Home Renovation and Other Marital Disasters

Here's a little known tidbit to digest over your morning coffee: There are more than 90,000 women in prison in the US at this moment. Most, according to a source I found, were incarcerated for economic crimes. Hmm, maybe, but I have my own opinion on that. I'm willing to bet that if anyone bothered to dig a bit deeper into the subjec, they'd discover HRV was at the root of most of the crimes.

HRV, or House Remodeling Violence shall soon become a perfectly acceptable defense plea. Half the juries are made up of women, right? There's the sympathy vote right there.

Have you ever painted with your husband? Wall-papered? Picked out new window treatments? Then you might have an idea of where this is going. If you've ever remodeled a room or portion of a house with a spouse, it's easy to understand how homicide might be the result. Or, at the very least, resorting to vigorous beatings.

You might have guessed, we're doing some remodeling at our house. Pretty much the entire upper story--five bedrooms and bath. More than the ordinary remodeling, because we raised five kids in that house

and by the time they all left it was a toss up whether to start renovating or to call a priest for an exorcism. (We opted to save the priest as a last resort.)

At the beginning I. Was. Pumped. At last, the moment

I'd been awaiting for decades. No longer was Menards the place where my dreams went to die. I'd visualized what I was going to do When The Time Came. I knew what I wanted. I'd picked out samples in my mind.

I'd also forgotten to factor someone else into the equation.

Really, a man only ought to be allowed an opinion if he also has taste. This is the guy who once (very early in our marriage) nailed a quilt over the sliding glass doors in lieu of curtains, and to this day fails to understand what was wrong with that. A man who has never grasped the correlation between buying cheap and looking tacky. A man that doesn't understand why we're remodeling bedrooms no one sleeps in anymore. One who could get all his renovating needs met in the pages of Craftsman and the aisles of Walmart.

A man who is seriously wishing he'd found a wife with similar tastes :)

The good news is, progress has been made in the remodeling. Tile has been laid. Painting has been done. Carpeting bought. And although one or two unkind words may have been exchanged, we haven't yet come to blows. (There was the one instance of a switch plate sailing through the air and coming suspiciously close to making contact. Note to self: work on the wind-up.)

And homicide has not (yet) been done. But I remain unconvinced about those 90,000 other women languishing in prison....

What about you? Have any building or remodeling nightmares to share? Need a character witness at the subsequent trial? And most importantly, anyone willing to post bail if things deteriorate before the rest of our projects are done???