Renovation Blues

     I pledge today never to do a major renovation project again.  Two weeks have turned into five and counting.  If it's not one problem, it's another.  The tile order was wrong, and we waited an extra two weeks for it to be remedied.  The bamboo doors came yesterday with hinge holes in the wrong place.  They had to be sent back for repair.  The owner of the company was incensed and asked our contractor whether she was the painter.  I could hear his raised voice across the room and thought, once again, that men are impossible when it comes to asking them to fix what was clearly a mistake.
(Check that:  Men are impossible.  Period.)

    Oh, the owner said, we always deliver the holes that way.  But we can plug the incorrect ones, and you'll never know the difference.

    Really?  A circle about the size of a silver dollar can be plugged, and we won't notice.  Give me a break!

     That call was the second of the day.  The first was in response to my having left a voice mail, questioning whether the tile "consultant" might come to the house to see all of her mistakes and mismeasurements she'd made.  A very irritated co-owner of the tile company screamed, If you'd wanted a consultant, we could have gotten you one for $100/hour.  Why wasn't that mentioned in the first place?  And who was this woman I'd assumed was a consultant with whom I met a zillion times and who drew drawings for us?  Drawings, by the way, that were way off.  

     If I'd read my horoscope for yesterday, I'm sure it said something like stay in bed and read a good book.  The stars and planets are way out of whack, and you'll be a lot happier taking a break from the world --- and renovation!

     Luckily, I have a slew of appointments this afternoon and can bust out of this joint.  It's time to get back to some semblance of a schedule and get my life back on track.

     My husband, thoroughly fed up with EVERYTHING, has told me that I'm not to ask him one question today.  Not one!  He wants out of this madness in the worst way.  He hates having to get out of bed at 8:30 a.m.  He can't stand all the little mistakes that send him into tirades about workers who have no professional and personal stake in the work they do.  He's not even convinced that the bathrooms look better than before.  But, if it's my money that I choose to "throw around" like a bourgeois princess, then go right ahead.  He would, he said, be perfectly happy with the seventy-five-year-old bathroom and the one we renovated 20 years ago that he hated from the get go.  Suddenly, he thinks the green marble counter top, the cute design of white and green tiles on the floor and in the shower are the height of style.  Never mind that he complained from Day One, accusing me of lifting some design from one of those chick magazines.  Oh, well . . .  In this case, he was correct.

     I know I should never say "Never."  I want to leave the door open, just in case I change my mind.  For now, I'm done with renovating bathrooms or any other rooms in my home.