There goes Santa Claus, there goes Santa Claus...

I took last Friday off to stay at home and pull old yucky wallpaper off as many rooms as I could get done in one day. I managed to remove the wallpaper in our main master bathroom common area and one of the sink/commode areas in the boys' jack-n-jill bathroom setup. I also got a skimcoat on both to fix those massive gouges I put with my scraper and to replace any sheetrock paper that came off with the wallpaper.

An interesting note: where the steam from years and years of showering has reached the wallpaper, the wallpaper is much more resistant to removal efforts. It took me nearly as long to do the boys' bathroom tiny area as it did to do the master bathroom area which is 5 times as large. Darn steam!

Anyway, now instead of mind-numbingly unnatractive wallpaper in our bathroom area, we have mind-numbingly stark white walls with no paint on them. And the real question is, how long is it going to take me to finish it all?
Which brings me to my blog topic for today. We're not talking about just schlepping some paint up on the wall and calling it a day. Nossir! We're talking about a full-scale, all-out assault on redecorating, which means:

• new light fixtures (2)
• new fan
• new towel rack (beause OMG what was she thinking buying that crappy silver towel rack at Target that shows the four honking screws in the front and doesn't match our gold fixtures? I swear sometimes that I should have been a homosexual since I have much better decorating taste (and sense) compared to many of the women I know)
• new paint for wall
• new trim paint
  and of course...
• new linens and such

All this adds up to mucho $$$ and even more time that I don't generally have. And with fall coming up (anyday now...hello?) I'll want to be outside, not cooped up inside.

But what's really bringing me down is my wife's idea to pay for all this; "Seriously honey, this can be my Christmas present; I don't really need anything." And before I knew what I was saying, I responded with, "Mine too!"

Wait! What? Did I just say that out loud? What the F*? No, I don't want my Christmas to consist of pretty red towels and hours upon hours of electrical work trying to figure out an outdated wiring code. I want clothes and...stuff!

So I'm kinda bummed about that. I mean, we did set ourselves a small gift limit to spend on each other so we will still be getting each other something, but still... What this at least does is free up money in my Christmas savings account to put directly towards the project. Hey, now we can afford the fan! Only 10 more things on the list to go!