Mike vs. the ceiling fan.

After 10 long years it's time to bid adieu to the ruby red walls that make up our living room. I loved the colour when I picked it a decade ago and I still love it today, but it's time for something new. Mike liked the colour for, oh, about 5 minutes so to say he was happy to be applying pristine white primer to the walls would be a severe understatement. The primer today, was merely a first step in, what I'm sure will be, a long journey to an entirely new living room. I'm talking new layout, flooring, lamps, area rug, furniture and ceiling fan. Mike had specific requirements for a new ceiling fan; it needed to be 52 inches and have a light. Looks were not important. Taking that into consideration I quickly made myself ceiling fan project manager so as to not end up with some gray industrial looking apparatus with a single naked bulb hanging from it. Since we were in no rush and I loves me a deal I have been keeping my eye open for a beautiful ceiling fan at a beautiful price. Today the discount Gods were smiling at me and I found exactly what I was looking for on the front page of the "Big Orange" flyer for a mere $40. Since it was a "special-purchase-two-day-sale" I sent Michael off first thing this morning to pick one up.

Since he was making the trip I also had him pick up the paint for the living room.



Hello, one extreme? Here's the other. These are the paint colours I picked out. Brown teepee and gobi desert. Don't ask me which one is which because I don't know and really does it matter? They're both pretty much nothing colours. They are beige in the very truest sense of the word. I'm really not sure what I was thinking. Mr. Beige Mike, however, is thrilled. Marriage, it's all about compromise.

With one coat of primer on the walls and a ceiling that didn't need painting Mike thought he'd pass the four hours he had before he could apply another coat by hanging our newly acquired ceiling fan. It wouldn't take him any time at all.

It's always amazing to me when it comes time to install anything that is suspended from the ceiling and requires electricity Michael seems to have forgotten what a tedious, time consuming and all around pain in the ass it is. Especially in an older home like ours. Where nothing is going to be anywhere near square, plumb or level. Where there will be no stud where you think there should be. Where you will scratch your head and repeatedly mumble, "but it just doesn't make sense." Where the instructions (now that you've decided to read them) that previously appeared to be written in English upon further inspection are actually written in Swahili for all the sense you can make of them. Today, of course, was no exception.

The annoyance started with having to install a junction box. The one Mike was trying to install was not going to work out. Luckily Papa stopped by and pointed out Mike would need to use a "pancake " style box instead of the traditional. First mini crisis averted. Papa, wisely, did not hang around for the requisite "stud hunt" something that had Mike stomping up and down the ladder while muttering, what I am sure were, obscenities to himself. It was at this point I could tell the fan was starting to get the better of my poor husband so I suggested he leave until tomorrow. Give his annoyance level a change to come back down to the normal range. It was a suggestion that was quickly dismissed as foolish. He would not let the ceiling fan have the pleasure of beating him. Finally, after multiple hours, multiple cuss words, reading, re-reading and re-re-reading the instructions he declared victory.



I see nothing, but smooth sailing from here until it's time to install the new flooring.