My Husband Is Doing Something That He Doesn't Want To Do

My husband is doing something that he doesn’t want to do. He is doing it anyway, because he loves me.

We added onto our house 12+ years ago, doubling the size of the house.  At that time, we had the builder paint most every room white.  And that is exactly what they did. Most every room is white, with stained wood trim.

In the past year (yes, we were kind of slow on the uptake) we noticed problems in the master shower.  Now, I will admit, that I am not a great housekeeper. Paul does most of it since he retired. I cook. I would describe my style as relaxed, very relaxed. Stains started to appear in the grout in the shower, mainly in the ceiling. I tried halfheartedly to make them disappear, but then grout started to crack and fall and tiles started to crack.

My husband, knowing that there was a bathroom above the master bath and that a water stain had appeared on the ceiling of the laundry room backed up to the bathroom, realized something needed to be done. Upon checking the obvious water source (toilet) that might be leaking, he found cold water spraying out of the back of the toilet. So he turned the water supply off to the toilet. That was about one year ago.

Now this is what you need to know about that addition that we had completed back when.  Literally every room in the existing house also had work done to it. The only rooms that had little or no work completed were the three bedrooms and the bath upstairs. Dearest daughter liked the stars that she had put on her ceiling. They glowed at night. A boy had helped her do it. She liked the dark stain on the wood floor. Grandpa had put up the delicate purple flowered wallpaper that I paid a fortune for-“Leave the room alone. Just paint the trim white.”

 We left the other two bedroom floors dark for the sake of symmetry.  Son was getting his room moved down to the lower level (basement) so he could have privacy and play music as loud as he wanted. That left his former room, which got painted. It was turned into my office/craft area and the former master got painted, to become a guest room.

The master bedroom was moved downstairs. It is large (about 20' by 20').  It has double doors, more double doors that lead out onto the patio, a huge bay window area at one end of the room, a tray ceiling, inset lighting everywhere, a huge walk-in closet off the master bathroom, and get ready for it- white (almost) plush carpet.

I think we paid more for that carpet, than all of the rest of the carpet in the house. White carpet is not a good idea, especially when you have an old male (neutered) cat (long gone to meet his maker) that marked everywhere he could get to around that large bay window area. The carpet was never the same. No matter what we tried, we couldn’t get rid of the evidence.  White carpet is also not a good choice when red pop gets spilled on it or for that matter, when anything gets spilled on it. I will also admit most (alright, all) of the spills have involved me in some way. White carpet just wants to be admired from afar. That is my opinion now. That was Paul's opinion then.

So, back upstairs-“the bathroom”. It had a door to the master and a door to the hallway. After much discussion- “It’s fine. Let’s just leave it alone”.

We are talking about the original 1960’s bathroom that came with the house when it was built. It had little square aqua and white tile on the floor and around the tub. It also had aqua Formica on the counter top, the original tub and (important information here) the original toilet. I will admit that the seat had been replaced a few times, and Paul had put in a new thing-a-ma-jig more than once.  You know the thing that has a metal ball on the end that moves up when the tank fills with water and goes down when the toilet gets flushed. You know, the thing you grab and yank upward when a toilet starts to overflow, while you are yelling for help.

So, after a year with the water cut off to the toilet upstairs and our now adult son complaining that the grout in the tub will not come clean and that he thinks the sink is beginning to leak from below, we finally decided that we could afford to do something about the bathroom.

Our friendly builder guy, John G.(He really is our friend.) came over and we told him what we wanted to have done around the house, including the bathrooms.  He did everything we asked him to do and did it timely and on budget.  The work that he and his crew did was great. He even located tile to match our master bathroom that had been discontinued. Everything looks great. We are very happy.

However, now we needed to paint both of the bathrooms and I also wanted the master bedroom painted. John suggested his wife Traci and her friend. They do interior painting as well as a lot of other artistic endeavors. The bathrooms were not going to be a problem. The bedroom however has massive furniture and lots of it. It had also accumulated a lot of other stuff that just kind of ended up in there.

Paul and I knew we were not going to do the painting. He is actually a better painter than I am. When we lived in Lapeer, I surprised him by painting a bathroom while he was at work. I used a can of paint that we had gotten for our first house and didn’t use because it was not the right shade of yellow. I decided that the shade would be perfect in this particular room. I didn’t tell him what I was going to do. When he came home, he could see the bathroom “glowing” from the backdoor. It was supposed to be a nice yellow with a golden hint to it. It ended up looking like the “Harvest Gold” appliance color that came before Avocado Green appliances.

I had done no prep work. Light switch plates, outlet plates, curtain rod, shower curtain rod, were all still in place. I had painted everything including the ceiling, the trim which had been white, the grout around the tub. There were drips that had run down the walls and hardened. There was paint spattered on the tub, the toilet, the counter, the window, the mirror.  Paul did his best to clean up the mess that I had created. We both agreed that I probably shouldn’t attempt to paint any more rooms.

                                                

So, Traci and Maria are arriving tomorrow morning to paint. Paul has spent the entire day prepping the rooms. He has moved furniture, taken down curtain rods, taken apart electronics of all kinds, and dusted.  He also went and got the paint it took me a week to pick out after crying tears over it, arguing with my daughter and Paul over the order of the chips that I had picked up, laid out (not marked) and then I had to start over picking the right color. I was a horrible brat about it all.

He has just gone back to Home Depot to get paint that we had already purchased (don’t ask when) a while ago (I am not saying) to get remixed.

The point of all this is that he did this for me. He doesn’t care if the walls are painted or not. He doesn’t care about the way the furniture is in the room. He is doing this for me.

By the way, we’ll be getting new carpet- some kind of beige, taupe, with flecks of different shades in it, something that hides spills; the kind of color that will go with Blue Reflections in eggshell satin, by Behr.

And, again, he is doing this for me... because he loves me.