Change in Plans

What good are plans if you can’t change them? It is over a month into 2007 and I have made absolutely NO progress on the hall. This is not to say that I have accomplished nothing. I put in a new lighting fixture in the pantry, I replaced a fixture in the basement near my workbench, I added a new light in the main area of the basement, and I have done some more odds and ends in the basement. Unfortunately, the hall - blue tape and all, looks pretty much the way that it did on January 14th.

The change in plans is due to a belated Christmas gift. It’s a long story but I’ll try and abbreviate it to the final two chapters. I was going to buy my wife a Christmas gift but instead of just buying it, I decided to take her shopping with me so that she could choose. O.K., everyone can repeate this in unison, "Chris you are such an idiot". Needless to say, the gift has since changed and I am not buying what I intended to buy. Actually, I should substitute the "I" with “we” in this sentence.

We are buying a bed. We need a bigger bed and our mattresses are almost 20 years old so we are buying a bed. My wife originally saw a bed at Crate & Barrel (or the French pronunciation, "Cratee Barrel" as we prefer) that she liked. It was nice – wood, Arts & Crafts style, but I thought it was a bit pricey. I suggested that we go to look at the Stickley beds and compare prices for “the real thing” as opposed to a “crappy knock-off”. I never thought this would amount to anything (typically my wife is suspect anytime I mention the brand "Stickley") but I’ll do anything to even just window shop at Toms Price.

After the first round of shopping, it was no surprise that we found a bed that we loved – one from the collection of new Pasadena furniture patterned after the Green & Green stuff. What was surprising is that the bed was CHEAPER than the Crate Barrel bed. I’ll repeat that in case you missed it. We found a bed at Toms Price that was cheaper than a bed at Crate Barrel. This may mean nothing to most people but I was pretty shocked.
Our new bed arrives in less than 3 months. This means that I have 3 months to complete renovation of the bedroom. This includes stripping all the wood, removing wallpaper, repairing plaster, etc. Needless to say, this is a much larger project than my hall would have been. With my luck the bed will be very early and we’ll be in the middle of everything. I better get to work.