Friday, November 14, 2008

The Doorknocker

It's funny what becomes a buzzword between two people who've been married a long time. Not only are they finishing each other's sentences, but phrases and words can be used in a way that only they understand.

"Hey honey... guess what I'm going to do this weekend?"

"You're not fishing again, are you?"

Now, the last time he used that term, he may have meant to go fishing, he just never made it there. One wrong turn and a person can end up in Vegas! So the word fishing develops a specific meaning between husband and wife. "You're not seeing that whore of an ex-wife again, are you?" or "You're not blowing your paycheck on dog races again, are you?" or the ever poplular: "You're not getting so drunk that you wet the bed again, are you?"

Our word is "doorknocker". It really was just a tiny little adjustment to our new house and we ended up with $3,000 on our Home Depot account.

Buying your first home is so scary. It's not just the mortgage and taxes and insurance, it's the little things. When should we trim our crepe myrtles? Are those ants or termites? Does the heater always smell like that when it comes on for the first time in October? We bought our first house in North Arlington after we had been married about 4 years. Michael was more than ready, but he had no idea that Bob Vila was living inside my brain just waiting for the Pandora's Box of home ownership to be opened.

It turns out, that I love all of that home improvement crap. It was a whole new world that was opened to me and HGTV had just come onto the cable scene. What luck! I've learned how to sew my own drapes, create a frame from wood trim and make a wall look like it's covered in suede with just a paint brush.

I loved our new house when we bought it, but there was just one little problem. The doorknocker. The people who had owned it before us were The Whites, and they had it engraved on the brass doorknocker on their front door. This was especially awkward since we are The Greens. I could just hear new friends coming to our door, "Harold, you told me their last name was Green, not White." It had to go.

I found a beautiful brass doorknocker at Home Depot and had it engraved at the mall. I was so excited to get it home and place it on the door of our new home. But once I got it on there, it looked funny. It wasn't the same shape as the old one and I couldn't get the door clean enough to look right. In fact, it looked like the door had been painted once or twice and the doorknocker hadn't been removed. Paint stuck up in rough edges around our beautiful doorknocker. There was only one solution. The door had to be painted.

Once the front door was painted, I realized how faded and worn the trim around it was. And it was brown. Ugly, faded, 70's brown. I thought how nice a cornflower blue would set off our newly painted door with the beautiful brass doorknocker. But you could hardly paint just the trim around the door. It would look ridiculous to leave the window and eave trim their ugly brown and only paint the door trim. And this new paint is so much better quality than what was already on the house. The siding was dull and flaking, and really took away from the striking improvement that the new trim had made. It would be an absolute crime not to paint the siding if the trim was going to be painted, too.

6 weeks and $3,000 later, we had painted our entire house to go along with our new doorknocker. And it's been a symbol of my inner Bob Vila ever since.

"Hey honey... guess what I'm going to do this weekend?"

"You're not buying another doorknocker again, are you?"

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