Dog blog # 7: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” apply to a boys weekend and home décor too.

Dog blog # 7: “What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas” apply to a boys weekend and home décor too...

Sigh, can you hear that? ‘Tis silence… house, husband and hound. Husband just left for a boys weekend. (Well technically left and then came back because someone forgot their sleeping bag) and hound has been pacified with big chew toy.

Silence broken after five minutes, husband en route: “Are you going to be ok? Will you lock the doors, turn on the alarm, phone your mom, remember to turn off the lights, close the garage door and lock the gate…”

Me: Yes dear.”

“You are not going to do something silly while I am away?”

Me, kicking paint tin with toe: “Of course not Babes. Have fun, drive safe, love you.” Click.

Right… where to start? DIY-demon only allowed out when husband is out of town!

My favourite past time is painting…not canvas, artsy stuff…but walls. It is an obsession. My second favourite past time is shoe shopping. Got both and husband has not even left the Gauteng region yet. But oh dear, throw in a few others…wall paper, fabric, furniture and Visa.

(TICK, tick, tick and TICK!) Wife can’t be left alone without parental supervision.

Décor Diva’s weekend:

Builder’s Warehouse man explained that DIY wallpaper is actually quite easy to do by yourself. Well…unless you were a gymnast in your previous life or born as an octopus, I beg to differ.

Second challenge would be the size of our walls and height of the ceilings. I am sure Bob the Builder got that horribly wrong. Either there is a design flaw or I am short. I think it is the ladder, I mean latter. Which brings me to the lack of owing one (a ladder). But with pure genius, one bar stool and stilettos (to add an extra 10cm), it is possible to increase wingspan of arm and paintbrush, miraculously…

Now, applying wallpaper, requires little skill. You lob on the glue, place paper on wall, smooth out and voila! Bah. The balancing act in heels and bar stool, also required tremendous accuracy in placing patterned wall paper in exact position on wall. This also required some math and dividing numbers and size of wall by size of wallpaper…stuff that!

Wallpaper finally placed in (approximately) right spot, smoothed out and moving in a fluent vertical movement from top to bottom…until…top and bottom got confused. Wallpaper on top released hold on wall, whilst bottom of wallpaper is being tugged, chewed and dragged away by dog. Yelling from atop a bar stool had little effect on the dog or the wall. So did swinging gooey-glue paintbrush in dog’s direction.

Right, get sticky tape and stick wallpaper to wall (great substitute for extra pair of hands), lob glue on paper (again) and dog safely outside the house, we finally got wall and wallpaper reunited. Don’t ask. I finished but we do not like to talk about that project.

Next:

Apply suede paint to bedroom wall. Now I have done this before, so easy-peasy. Until mom (shorter than me) dropped the painting and took along half of the wall with it… The other half of the wall is attached to the once beige Labrador, now mocca-grey.

By now, my décor patience was running low.

Dog started chewing on newly bought antique chairs and the expensive fabric to cover them in absence of fun parent (dad) and attention from mom and from frustration of being excluded from DIY fun. Décor weekend turned out to be a lot of hard work, including frustration and mess ups. Husband? Well, they drank beer.

PS: Husband has not noticed DIY projects yet...

PPS: Willem * our friendly insurance man* can’t undo the wallpaper disaster in the lounge and apparently DIY is not covered in our household policy. Nuts.