home improvement - on a channel near you!

We’re having fun this week. At least I am – not so sure about hubby. My doc client is on holidays, which means I get a holiday (from typing) as well. We’ve already had our official vacation, so this week the decks have been cleared for some interior decorating. These thoughts to the contrary notwithstanding, I have caved in to trendiness, and we’re presently up to our elbows in a house project.

It’s nothing startling. I’m not doing anything brave like knocking out walls or painting them red. I’m simply getting our house into the 90s, or maybe it is only even the 80s, by painting all the dark wood doors and baseboards, white.

Now all my home-owning life I’ve been laissez faire in the decorating department. This is due to several things. For one, I never learned to hang wallpaper – only listened to the tales of how horrendous an experience it could be and decided, all those years when wallpaper was the rage, I didn’t need that.

For another, I married a man who doesn’t like doing handyman projects or having the peace of his home disturbed by others doing them. In the past whenever I made noises about wanting to make changes, he’d always convince me things were fine the way they were.

However, even the most lackadaisical of women can tolerate builder-beige and wood paneling from the 70s only so long. A few years ago I surprised even myself by tackling the dining room. In one determined week I painted walls that had been a yellowy cream since 1984, a soft clay color.

The result so inspired me I spent a week last summer covering the faux-wood paneling in my back room office with the same color, and painting all the trim white. To give him credit, hubby got right into the spirit of things. The week it took me to paint that room last year would surely have stretched to two or three if he hadn’t tackled all the bookshelves and doors.

This year it’s the turn of the upstairs doors and closet bifolds. I’ve already put primer and one coat of semi-gloss on four door frames, while hubby (who thankfully has been talked onside again this year) is one coat away from finishing the doors in Sonia’s old room. Even with the smudgy green masking tape still in place, it’s looking much better. Hubby’s "It really was fine just the way it was" will soon be silenced. He’ll see!