This is NOT man-bashing...honest....

Answer me this: Are all men stubborn, or is it just the one that comes with me?

We've done some remodeling in our cellar/family room. We added a bathroom, a laundry room and made a delineated area for my art stuff and Larry's wood working shop. It looks great. We have a great contractor who puts up with my whining and complaining when I tell him what I want done. I know better than to think that we, Larry and I, could possibly do the work which needs to be done to get a room looking like a room.

Many years ago we did some remodeling by ourselves and it nearly ended in divorce court. Since that time, we know to hire outside help. Yes, I know it's more costly, but when you consider the cost for lawyers and courts, it's the less costly way to go about the remodeling.

This time we decided to add the bathroom 10 days before a party. For some unknown reason we felt everything would be done in plenty of time to hold the party in the family room with the new bathroom at the ready for all the guests.

Believe it or not, the contractor finished the last of the remodel at 12:00pm the day of the party. We went downstairs immediately to clean, clear and set up for that evenings festivities. We did a great job too, together. We had so much to do there was no time to bicker, sneer or complain to each other. The party came off pretty well. Just one time I had to brush off my friends tush to get the sheet rock dust removed. Not bad, considering the way it looked when we started the cleaning.

However, when the remodel was completed we realized the walls of the existing family room looked bad, I mean really bad. We're talking 1960's maple paneling...(I know...it's coming back in style...but honest, there is no way this stuff will ever be on the H&G network as a "new and improved" look for your house....It's said that "everything old is new again" but that phrase wouldn't cut it for this paneling....My gosh, when we bought it, it was $3.49 a sheet [that's 4' X 8' sheets we're talking...] ). Anyway, the paneling needed work, of some kind. The best thing would've been to remove it and do something different on the wall, but Larry thought better of that idea.

Up we went to our neighborhood big box home improvement place. We were looking for something called, "coverall". It's a kind of wallpaper made to be painted, or not. It covers a mass of sins on existing walls, paneling being one of those sins.

We found some and bought it. This would be a "GREAT" project stated Larry. (I think he'd had a couple of beers before we went to the store. He was in a very "project" minded mood. It was either the beers, or it was the fact he was so excited about the bathroom in his "man-cave" that he morphed into some alien being....I'm still not sure).

So the party was over, a success I might add, but we had two more parties that week. I thought the wallpaper project would be done after all the parties...How dumb am I? No, Larry (or the new alien being I'm living with...still to be determined...) decides he's going to "just try a strip or two".

Larry is not the one who does wall covering in the house as a general rule, that's my bailiwick. Larry decided to go ahead and do it while I was getting ready for party number two.

Anyone who has had experience doing wall covering knows there are certain instructions that cannot be skipped. Oh, you can try to skip them, but it will take more time in the long run and the process will be so bad you'll be looking for a bunch of baby ducks to peck you to death. However, what do I know? I had to leave the family room because I started to kibitz and started to see the fire coming out of his ears.....I knew my retreat from the family room should be post haste.


After quite a while he came up and said, "something is wrong.....". I looked up from the umpteenth crystal glass I was polishing and said, "Why, whatever do you mean???" He looked at me and said, in all sincerity, "I think I should have done more prep work before hanging the paper". "Oh, reeeeally?" said I.

I followed him downstairs to the family room. We opened the door, directly opposite from the doorway where we were standing was the wall covering rolling down the wall, falling into a puddle on the rug....I just turned around and went back up the stairs, as Larry uttered, "Thanks for all your help...". ARRRGGGGHHHH!!!!!!

To be continued...