The stairway:Thank goodness that’s behind us

It was irksome, but expected, that we would make multiple trips to the home improvement store for our interior painting project.

My Beloved husband is better at giving orders than taking them and I got sick of being the order-taker, but in truth, I didn’t know what I was doing half the time and I couldn’t have successfully accomplished what needed to be done the other half of the time, so it’s a good thing someone was in charge.

I wearied of living in a half-assembled space, but total project time was only three and half weeks.

Those irritants were troubling, but nothing — nothing — compares to painting the stairway.

That was terrifying. And I didn’t even paint the stairway.

My Beloved assembled an awkward system involving a ladder, a couple of 2-by-10 planks, a prop and a number of screws in order to be able to reach the top corner of the stairway from the main floor to the second story.

He wanted me to hold the ladder while he high-wired the paint job, one hand holding the paint can and one hand holding the paint brush.

The fact of the matter is that I could not have stopped calamity had it befallen him anyway. The whole mess could have collapsed, paint splashed all over everything and him a broken pile at the bottom of the steps, and I would have been standing there screaming, my voice the only instrument of strength in my entire upper body.

But I did what I was told and held the ladder. I broke out in a nervous sweat. I could barely breathe and closed my eyes. I prayed.

Meanwhile, my ever confident husband painted a straight line of Dusty Trail along the wall meeting the ceiling.

While he was disassembling his homemade apparatus, I took this picture:

The planks and props and screws are gone, but you see the thank-God-it-was-sturdy ladder. And the yellow. The thank-God-it’s-gone yellow.

The carpet layers came today and replaced the worn-out taupe carpeting on the stairway and in the hallway with a sumptuous thick fudge, neat and clean.

Here’s the after shot:

My stairway has never been decorated, but now I’m entertaining the artwork  – or family photos — I can hang along the steps and in that open expanse above the entry to the dining room. My mother says one should hang only meaningful objects on the wall.

Maybe I should be shopping for tightrope art.

Tomorrow: The big reveal on the dining room. Not only was the carpet installed today, our new area rugs were delivered!

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