The Office

Our house was something we never thought we would be able to do, back in the day.  We were poor, but wanted to stop paying rent and start putting money into something we could someday call our own.  We never thought we would be able to afford a house, but came across a company that was selling new houses for pretty cheap.  Of course, it was cheap because they were built that way, but we also never dreamed we would be living in it so long!  To keep our house on the more affordable end, we did as much work on it ourselves as we could.  One of the things we did, or I should say Evan did, was to put in the tile to the front entryway.  We were basically given some marble that a friend of ours picked up in Mexico many years ago, but had decided he no longer wanted it.  Evan decided on a pattern and then over the course of several days, put in our unique entry way.  We were pretty proud of it for one because Evan did it, but also because no one in the neighborhood had anything like it.  Our house is a cookie-cutter house so it was a big deal to us to have something different.  The one thing about our marble is that it has a vein of pink running through it.  Yes, pink.  I love the tile, but pink it not my favorite color.  In fact, it is my least favorite.  Good thing, when I look at my tile, I don't really see the pink, I see the grays and whites in it instead.  However, when we were picking out carpet for our front room, the one where we would have guests come to sit when they came over, we couldn't find carpet we felt would match the tile except for a pink one, which, believe it or not, was in style at the time.  Now, look.  It was nice when we first put it in.  The carpet went well with the tile and we didn't care too much since we weren't going to be living there for long. 

Now, 15 years later, the carpet was horrible.  I hated it!  What's more, that room is now Evan's office and has been for 10 years.  He practically lives in that room and the carpet is the worst thing ever!  No man should ever have to endure what Evan did with having pink carpet in his office!!  I also found out in my interior design class that pink drains a person.  Emotionally, physically, mentally.  It is sometimes used in prisons in cells to calm the inmates.  Evan was in a prison cell in our home!  And his emotional state was taking a toll.  We needed to change something and it was way overdue! 

After the Beach House, we decided now that I have my own space and some peace, it was Evan's turn.  (See, he is the best husband ever!  He endured so much with the pink carpet and still let me have my room first.)  He spent more than a couple of hours looking online and trying to come up with a color he would like for the office walls.  The walls had always been painted white.  Same as the ceiling.  And the doors.  And the baseboards.  With pink carpet.  Boring.  He didn't want white.  And he didn't want bright.  For him, the white and bright was screaming out and it was distracting.  He needed something with color.  The problem was that he wanted something dark (you know, more professional looking), but dark colors in a room are associated with heaviness and depression.  Feelings we were trying to get rid of from our home. 

A couple of weeks ago, Evan was invited to go to San Francisco with his brother for a very rare vacation.  The wheels in my head started turning and I thought about that show we used to watch on tv called "While You Were Out".  You don't even have to have watched the show to get to what I was thinking!  Evan had done that for me a long time ago with our family room, and I wanted to do the same for him in his office.  I encouraged him to go.  In the few days before he left, he expressed to me that he didn't want to go because he would be just coming back to the same thing (don't worry, he was talking about his office not me) and that would be unbearable.  He didn't know if he could face coming back to the same mess.  I was afraid he wouldn't go!  But he did go and he had a good time.  A few days before he left, he chose a color- green.  He printed out a picture of the color so I could see it.  He had also found some wood flooring at Home Depot that was on sale and we both liked it so we purchased enough to do the office.  He must have seen those wheels in my head and known I would try to do something since the color and the floor was all picked out before he left.  I didn't tell him anything, though, except that I had so much homework to do and assured him I didn't have time to do much else.  Well, he left, and I got to work!

I had my mom, a classmate from interior design class, and my younger daughter and younger son to help me out.  We took out everything from the office except for the stereo (it was connected to some wires under the carpet and I didn't know how to disconnect them and I didn't want to mess them up), and the carpet since we didn't care what happened to it.  We wiped down the walls and baseboards, taped everything to keep unwanted paint off of some places, and got to work.  What am I saying?  This was already hard work!  It took us a couple of hours to pull everything out and then we had to get a neighbor to help us move the heavier furniture.  We were exhausted!  Then we had to tape everything and putty the holes in the walls!  The doors to the office are French doors and we had to tape all the panes of glass to keep paint off them if the brush of paint slipped and we also taped the baseboards.  Whew! 

The day before, Chelise and I had found the paint color Evan wanted, but we had it mixed 2 shades lighter and hoped he wouldn't mind.  We also got the rest of the cream colored paint that we used in the Beach House and got it ready.  My plan was to paint the ceiling, doors, and baseboards the cream color, and paint the walls the green.  We would start with the ceiling and doors, then do the walls, then tear out the carpet, then paint the baseboards all before Evan came home.  Yep. I bit off more than I could chew. 

The ceiling and doors didn't take too long, then we started on the walls.  It was so much fun to see the color going on the walls!  I had purchased paint that had the primer mixed in it already so I didn't have to prep the walls, however, I noticed that the green paint would go on the walls when I pushed the roller up, but would come off in little splotches when the roller went down.  No matter how many times I rolled that thing up and down, the paint kept coming off in little splotches!  I finally decided I would have to wait for it to dry and do a second coat.  The only problem was that after we got the room painted with the first coat, we were out of paint.  I had only gotten one gallon!  If we had only to do a single coat, it would have been perfect.  Oh, well.  Back to Home Depot I went. 

I had planned on ripping out the carpet after we finished painting so we wouldn't get blobs of paint on the cement that might cause problems when we put the wood flooring in, but I got impatient.  As we were waiting for paint to dry, I started ripping that pink mess out.  Once I got started, I couldn't stop.  It was much easier to rip it out than I thought, then Chelise and I carried it out to the trailer where it still sits today.  This week, it goes to the dump!

Now, I was getting pretty nervous by this time.  I mean, Evan might have known what I was up to, but I never confirmed with him that he really wanted the green.  Nor did I check to see if he wanted the shade I had picked over the one he had picked.  I wasn't worried about the carpet.  I knew that was going no matter what, but I had also taken out every single item from the office (the stereo went after we tore out the carpet) and he needed to get back to work as soon as he got back.  In my zeal to get everything out and get started with the transformation, I didn't pay attention to where things went.  We piled stuff in our already cluttered game room, and the furniture and other odds and ends went into the family room where we only had a small space to walk.  (We literally couldn't use our family room for anything except getting to the kitchen for almost a week!)  I couldn't even begin to find the things Evan would need to get back to work when he came back.  I was afraid he would not be happy about my "help", but instead would blow a fuse!  I was a little relieved when he called me on Monday and told me that they wouldn't be back that evening as planned, but would be back early Tuesday morning, around 5:00 am.  That gave me a little more time to finish up the last touches and try harder to pull up the padding pieces that had been glued to the cement floor and I had no clue how to get it off. 

Monday evening, my mom came back and she and Chelise took turns using Mom's steamer on the floor while I touched up paint.  It seemed that the steamer would dissolve a bit of the glue and by using a putty knife we could scrape off some of the padding.  It was slow going and we resigned ourselves to the fact that there was no way we were going to get it done before he made it back, but we tried our best.  After a few hours, Mom went home, and the kids went to bed.  I swept the floor as best I could around the padding fragments that were still glued to the floor, returned the desk so Evan would have something to work on in there, and stacked up the ladder and other painting supplied in the corner out of the way.  Then I went to bed and waited. 

Sure enough, 5 am came around, Evan called to let me know they were down the street.  I got up and checked the office again and waited.  And waited.  Time seemed to go by slowly as my heart raced gearing up for disappointment.  Guess what!  He didn't yell at me!  He actually like it!  He wasn't upset!  It was good!  Phew! 

This isn't the end of The Office Story, but this is the end of this post.  Stay tuned for more!

PS- This description in no way describes the hard work that my helpers put into everything those couple of days.  I would like to give a special Thank You to Marie Webb, Davina Porter, and Chelise and Bryant Frederickson for all they did to help me in my crazy idea to try to get this room painted for my amazing husband!