For eleven years (as long as we have lived in our house), Troy and I dreamed of replacing the stain magnet carpeting with hardwood floors. While most people in our comfortably middle class neighborhood would have long ago whipped out their Visa and contracted someone to do the job, we have not for one reason: Troy.
You may be expecting this to turn into a case of husband bashing, but I am actually quite proud to have married a man who believes in saving up to pay in cash, refuses to hire someone to do what he can eventually figure out, and enjoys shopping.
As you know, I hate shopping, but for Troy it is the way his primitive hunting instinct presents itself. Channeling nomadic ancestors, he subconsciously believes that he has only so many arrows to bring down his prey, so waits patiently (too patiently, I often believe) for the perfect specimen to cross his prowling path before digging into his quiver. My dad says Troy is just cheap like his mom. “They grip a dollar bill until George Washington screams.”
Thus, it took years to pick the ideal floors because Troy enjoys the hunt far more than the kill. For a few more years, we would “visit” them to affirm our choice. Last month we stopped by and found that the floors were on sale to the degree that even Troy had to admit it was a deal too good to pass up. He pondered it until the very last day of the sale, drew back his bow and shot.
The floors we picked
I went into a mild panic, suspecting that my spouse had been replaced by a pod person, because this man had just bought a new kitchen table the previous week, from a store. I emphasize this because only once before have we bought furniture from a store, and that was with our wedding money. Yes, we had “stalked” this table for months and combed Craigslist looking for a better deal, but eventually he slapped down the greenbacks, going so far as to purchase insurance for it; this from a man who maintains that bike helmets are sissyfying a generation.
The precious, insured table
So I spent that week peering into my husband’s eyes to make sure his soul was still there while he hopped on Facebook to round up friends to help with instillation. The family room is lined with thirty, eighty pound boxes of hardwood flooring (SO happy that the boys are home from college and will work for cheap pizza) as they acclimate to dry Colorado, which gives us time to get up to our neck in the brutal tar baby of home improvement. I’ll share that fun little trail of projects next time.
Flooring acclimating in our family room
