The other night as The Husband and I were in bed reading, I brought up the subject of wainscoting. You see, once the bathroom is finished, we plan to knock down the grease-stained, horsehair-plaster-and-cheap-sheetrock walls in our kitchen and replace them with quality sheetrock and wainscoting, and I wanted to talk about the cost of the wainscoting.
So there we were, talking linear feet and price and baseboard mouldings, when I realized that, actually, I didn’t want to talk about the cost of wainscoting. Even though I was the one who brought the subject up, I never ever wanted to talk about wainscoting ever again.
This is an unforeseen side effect of home renovations. The renovations become such a huge part of your life that you become unable to talk about anything else. Approximately 75% of my conversations with The Husband in the past two-to-three weeks have been along the lines of, “Have you called the electrician? When will the floors be done? Is the water back on? How much does 70 linear feet of wainscoting cost, anyway?” (The amount of time we spend discussing these things would be higher, but at least 23% of our conversations are about cribs, diapers, and strollers. Yeah, we’re living the high life.)
My sister-in-law, who currently resides in a house with completely new walls (and wainscoting!), warns me that once we are finally done with the renovating, the shop talk will not be over. Oh, no. Because then we will have to invite people over and show them everything we’ve done. And if they are homeowners themselves, they, too, will be compelled to discuss things such as the cost of wainscoting, because other homeowners can’t help but be interested. Those without houses, however, would prefer that we all shut the hell up.
So, to all you non-homeowners out there, I have this to say on behalf of those of us planning renovations, undergoing renovations, or basking in our renovated homes: We are sorry that we can talk about nothing but wainscoting, drywall, the benefits of ceramic vs. acrylic tile, and porch-painting. We are sorry that we have become such colossal bores. We can’t help it. There must be something in the wainscoting.
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2 comments:
Yes! Even if you are NOT renovating, just owning a house renders you physically incapable of talking about ANYTHING ELSE. All of our friends are new homeowners and all of them are renovating and even though all we've done is paint a room or two, my husband and I can't even stand being in our OWN company. Talk about colossal bores... (found your site through a comment at Arwen's- I love your blog's name!)
Thanks, Maggie! I love it when people comment. I think there are about 15 people who read my blog, but if you discount The Doktah and the people to whom I'm related, my readership is down in the single digits.
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