continued from page I ….

continued from page

I hung the rest by myself — with elevated blood pressure, steam shooting out of my ears, and arms that felt like they were going to fall off my body. Working around all of the windows was a nightmare, and while moving past the first corner of the room, I realized that the room was not truly square. Still, I pressed on — alone. Three or four days later, I finally finished the monstrous job, and it looked great. I purchased cheap white wicker furniture and curtains for the room and brought in the houseplants and arranged them on white shelves Gene had made for me in the garage weeks before.

For years, on Saturday mornings, I sat in there by myself and read the newspaper or a good book, occasionally looking up at the gorgeous green and white striped walls. It was my sanctuary.

But Gene never got over the big wallpaper blowup, and that’s why he refuses to consider putting wallpaper in the upstairs bathroom. Just hearing the word, “wallpaper,” makes him mad.

“I’ve heard that the new peel-and-stick wallpaper options are much easier to hang than the old stuff we used in the 1990s,” I said.

He went into “ignore mode.”

So, looks like I’ll be hanging wallpaper by myself again in the near future, but looking on the bright side of things, I’ll be saving our marriage. I just hope the project turns out as good as that sunroom did all those years ago.