The Domino Theory of Domestic Bliss

The Domino Theory of Domestic Bliss, Part 1  April, 2015

Amazing how time, cats, and the Spirit of Christmases Past can upset the apple cart that you call home.  Not that I actually live in an apple cart.  But right now my home does look like the aftermath of a truly horrific apple cart disaster, minus the apples.  Perhaps this is a bad analogy.  I'm sticking to it anyway.

 Below is what I see when I peer through the French doors between my current hideout in the family room and the original part of our home, which was built in 1978.  Notice my husband Jim propped up against the couch that this morning was a deep garnet red.  Notice his head of completely white hair, that, just this morning, could still claim to have a decent portion of pepper mixed in with the salt. Notice the layer of ash that might make the reader think that the aforementioned apple cart was in the path of a destructive volcanic eruption.

I found myself entertaining a guest this fine April morning, relegated to one corner  in the family room, serving tea and pastries on Christmas dishes, unable to access my kitchen.  Luckily there is an attached apartment on the other side of the family room, complete with a fine kitchen that was once well stocked.  Luckily, I was able to serve up my tea party fare using the melon baller, butcher knife, plastic cocktail forks, and poinsettia-bordered plates that I still had access to.  How did it all come to this, anyway?

Tea and Crumpets, Anyone?

Now serving in the back corner of the room!  Luckily crumpets are small!

Well, much in the manner that the war was lost due to the loss of a horse, the horse lost for the loss of a shoe, the horseshoe lost for the loss of a nail, etc.  I have to reach back a ways to explain the current state of my home.  Let's see now...where to begin?

Christmas 2011--almost four years ago.  We had replaced our aging pellet stove with a lovely new and much more efficient one.  I always put lots of effort into decorating for the holidays, removing pictures, sconces, wreaths, and plaques and replacing them with jolly Christmas art and doo-dads.  I was quite horrified to see dozens of soot frames decorating said walls when seen in their pristine (read empty) glory.  Luckily, my festive holiday decor somewhat camouflaged the sad and smudged walls.  After Christmas( ok-mid-January!), when I traditionally un-decorate the house for  my yearly observation of Martin Luther King Day, I was too worn out from year-end celebrations to tackle a major project, so I just re-hung all the stuff that had sat in storage boxes in the shed since Thanksgiving.  Remember, I said that I enjoy having a nicely decorated house.  Actual down and dirty house cleaning and maintenance, I do not enjoy not so much.  And the concept of "in a timely manner" is completely foreign to me.  Out of sight, out of mind. All in its own good time.   Those are my mottos!  

 

Three more Christmas seasons passed, and by 2015, I knew that something would definitely need to be done to freshen up the place.  Luckily, Jim doesn't mind painting too much, so I figured this spring or summer, we'd deal with soot and smudges.

I kind of rushed ahead through those winter holiday seasons in this telling, but verily, other seasons had passed in the interim.  Three full springs and summers.  Plus several other seasons, maybe ten.  At any rate,  Jim and I were experiencing problems in the bedroom.  No, not that kind.  The kind related to cats and curtains.  I think Jim must be a saint for putting up with my decorating motifs.  Our bedroom is very feminine, a vision of tiny pink roses on blue latticed wall paper, very outdated, and I love it.  It matches a handmade pink teddy bear I was given from a student well over thirty years ago that sits atop the bed.  That's how I decorate, baby--start with one accessory and build a whole room that will remain largely unchanged for decades. 

We don't have much in the way of curtains in our house, because we like light, we have a lot of privacy, and at this point in time, I figure if some random stranger is stricken blind from viewing me charging through the house in my underwear or less, well, that's his problem for being too close to my windows with his eyes open.  But the morning sun shines bright into our bedroom so I had hung white sheer panels with a lovely  blue valance (note: same adjectives apply to window treatment as to previously mentioned general bedroom style).  This blocked enough sunlight to allow us to sleep at least until  the alarm clock woke us.  Or until my cat would screech and hiss as she clawed her way from the floor up to the curtain rod.  This was a fairly regular occurrence.My cat does not play with laser toys, catnip mice, spring-loaded fish, or any of the many other amusements I have bought for her.  No, she really only thrills to the opportunity to shred the one pair of curtains I have in the whole house!  Also, Miss Butterfly McQueen seemed to particularly relish  opportunities to hide behind the panels and cough up fur balls onto the white window sills. Now, lest you think that I would allow my bedroom to be festooned with tattered and puke-stained rags, please be assured that I removed them while they still only evidenced enough snags in the fabric to have given the once opaque sheers the texture of a tapestry.  And I always cleaned up the fur balls. But the curtains had to go!

.

  Butterfly McQueen, Resting Up for Next Assault on Bedroom Curtains

& Growing Fur for Hair Balls

So, about a year and a half ago, I took them down.  Then the sun began to awaken us too early.  We solved the problem as best we could, by mashing pillows over our eyes or burrowing under the covers, neither of which was too comfortable in the summer.  Plus you woke up with hard-to-get-rid-of pillow case and sheet wrinkles smooshed into your morning flabby face.  Not attractive.

I was rummaging through the linen closet one day when I came upon four panels of white dotted Swiss curtains that had formerly been in the Cherry Bedroom (so called because the wall paper border in Melanie's room had gorgeous cherries emblazoned on it.   I know, out-of-date!).  Hot damn! Re-purposed curtains would allow more shut-eye for the puffed and creased Jim and Marilyn.  Ever on the lookout for time-saving tricks when it comes to household drudgery, I decided that I wouldn't bother to iron the curtains until I first hung them to see how they looked on the window.  Clever, no?  Even though ironing is the one chore I enjoy.  I believe that is called irony.  Working somewhat feverishly, as I was quite taken with both my thrift and efficiency, it wasn't until I had single-handedly  wrestled with and hung the curtain panels that I noticed  the panels were from two different completely sets of curtains.  One was floor length; one fell  six or eight inches below the window sill. In other words, both sets were all wrong. At least I managed to hang them in an artful short-long short-long pattern.  One thing I can always say for myself, I can never be accused of succumbing to hubris, as I am constantly reminded that I am an idiot.

Well, at least I can sew.  I figured that when the spirit moved me (I seriously think that I was a Quaker in a former life),  I would shorten all the panels to a right-to-the-windowsill length.  Weeks passed.  The spirit felt a slight rustling.  So I got out my very nice, but infrequently used Bernina sewing machine, thread, pins, measuring tape, and set to work.  Only problem was that the machine would not stitch.  I checked the bobbin, took everything apart and cleaned all the casings, gears, and whatever else inhabits a sewing machine body.  No luck.  I'd exhausted my bag of tricks.  I determined that it had been awhile since I'd taken the machine into the dealer for regular maintenance and cleaning. so I knew what my next course of action must be.  Several weeks later I actually put the sewing machine in the trunk of the car so that if I actually drove down to Folsom and passed the sewing center, I would have the ailing machine with me.

Two months later, I did drive  past the sewing center, on a day when it was open, and lugged the machine inside.  It would be worth the hundred or hundred and fifty bucks to have my machine back in good working order.  Well, apparently, it required a bit more than just routine maintenance, including a completely new bobbin mechanism.  Oh, and from rattling around in my car's trunk for two months on bumpy country roads, it looked like I'd also cracked the actual body of the sewing machine.  Just a hairline crack, but still!  Long story short, a mere month and a half later, and four hundred twenty dollars lighter, I had a beautifully working sewing machine again.  I think.  I haven't actually used it yet.  But that will have to wait for Part Two of the Domino Theory of Domestic Bliss.

The Domino Theory of Domestic Bliss, Part 2

It looks like I forgot to mention in part one that I opted to wait to claim my back-in-good-repair sewing machine from the shop until well after Christmas, as the four hundred and twenty dollars required to get it out of hock was needed to buy Christmas gifts for the family. Especially since I would (again) be sewing no gifts for anyone.  In fact, we decided that instead of exchanging gifts with each other, Jim and I would make a short get-away down the coast in mid-January.  I did force myself to take down all the Christmas decorations and put back up most of our non-holiday items before we left for our coastal escape.

Using my Groupon and Living Social accounts, I had gotten great deals on a night on the water in both Morro Bay and Monterey,  with neither hotel room even costing a hundred dollars per night.  Score!  And they were nice places!  In Morro Bay, our room had beautiful wood shutters that afforded both privacy and light.  Actually, I thought these would be perfect for our bedroom window at home, as Butterfly McQueen could not sneak up into them to use as a scratching post or repository for coughed up fur-balls.  Plus, the shutters could be considered a practical update for our quaint, totally out of style bedroom.

Now I may do nothing of note for  weeks, months, years, even decades, but once I make up my mind to do something, I throw caution to the wind and charge ahead with unbridled swiftness.  I zipped off to Home Depot and began checking out blinds and shutters.  I broached the subject with Jim, who agreed this would be a good project.  We ordered the blinds a couple of weeks later, as there was a great sale at that time.  The sale was so good, that I decided we should order blinds for the living room as well, so the next day we returned to the store and ordered them.  Our house has over-sized windows.  Lovely for letting in light.  A pain for ordering curtains, drapes, or blinds.  We had measured very carefully--twice-- just to make sure.  As soon as we returned home from ordering the second set, I realized we had measured incorrectly, so I raced back to Home Depot with the new measurements.  Formerly eager salespeople appeared distressed to see me barreling back to the window covering department for the fifth time in two days  with my little notebook and measuring tape in hand. But I thought I'd finally gotten it right, and hey!  I'm always a polite and self-effacing customer.

Of course, now that I had ordered shutters for the living room as well, we could not hold off til spring  to paint the walls in the living room.  And while we were at it, we'd better do the dining room, hallway, and family room.  I could see Jim getting a bit panicked at the thought of throwing the whole house into upheaval, so we agreed to start with just the two main walls in the living room, so we'd be ready for the shutters installation.  But, planning ahead, I began to systematically take everything down from the walls in the living room, hallway, and dining room, including all the books and brick-a-brack on the floor to ceiling bookshelves.

Enter our daughter Melanie.  "Mom, if you're going to re-paint the whole front part of the house, you've GOT to get rid of these hideous popcorn ceilings!"  Melanie is nothing if not direct, but she also has boundless energy and is always more than willing to lend her help to any projects we undertake. "I did it at the house in L.A.  It's easy to do, a bit messy, but easy to do."  I thought back to that house she'd lived in fifteen years ago.  "Was there any furniture in the house when you did this?"  Of course not--the house was completely empty at the time of the ceiling work as no one was yet living in the abode.

 Truth be told, I'd long been sick of the popcorn ceilings, with their grimy look and  constant cobweb sprawl.  I had wanted them removed for quite some time It seemed that if we were doing all this work, why not get rid of the popcorn ceilings as well?  We contacted a friend who'd done a nice job re-doing our front bathroom the year before, and he said it was something he and Jim could complete in just a couple or three days.  Poor Jim.  I see now that his hair had started going white long before we started scraping the ceilings!   Naturally, I  wanted to get all this done before the shutters were installed.  We scoped out Home Depot for the necessary supplies, and lined up a time to get started on the popcorn project.  Joe, our friend who would be helping us, suggested we look at some YouTube videos before we got started.  All internet videos and articles on popcorn ceiling removal had one thing in common:

MAKE SURE THERE IS NO ASBESTOS IN YOUR POPCORN CEILINGS

 before you do anything else!   Failure to do so can result in DEATH!  WHAT???

  

This cheery news caused us to stop in our tracks.  Our house had been built during the transition year between when asbestos was not banned and when it was.When faced with any kind of dilemma, this is what I do.  Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  For days or weeks.  Eventually I come up with  a plan, but not after quite some time of staring vacantly into space, coming up with contingency after contingency, and casting off each one in turn.  The wheels spin, but I go nowhere. I take to the couch. And I'm depressed.

Choices From The Couch:

1.  Do nothing.  Keep the house exactly as it is
2.  Paint, and just re-paint the ceilings.  Asbestos is not a danger unless it is released into the air--like when taking down acoustic ceilings.
3.  Do nothing.  Eat ice cream
4.  Hire a contractor and a HazMat team to deal with it all.
5.  Do nothing.  Take another trip to the coast.
6.  Do an asbestos test and take it from there.

Eventually I recovered my equilibrium, called up a lab in Sacramento, and we did an asbestos test, which showed no asbestos in the house.  Hooray!  Now we could proceed.

In the interim, when I was couch-bound, Jim had decided to go ahead and paint the family room, an addition to the home that already had nicely finished ceilings.  Away with all the memorabilia in the family room!  Off it went to the apartment, which, at one point had been perfectly organized with all the front-of-the-house crap. Now it looked like several small explosives had gone off in there. But the family room was now ready to receive the furniture from the living room and dining room.  Rendering it the complex maze of chairs, sofas, end tables and lamps, that greeted my guest and me for our mid-morning tea.

Which, I believe, brings me full circle to the beginning of this all-too-lengthy, but still condensed  version of home repairs a la Souza.  The tea turned out just fine, and the pastries were delicious.  The popcorn was removed from the ceilings in what had to be the messiest project we had ever undertaken.  We have decided that the popcorn ceilings can remain in the three bedrooms, and can be painted if we ever feel like it, which we probably won't.  I do worry that if something were to happen to Jim, I'd be forced to sell a house that is dated and in need of repairs.  Jim, on the other hand, has informed me that I worry too much, and if I should kick the bucket first, he'll just load a few things into his little racing camper, and take off to parts unknown! He would most likely abandon the cat. I should prepare the kids for those eventualities, I guess.




In a final note of irony,  once all the popcorn had been removed from the dining room ceiling, I was on the phone, looked up, and spotted a  tenacious little creature.  Sure, let us try to de-popcorn his habitat!  You can take the popcorn out of the ceilings, but you can't take it out of a Daddy-Long-Leg's web!

Final Note:  It is now July 11.  We have decided to re-texture the ceilings.  Not with acoustic popcorn, but with a hand troweled effect.  So, nothing has been finished, walls are still largely empty, ceiling vents are still missing, and ceiling lamps hang precariously by wires.  We survived a  ridiculously stressful  window blinds installation imbroglio---perhaps a future blog post, but it's too exhausting to recount now. The Daddy-Long-Legs have vacated the front part of the house, and are apparently ensconced in the front bedroom, which they are happily and copiously decorating with their webs.  And hopefully, I will be able to put up Christmas decorations before New Years!