Maniacal Bric-a-brac-ism

Home improvement do-it-yourselfers—beware. You will have no one but yourself to blame when things go wrong.

And they will.

I haven’t written for quite some time and now you know why. We have been doing a little home improvement this month. It all started with the need for new flooring, as the carpet was going on twenty years old. In dog years that would be 114, and believe me it looked it. It was beyond shabby and moving toward threadbare.

As you know, one thing leads to another. Kind of like buying a new outfit. If you buy a dress, you have to find shoes and a purse to go with it, etc… So it is with flooring. New flooring requires the walls to be freshly painted beforehand. The baseboards all need to be pulled off, sanded, and stained. And lighting fixtures must be replaced.

Instead of carpet we decided to go with wood. Being the keeper of two dogs who still have “accidents” and think carpet is the equivalent of a litter box, I hoped wood would mess with their little minds and maybe they’d be afraid to go on it.

The wood planks just click together so easily and you’re done in two swishes of a lambs tail. At least that’s what the Vietnamese man at Home Depot told us when he sold the boxes of wood to us. Of course upon our return to the store for a second room of punishment, we learned that he’d never actually worked with the wood, but just read the hype on the side of the boxes.

When the floors were finally done, I heard Karen Carpenter singing in my head—“We’ve only just begun…”

Redecorating has commenced. I am a novice at such things. I have no problem dressing myself, but when it comes to rooms, choosing colors, drapes, rods, lamps, or random decorations, I fall apart.

I think I have Home Decorating Phobia, or as it’s called in psychiatric circles—Maniacal Bric-a-Brac-ism. Whenever I find something I think would be perfect for my living room, it’s either in a museum—or according to my daughter—should be.

But the other day I braved the furniture/decorator stores on my own and came home with a lovely black and white lidded jar that I thought would look terrific on my bookcase. I was immediately met with looks of utter shock and confusion. The shock was from my daughter who was aghast that I would buy an urn as a decoration. Had someone died she didn’t know about?! The look of confusion on my son’s face changed to fear as he wondered if we were planning on moving him out of the house “the hard way.” Needless to say, I took it straight back to the store. The opening was a tad small for cookies anyway and I couldn’t think of anything else to put in there right now.

Follow