Dining Room Developments

Some are skeptical, but I'm going to have this baby looking like something in a magazine by Christmas Eve!

Ed and I have officially entered the cussing and fussing phase of our dining room renovation, beginning with me burning my arm on the chandelier while painting the ceiling and ending with Ed having a chisel fall on his head, which apparently hurt and made Ed angry at me, as he claimed it was my fault the chisel was on top of the ladder in the first place.

“Yes, but I didn’t tell you to move the ladder!” I yelled, torn between alarm that Ed’s head could have cracked open (it didn’t) and irritation that he was blaming me for something that happened because he doesn’t listen. “I asked you to move the table so that I could move the ladder! Me move the ladder, not you!”

See, I’d tried to move the table myself and for my trouble got a broken table leg, and I’d called Ed for assistance. Of course I got the old Kunta response, but then he showed up, and you kind of know the rest.

Rubbing the back of his head, Ed looked at the table top piled high with cans of paint, a big bin of books slated for the bookcase, rollers, brushes, compound, plastic gloves, sanding sponges, a radio, and a bunch of other stuff, and disgustingly said “Who the hell tries to move a table with all this junk on it?” I told him, “The table’s on wheels,” to which he snorted and said, “Yes, and they’re two hundred years old.” The table is an antique, but I don’t think it’s that old, but okay I get his point. Still, I say the chisel incident is Ed’s fault. If he’d asked me, I’d have told him not to move the ladder, because a few days earlier, a tub of compound had fallen on my head before colliding with my glasses and knocking them clear off my face, and yes, it hurt. So, I’d already learned my lesson about moving the ladder with things on top of it.

Speaking of the ladder, the eight-foot beauty I’m using belongs to Liz, our carpenter, who lent the ladder to me after taking a look at our rickety, wooden five footer and saying “Uh, Crystal you should be careful on that ladder.” I casually told her “I’ll be fine, I’ve used this ladder all over the house,” but this time I hadn’t considered how high the dining room ceilings are, how short I am, and how unstable the ladder has become over the years. Long story short, while painting the top level of the bookshelf, with the ladder swaying this way and that, I was literally fearing for my life, imagining Ed coming home from work and finding me sprawled on the dining room floor, legs askew and back cracked, barely conscious, kind of like those old people in the Life Alert® commercials. So the next time Liz offered her ladder, I gratefully said, “Yes, Liz, that would be wonderful!”

Do you think this chandelier knows its days are numbered?

As you’ve no doubt figured out, Liz is female, and I can’t believe my good fortune in finding such a talented woman carpenter, and she’s nice too. She has no idea how many projects I’ve got planned for her, but she’ll find out!

Well, we’ve all got to head out to Lowe’s for more primer (am I the only one still suspicious of those combined primer/ paint products?), and it’s close to dinner, so I’d better shower (hey, I’ve been painting all day) so that we can get moving!