Adventures in Decorating…

I have a couple of decorating “incidents” I should probably relate. One involves a new couch, and the other involves my kitchen shelves (or what’s left of them).

The first incident kicked-off when Jeff was getting ready to do our taxes. I have been wanting to get a sectional for our TV room for several years, but it was never in the budget. When Jeff informed me that he was going to do our taxes, I asked him if we got a refund, can we get a new sectional? He agreed with a smirk as he didn’t think we would be getting a refund, certainly not one that covered the price of a sectional.

I made him look me in the eyes and PROMISE that if we got a large enough refund that he would buy the couch I wanted. (Of course, I already had it picked out…I’m not an amateur).

Imagine Jeff’s chagrin when he had to tell me that we were getting a substantial enough refund to cover the cost of the couch. Too bad…a promise is a promise….

Jeff doesn’t like getting refunds. He wants our tax bill to be as close to 0 as possible. Something about not wanting the government to have access to our money for months for free…blah…blah…blah….

Lucky for me, that didn’t work out for him this year….

Since the couch I wanted was a large slip-covered sectional from Ikea, it came in many boxes and needed to be put together. Jeff and the boys were kind enough to do that.

Now, I had measured the couch to make sure it fit properly, but when it was placed on the wall where the previous couch was located, it looked “off.” I decided to relocate the couch to the other side of the room, which looked much better.

This is where the tragedy happened. I wanted the couch centered a bit better on the window, so I had Jeff push while I pulled. Evidently, my foot was lifted too high off of the ground because we rammed the couch into my big toe, and I felt my toenail lift off.

It hurt so badly, I couldn’t even get any swear words out.

I took my shoe off and sure enough, my toenail was a bloody mess. I band-aided it down and got back to work. It was kind of hanging on like a very loose tooth does. I kept it strapped down with a band aid as toe protection, that is until the second incident happened.

Last week, I wanted to move a couple of things on the shelves in my kitchen. Since I don’t do ladder work anymore, I had Tyler climb up to retrieve an item from the top shelf. After giving him my instructions, I turned around to place something on the coffee bar a few feet away when I heard “whoa” and then the sound of porcelain crashing to the floor.

I quickly turned around and saw several items smashed on the floor and the lower kitchen shelf slanted with all of the rest of the blue and white slowly sliding to the edge. Tyler was briefly stunned, and I had to shout at him to “shift it” and start grabbing things before they too hit the floor.

We managed to salvage most of the items, but the shelf itself was toast. That meant that I needed to take the upper shelf down and all of its items too.

Now, I had been thinking about replacing those shelves with some artwork at some point but I wasn’t planning on doing it that day. When Jeff came home at lunch and saw all of the rescued shelf contents all over the kitchen, he looked at me, narrowed his eyes and said, “what did you do?”

You would think that his statement was out of character for him, but I had been known in the past to start crazy home projects right before we were having company, and we WERE having company (large dinner party) in a few scant days.

He didn’t believe me, at first, that it was all an accident and that I had NO intention of doing a quick kitchen remodel right before we needed to cook a 5-course meal for 12 people. I had to call Tyler up and thoroughly and completely throw him under the proverbial bus.

Jeff finally conceded that it was, indeed, an accident and helped me take the shelf down to see how many holes I needed to patch. I told him I wanted to find some inexpensive artwork, so we measured the holes and found the dimensions we needed to cover.

Tyler and I went on an art finding adventure that afternoon. We found a lovely LARGE piece at Kirkland’s that Jeff hung over the swiss-cheesed wall that night.

I also had to farm-out all of the leftover pieces that didn’t get shattered into tiny bits. Most of them ended up in the glass cabinets over the coffee bar.

How does the first incident relate to the second one?

My big toe…

When we were cleaning up the glass on the kitchen floor, I slid the kitchen rug over so Tyler could reach some bits with the vacuum. The problem was that I slid said rug into my already injured toe.

Well THAT did it…

I had to hobble upstairs and assess the damage. The toenail was a goner. I now had a completely naked toe.

It really isn’t as sexy as it sounds. As a matter of fact, it’s kinda gross. My plan is to get those fingernail sticker things and camouflage the damage. It’s sandal season after all….

So those are my recent adventures in decorating….

Now that I think about it, I should probably call them “misadventures.”

 We all survived though, and I’m not much worse for wear, plus I got a new couch and a piece of cheap artwork that I am going to have my mom repaint to look even better. It’s nice to have artists in the family!

 Hopefully, that adventure will be less eventful than the others!