The redecorating project was coming along very nicely. I even had a schedule worked out so the painting, the carpeting and delivery of new furniture would all be accomplished in one week or less. Before you laugh out loud, please remember it had been more than 15 years since we had done this.

We had finally decided on the various details. Every time I went shopping for anything but groceries, my plastic bag with all the samples we were buying went with me, so I could match any accessories I might want to buy.

One evening as I was looking out a window, it occurred to me that lace curtains might look nice.

We had had sheer panels with drapes forever. Time for a change. Back to the catalogs and the stores. I couldn’t decide which ones I might like, so I bought different styles, brought them home, and late one night, I took the old ones down from one window and put up lace panels with a swag. I was sure Bill would say, “Why is the petticoat hanging in the window?” But I was too tired to take them down and put the old stuff back up, so I let them hang and went to bed.

The next morning Bill looked at the lacy window and said, “That looks kinda nice for a change.”

I still thought it looked like a petticoat, but decided the problem was the swag, so I traded the swag for a tailored valance. We both liked it. I put them aside for a while because we wouldn’t need them for a month. I returned the ones we would not use to the stores.

The next week I got the panels and valances we would need for the living room. Then we decided to put the lace at all the windows downstairs. No problem. Well, not with the panels, but the valances had been discontinued.

Blast! I had no desire to go through all the patterns again. Valances would be straight sewing. All I had to do was buy the longest panel they had, cut it up, and hem it into valances. So I bought the long panel, and one of these days I’m going to get those valances made.

Next I looked up at the ceilings. They were a little bumpy due to some emergency replastering jobs. I consulted my son, the painter. “Sure, Mom, we can straighten them up. No problem.”

Back to the scheduling. We arranged for the carpet people to come in the day before the new furniture would arrive. I called our son, the painter, and arranged for the painting to be done two days before the carpet would be delivered, and the old furniture and carpet would be moved to their new home the day before the painting began.

We enjoyed the beauty of that plan for three days before our son called and said, “We’ll be up Wednesday to redo the ceilings.”

“Okay, uh, do we need to move the furniture out before you get here?”

“No, we can do it.”

I told Bill the good news. They would move the furniture.

He just looked at me. Finally he said, “Today is Sunday. All the boxes of stuff you took out of the big desk before we moved it over to Denny’s for refinishing have to be put upstairs.”

“There are only seven boxes, one for each drawer,” I said hopefully.

“Yeah,” he said, “plus the two big five-shelf bookcases, plus all the junk in the hutch and the curios that have to be packed away.”

Suddenly our beautiful four-day plan which wasn’t scheduled to start for two weeks was a two-week plan that was starting in three days.

Whose idea was it to redecorate I wondered.

But I didn’t ask out loud.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This column was first published in the Greenville Advocate on April 12, 2000.