At home with the temporary?

When we moved to our present home, my husband and I labeled certain difficulties with the house as “temporary.”

We should have looked up that word, as the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it as “lasting for a limited time.”

As in, “This scratched-up floor is temporary.” Or, “The sparkly 70s wallpaper is temporary.” Or, “This white carpet in the living room where kids held pop-spitting parties is temporary.”

In home décor and repair timelines, “temporary” resembles a blank, signed check. It has a way of consuming far more than we would want or expect.

Hubby and I should have known better. While some couples spend every Saturday night rearranging their furniture, we are not big on change. We delayed remodeling our former house until we had lived in it more than 20 years. Then we spent big bucks to make it irresistible … so we could sell it.

Now, more than a decade after our move to Upland, “temporary” has caught up with us once more.

To our credit, we have made several major improvements, mostly outside: new siding, new roof, and some landscaping. Hubby even painted the ugly, “temporary” black front door for me.

He says it is orange.

I know it is terra cotta.

Which brings me to two major reasons we procrastinate in updating our surroundings. A. He is male.

B. I am female.

Those two facts complicate the simplest project, yet we have made substantial progress in this area. After only 45 years of marriage, we both not only like our terra cotta/orange door, we can arrange decorative pillows on our bed to our satisfaction. Hubby keeps the dull green one on his side. I want the fringed, patterned, ivy green satin one on mine.

Now, all we have to do is agree on whether to paint the kitchen cabinets Blue Sand or Eggshell Ecstasy.

Viewing color samples, Hubby’s eyes narrow. “How do they get off, calling this color ‘Blue Sand’? Have you ever seen blue sand? Anywhere?”

I haven’t experienced ecstasy boiling eggs for potato salad, either. However, I do not mention that fact, as doing so will extend a discussion about product misrepresentation to blank-check proportions. The cabinets will go unpainted for another decade.

But a decade is temporary. Not forever.

It just seems like it.

The only thing longer than the decision to remodel? The actual process. My husband, reasonably skilled in the handy-dandy arts, could shorten makeover timespans if he were married to a more talented assistant. We attempted wallpapering together. Once. He discovered that everything I touched turned to trapezoids.

No matter how carefully I measured, cut, or stretched. No matter how many helpful tutorial videos I watched.

Speaking of tutorial videos, perhaps I should create my own, designed for homeowners like myself. Instead of the cheery “Seven Simple Steps to Your House’s Total Makeover,” I would condense mine to “Two Simple Steps”: 1. Light a match. 2. Burn the place down.

Though if I followed my own advice, I would have to move again, probably to jail. Tsk, tsk, more change. Even wallpapering with Hubby seems preferable. Though he might feel differently…

I offer a another option, in which we could avoid painting cabinets and the kitchen and installing new counters and—

“What new counters?” Hubby’s eyes narrow again. “When did we decide this?”

I simply use the logic he often begs me to employ. Surely, if we paint the kitchen and dining room, we cannot leave ancient, discolored counters as they are. The flooring is nicked and stained, too.