Subject 2

Several summers ago, when my husband and I talked about spending a week’s vacation to install a new kitchen floor, I wondered about the wisdom of our decision. We’re both about as handy as a hammer in a jewelry store, and I thought, as friends heard of our endeavor and the ensuing grief that I was sure it would cause, wedding vows might be forever changed to: “Love, honor, cherish, and promise never to do home improvement projects together.” Experience had taught us that we could argue over something as simple as raking leaves: how to approach the task, how to bag the leaves. When we got finished, the yard looked tidy, but I was tempted to tell my husband where he could put the leaves, a place which had nothing to do with lawn and leaf bags. Our decision about the floor, however, was ultimately dictated by a higher power, our checkbook. The only way we were going to get a new kitchen floor was to lay it ourselves.

My sister-in-law gave us some purple floor tiles (not lavender or light purple but a shade dark enough to cause my niece to ask if Barney lived there), but there weren’t enough to cover the whole floor, and when my husband talked about bright gold as an accent color, I knew I wouldn’t let him go to Home Depot without me. We made the Depot run the first weekend of our vacation and pondered over primer, glue, and tile cutters for so long I thought people were going to ask if we worked there. My husband graciously let me pick out the tile, and when I chose a bland white, explaining that I thought we needed a subdued color to go with the purple, he nodded. Plus, I told him he could choose the brand of tequila. While you won’t see alcohol listed in any how-to-guides for home improvement projects, sometimes it’s a necessity.

At that point I allowed myself a little optimism; maybe we wouldn’t end up in a big argument over the floor. We’d done fine with the "what to buy" hopefully the "how to install it" would go just as smoothly. I thought about our last project, replacing the commode, and couldn’t remember any major trauma to our marriage because of it. “Let’s hope this goes as well as the commode,” I said to my husband on the way home. He looked away from the road long enough to glance at me wide-eyed. “What?” I asked, trying to recall any cross words that may have passed between us. “Aren’t you forgetting that all we were going to do was replace the fill tube?” He was right. He broke the old metal tube when he was trying to tighten or loosen something in the tank. A project that should have cost a few dollars and an hour of time took twelve hours, two trips to Home Depot, and over fifty dollars. I guess we were measuring success by different standards. “But we made it through,” I told him. “And it’s still working,” I added. He still looked dubious. “Aren’t we still flushing proudly?” He smiled at that one.

We planned the layout of the floor, but of course we ran into unexpected problems. A box of purple tiles was damaged on one side, so we severed the bad areas. This caused us to run short on the white tiles, so we redesigned the layout. Compromise and reevaluation were essential.

I assembled tiles into piles while my husband applied the primer. He gave me the lighter duties, the gopher jobs, because he knew I needed to read Macbeth for a literature class. I didn’t cry, “Come, you spirits that tend on mortal thoughts, unsex me here.” Instead, I vacillated between handing him supplies and reading.

“The Macbeths really made a mess of their lives,” I said as I handed my husband a margarita. “Too much ambition,” I added before tasting my drink. “Were they laying a floor too?” He asked, chuckling under his breath. “Ha, ha,” I said and grinned, but I wondered how the Macbeths thought they could kill a Duke and take over a kingdom when neither had faith in the other.

My husband handed me his empty glass, and I watched him spread the glue. I told him I thought he was using too much, but he disagreed. “We want to make sure they hold,” he said. “Yes, we do,” I answered.

Glue