What Part of Our Home is Being Improved?

I would be willing to lay Odds (who is Odds, anyway?) that there have been more marriages toppled by HGTV than by ESPN.

Of course, I have insider information that leads me to this conclusion.

My husband, Cap’n Firepants, is a mild football enthusiast.  He can take it or leave it, most of the time.  In fact, the more interested he is in the outcome of the game, the less probability there is that he will watch it.  He seems to think that his mere presence in front of the screen somehow negatively effects the results for his chosen team.

But he will be more than happy to sit in front of the T.V. for an entire Sunday watching shows about ripping out your kitchen or making your small patio into a mega outdoor living space.

And while I find the Cap’n’s choice of television shows slightly ironic, I have a bigger problem when he gets up from his armchair, inspired by the amazing makeovers he has been witnessing for hours.

This past weekend, we were spending a leisurely morning taking in one of the more ambitious of these DIY shows.  During the commercials we discussed what we hoped to accomplish during the weekend.  The Cap’n mentioned getting the Christmas tree down.  It had been standing forlornly with the lights wrapped around its branches ever since I removed the ornaments over a week ago, so I, of course, wholeheartedly approved this idea.

After the manly, testosterone-laden DIY show that had something do with crashing houses was over, I wandered off to begin my projects.  I heard the garage door open and close a few times indicating that the Cap’n was hard at work.

Then I heard the unmistakable sound of a tree being taken down our house crumbling down around us. I raced out to the living room to find the Cap’n slamming a hammer into the tile in our entryway.

“You are NOT taking down the Christmas tree!” I intelligently observed.

“I’m just exploring,” was his irritated response.

At this point, here is whatimeant2say:  Did I mention you’re a pirate captain, not friggin Marco Polo? And since when do explorers completely decimate every thing they come into contact wi- oops, bad metaphor.

“So, uh, what exactly are you exploring?”

“I’m just seeing how hard it is to remove the tile.”

“So you chose destroying the one piece of actual floor we have left, that visitors to our home who never make it past the storm door might see, over taking down the Christmas tree?”  Actually, I didn’t say that either.

I just said, “Oh.”  I can pack a LOT of power into that little word, believe you me.

To be fair, the rest of our flooring looks worse than this solitary island by our front door.  Wonderbutt, our bulldog (or my bulldog – depending how angry the rest of the family happens to be at him), pretty much destroyed our carpeting and rearranged the padding underneath, and the Cap’n decided staring at a concrete floor with a skin disease was better than the lumpy, partially shredded, giant diaper our carpet had become.  We are waiting on some estimates from people who will transform our concrete foundation into a glorious, polished, bodily fluid repelling work of art that costs less than 1 cent per square foot.

We’ve been waiting for awhile.

Wonderbutt's Idea of Interior Decorating

We were pretty sure the tile was going to be removed when we started the new flooring process.  But, apparently the Cap’n decided he wanted to see how hard it was going to be to eliminate the entire area by himself since he had nothing better to do.

Hard enough, I guess, that he decided not to complete the task.

Before the Exploratory Expedition of Cap'n Firepants

 

After (Shouldn't These Two Pictures Be Reversed?)

I am declaring a moratorium on HGTV until one of the following happens:

1.)  We get enough money to tear this place down and rebuild the house of our dreams

2.)  We get enough money to move to the house of our dreams

3.)  HGTV sends Carter Oosterhouse to build us the house of our dreams

The Man Who Could Save our Marriage