnies that blew out of my sister’s and my room; we offered to lay towels under the door rather than vacuum.

When Sophie was little, our house was mostly clean. It was fun to clean with her, and I’d heard that you should start cleaning behavior when kids are little and think it’s fun rather than wait till they’re teenagers and whine. Sophie loved mopping floors. One day, she came to me and asked if she could mop using water. “Sure,” I said.

A little while later, Tim came downstairs and said, “Why is Sophie mopping the floor naked?” I had no idea.

“I’m mopping like Mommy. She gets hot and takes off her shirt. Then she gets hotter and takes off her pants.” Tim looked at me. “I mop in my underwear. I’m not naked,” I explained. But, I admit, I did teach Sophie that we clean the tub from the inside … naked. (Tim put a stop to that: “Do you know how much cleanser she’s using???”)

I digress. I do not dust naked. In my Third Third, I’ve pretty much abandoned dusting entirely. I just can’t fathom how I once worked a regular job, raised a kid, managed a household, had fun, and still dusted. I polished the wood! Now, in my Third Third, I have knocked out half those things and there is no time ever to dust. (Well, I do the obvious shelf in the dining room whenever people come over.)

It’s not like I own tchotchkes; they were de-cluttered a long time ago. It’s just now, as we readied the house for the elusive carpet guys, we moved lamps, bookshelves, couches, chairs. The rungs of the chairs have dust! The lampshades have dust! The games on the game shelf have dust! The tops of paintings have dust!

Aiiieee! Is this acceptable???

I must admit, it is very satisfying to vacuum, dust, and polish all this stuff now. Once something becomes a Big Job, you can see the accomplishment. There are pleasurable psychological rewards. As opposed to mere maintenance, which is an abominable sinkhole of time yielding no visible satisfaction whatsoever because it’s “preventive.”

Before you say it, No, I do not want anyone professionally cleaning my house. It’s my nest and my responsibility. The only time I had someone clean for me was when I had two broken legs. I’m a little too anal retentive and controlling to let someone else move my shit around.

So now this is my question: when I put all this clean, dusted, polished stuff back; how long before I have to do it again? Do they call it spring cleaning because it’s an annual thing?

I just want to know: what are the dust rules?

The Newly-Naked Room

This is a story of dominoes. Not as in Mexican Train and lots of fun with a newly-discovered game, but as in one thing leads to another and Southeast Asia falls to the communists.

The asbestos abatement guys are gone now. They were thorough, clean, polite, punctual. They were terrific; it’s not their fault that I don’t want to go downstairs anymore, that I’m living upstairs with my laptop and paint on the dining room table. When I realized my granola was still downstairs, one of them even fetched it for me. Now I really don’t have to go downstairs.

I overheard one of the asbestos abatement guys asking another, “Why are we even doing this? It’s not a commercial property.” I refrained from telling him that the lady of the house is a fussy little worrywart who thinks asbestos abatement is a necessary part of carpet renovation.

If this weren’t a dominoes chain reaction story, if asbestos removal were the only activity, I’d tell you all about it. How they have to coat the insides of the rooms with plastic to make it airtight. How they set up big fans and suck the air out so they don’t breathe the dust. It makes an incredible racket so I didn’t stay around; I didn’t see the gas masks or white suits. I didn’t even see the portable shower they set up inside. They came and went through the laundry room window. They were so good they didn’t even squash the flowers in the garden under the window. If this weren’t a dominoes story, it would be a story of conscientious workers, professionalism, and great customer service.

But it is a dominoes story. The first domino: old carpet needing replacement. Other people do this. Their big aggravation is moving furniture out and back in.

Second domino: Replace some carpeted areas with wood. Oh, the existing wood is discontinued and has to be replaced to match, too? That’s the…

…Third domino. Followed by the fourth: wood installer thinks it’s getting too hard and quits at the stairs. Tim finishes stairs, furniture stabilizes, illusion of normalcy sets in.

Fifth domino: Pick out carpet. Realization that old carpet has to come out before new carpet can go in: furniture has to move out and in, then out and in AGAIN?!?

Sixth domino: Discovery that downstairs has vinyl tile under the carpet, that the adhesive attaching it to the floor has asbestos. Yes, many houses have it, but if you don’t disturb it and just cover it back up, you get to avoid the hassle the resident worrywart puts us through.

Seventh domino: Carpet guys tell us the carpet is “being made.” What does that mean? Is it like going into a restaurant and waiting for them to grow the lettuce?

So now the asbestos abatement guys are done, and the downstairs is naked to its concrete. There is NO WAY I am moving the furniture back in only to have to move it back out again. Moving furniture is not my preferred work-out routine. I can’t even tell if my aching back is from dead butt syndrome or furniture hauling.

So the furniture is going to remain in the heaps and piles where it’s been shoved. The downstairs is going to remain naked. The carpet Tim tore up is going to remain in its gigantic pile in the dining room, there to protect the new wood floors from the furniture moved out of the areas to be carpeted. Whenever the carpet shows up.

Which should be just about the time the summer visitors arrive.

Not just a floor; it's a symbol

My house is a catastrophe. It has no floors, there’s plastic everywhere (supposedly to keep out the dust), and the oven and refrigerator are in the dining room, facing the walls. Closets had to be emptied, and I can’t reach the sink over all the power tools and scrap. Never mind, it’s covered in plastic anyway. Last night, the air compressor went off at 3 a.m. and I thought a plane had crashed into the house.

When I find a place for something, that is its place for the rest of its useful life. I don’t let things move. If the bath towels are on the third shelf, right side of the closet, they will be there from Day 1 to Day 10,950. All this external order gives me the freedom to have internal disorder (I call it creativity).

Now I am barely holding on to mental stability as I realize everything will have to be put back – once I locate it. Things are in boxes or stacks all over the house. My house is one giant fruit basket upset, and it’s all so DUSTY.

I think I’m hyperventilating. But that may be because this is a love story.

Twenty-six years ago, my husband wooed me with dates and social events, planned outings and invitations. Over the years, somehow social calendaring became my job. Many women friends tell me the same thing happened to them. Tim’s current idea of planning a date is calling at 4:30 and asking, “Are there any good movies?”

Meanwhile, I look for fun things to do, pick out theater events, invite friends over, arrange vacations. Tim is an eager companion, but I am in my Third Third and tired of having to do all the planning and inviting, the discovering of new, fun things. Plane tickets and websites and changing airfares; reservations and loyalty programs and Trip Advisor. And then he just gets to relax and enjoy?

So even though I am supposedly old enough and long-married enough to know better, I can lapse into something like this: Forget it, I am going to stop planning things for the two of us. When he notices that we’re not doing anything together, maybe he’ll plan something.

Maturity is not a requirement to growing older. You can grow older without it.

Which brings me back to the floors. Every night for two weeks, Tim came home from work and ripped carpet and flooring up. Carpet with horrible dust underneath, tenacious staples, and different subsurfaces. He lugged debris outside. He walked around and around, testing for squeaks, eliminating them. He talked to workmen to find out the best way around a problem. When Paul came over and said, “Y’know, now is the best time to level the stairs and make sure they’re all exactly the same height,” I said, “No, no, no! This job is too big!” An hour later, Tim said, “Paul’s right. Now’s the time,” and he shimmed one stair which required adjusting its neighbor which required adjusting that one’s neighbor, on and on. The stairs are now perfect. Each night, Tim would shower off dust and sweat and fall into bed.

I unloaded two bookcases.

Every now and then, I thought maybe I could help and we could do this together, but really, I hated the thought and he didn’t help me plan social events or vacations so why should I…?

And then one day, a light bulb went off. I realized the floors weren’t Tim’s; they were ours.

He was not working on the floors because he loved working on floors.

He was working on the floors because it was his way of building our life together. I’m not talking about a division of labor; it’s not about I-have-my-jobs-and-you-have-yours. It’s about this is our home and we live in it together so it needs to be nice and happy and secure. While I was planning little vendettas, he was … working on the floors.

Many years ago, someone once gave me advice on staying married: Try to remember the gifts you receive, not the ones you don’t.

It wasn’t the floors that reminded me; it was the man working on them.

My house is in its Third Third, too

The carpet was the first to go. I’d meticulously cleaned every stain that appeared, every food item or glass of wine that found its way to the floor. Sophie’s weekly job was vacuuming, and she did it till she left for college, gleefully saying goodbye to the vacuum cleaner and spouting that “other mothers” had let chores slide over the years, why hadn’t I??

So the carpet was well-maintained and looked lovely…

                ...until it didn’t.

The first sign were little frays at intersections. Gradually, ripply waves started moving across its surface. It no longer fluffed up the way it used to after shampooing and vacuuming. Eventually the intersections became actual gaps.

The carpet is in its Third Third, too. No, it’s worse than that: the carpet is dying.

I decided the dining room carpet was going to reincarnate as wood laminate floor, like the kitchen. In fact, where carpet wears the worst, we’d switch to wood. Do the hallways and stairs, too. Look how great the kitchen is. Do it just like that!

Except that Pergo discontinued the color of the kitchen floor. If it’s all going to match, the kitchen has to be re-done, too.

This is what happens with remodeling. This is why I can only do remodeling every ten years or so, when the memory of the previous remodel has receded. Remodeling is like setting up dominoes: one job requires another which leads to a third. Soon your house is a demolition site.

First the tile guy did the entry way. I was trapped in the house till the grout set. Only that night did I realize, “Oh, we have a back door.” That’s what happens to your brain on remodel.

Last night, Tim ripped up a perfectly beautiful kitchen floor. I loved that kitchen floor. My hairdresser had installed it in her new salon and we got the specs and bought exactly the same stuff. It was indestructible, easy to care for, always looked great. Now it’s shards and splinters and I’m bereft.

The dining room bookshelves had to come out, too. Now all the books are piled in the living room. I’m thinking optimistically about how it will spur me on to further weeding and culling, taking books to the library as donations, putting the rest on the shelves all dusted and freshly arranged. I am trying to look on the bright side of piles and piles of books laid out all over the living room floor … but then the floor guys call to delay till next week. My optimism is fading.

After the wood floors, we’ll be re-carpeting the bedrooms and living room. Everything in them will have to be moved out … and moved back in. It’s all so daunting. And then it hits me: I had just switched rooms with Sophie’s old bedroom a few months ago. I’m going to have to move those dozens of tiny tea sets again!