LETTERS FROM HOME: THE BEAUTY OF GETTING SOMETHING DONE AROUND THE HOUSE

Dec. 4, 1997

Dear Pat,

DC and I are approaching a household milestone. The peacocks are finally being evicted from our walls.

When we moved into our house 3 1/2 years ago, one of the projects we set for ourselves was to replace the peacock wallpaper in the dining room. Not that the wallpaper offended our taste. It was, in fact, a rather bold decorating stroke that seemed to fit right into an Arts and Crafts home. But the wallpaper was of indeterminate age and the peacocks were coming apart at the seams. The dining room was looking a bit tattered.

Since there are worse things than being tattered, other projects have taken precedence. For instance, the trim on the house is now half painted. Has been for some time now. And the paint on the front staircase is half stripped, which of course makes the staircase look twice as bad as it originally did. No one wants a stripper to go just half way.

Headway on the dining room project has been fitful. The new wallpaper was purchased about a year ago but we weren't sure whether to hang it on top of the old wallpaper or strip the old away. People who claimed to know had different opinions.

I admit to being a neutral observer in the negotiations who was starting to grow fond of those peacocks. "But it will be so beautiful when it's done," DC said.

DC finally found wallpaper hangers who proposed to do the job for a reasonable fee but insisted we strip the old paper. We didn't know what we were getting into.

There were three layers of old wallpaper, the first of which had bonded with the plaster wall. So we've been spending many nights and Saturday afternoons atop ladders chiseling away with hammers and putty knives. DC's father and mother even pitched in.

It has been hard work, with progress made inch by inch. I was not meant to sculpt granite. I like big brush strokes. Golf strokes are what I really like.

In some spots we had to gouge out chunks of plaster. Plaster dust hung in the air. Each session demanded a bath afterward, during which you'd find your scalp had become bumpy with fine pebbles.

As a light at the end of the tunnel began to glimmer, we discovered that phone calls to the wallpaper hangers were going unanswered. Perhaps a missing persons report was called for but we thought it more likely they'd suddenly gotten out of the wallpaper business and hadn't the heart to tell us.

So we engaged another wallpaper hanger, who gave us a comfortably distant starting date. This is the incentive we had needed all along, a deadline. Deadlines are my life. We were down to two walls and a few especially tough patches elsewhere. We would make it, I thought.

Monday I arrived home from work at 9 p.m. to find DC pounding on the wall, her face as white as a mime's. She'd been at it for an hour, she said, because "the wallpaper guy had a change in his schedule and wants to start tomorrow." She agreed because she thought we really needed not a comfortable deadline but an uncomfortable one if the job was to get done.

This woman is getting to know me too well.

Herewith is the secret to finally finishing those pesky household projects: A work crew arrives tomorrow and you're angry with your spouse for figuring out how to short circuit your household procrastinations.

Big Sam became a wallpaper-driving man. "It's going to be so beautiful when it's done," DC said encouragingly.

The dust has settled now. The walls have been mudded and Gary, our wallpaper hanger, says he could begin putting up paper today. I finally agree. It will be so beautiful when it's done.

Love, Sam

~Sam Blackwell is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.