Do-it-yourself home improvement shows are very popular on TV right now, but I think my Mom was the original DIY Disaster Queen.
Our house was small and shabby and she was always trying to fix it up and make it nicer. Dad wasn't very handy and he didn't like working around the house so when she came up with ideas he always tried to find a way out of them.
Here is an example:
There was a shelf in the kitchen over the stove that Mom hated. She thought it was ugly and it was always greasy from cooking so she asked Dad to take it down. He didn't want to, so he said that the shelf was part of the wall and was holding up the ceiling. He said, "If I take it down the ceiling will cave in!"
Shortly after, they were at the neighbours' house, which was exactly the same as ours. Mom noticed that there was no shelf in the kitchen, just a mark on the wall so you could see where it had been.
She said, "Oh! You took down the shelf and the ceilng didn't collapse!"
The neighbours looked perplexed and said, "Why would the ceiling collapse? That shelf was just held up by a couple of brackets."
Mom glared at Dad and he was busted.
So for her next project she decided just to do it herself. She felt that what the place needed was some wallpaper on one wall of the living room.
This was before they made pre-pasted wall paper. You bought the paper in rolls, and a box of powdered, dry paste substance which you added water to and then spread on the back of the paper before applying it to the wall.
She did her best with the paste and got the paper up on the wall. When she was finished it looked pretty good she thought. True, there were some lumps but you could hardly see them unless you looked real close.
A few days later it rained, and for some reason, the moisture caused the lumps to turn purple. You could really see them now through the ivory coloured paper.
What to do? Mom thought that applying heat to the lumps might help so she got out the iron and began ironing the wallpaper. At one point, she put the iron down to examine the results.
Unfortunately, she set the iron down flat on the arm of the sofa. It burned right through and left a perfect imprint of an iron singed onto the fabric.
After that there was always a toss cushion placed casually, but strategically on the arm of the sofa.
And whenever it rained, there were purple lumps on the wall behind it.
It all became moot, when a few years later, she decided we needed a dining room. My sister was dating a guy from a wealthy family and wanted to invite him for dinner but there was just no room for an extra person in our tiny kitchen.
Mom figured the solution was to knock down the wall between the living room and their bedroom. The extra space would hold a table and chairs for dining.
Of course, this left us with only one bedroom but she and Dad could sleep on a pull-out sofa bed which would be purchased to replace the burned one.
Understandably, Dad wasn't crazy about this idea and refused to do it. So while he was at work one day, Mom took a hammer and started to tear down the wall. Of course she couldn't actually get the wall completely down but she did enough damage that it had to be done.
The wealthy boyfriend came for dinner but turned out to be kind of a jerk and got dumped soon after, but at least we had a dining room!
I don't know how Dad stood it. He would just roll his eyes and curse under his breath so quietly that no one could hear the exact words he was saying, but you got the drift.
Mom always felt bad because our house wasn't big and beautiful, but she needn't have worried. My sister and I think we were lucky to have been raised in a home that was full of laughter and love. We cherish our memories of that time, including the day Mom ironed the wallpaper!