Monday, September 04, 2006

Wallpaper


Well, the time has come to replace the wallpaper in the dining room. Much as I love the pattern, the paperhangers ruined the paper when installing it, and I can no longer find the same pattern. Three hours in Home Depot (this trip) finding the paper and ordering it. For the first time I had an unpleasant sales clerk at Home Depot. That has never happened to me before. I was offended at first, then I decided that perhaps working Home Depot on a holiday weekend is not a lot of fun. The store is crowded, there are screaming kids, demanding customers, lines and who knows what kind of pressure is put on them by their co-workers or managers.

Well, when it was time to order the paper, I found out one of the pressures is that the computer systems wasn't working properly. I watched as the clerk's frustration rose as the system kept refusing to complete the transaction because it was asking for an installer, even though this store does not have wallpaper installers available. In the meantime there are people in the aisles wanting help, and the more experienced clerk disappeared.

Three hours and a crapload of money later, we left the Depot, drained, but with the paper ordered and the tools to remove the old paper.

Here's the wallpaper plan:

You can see the pictures at the beginning of this post. In the suggested installation, the paper with the diamond pattern is on the upper wall, the shaped border at the ceiling, the straitedge border midway down the wall and the plainer pattern on the bottom. That looked too busy, so I altered the plan. The busy paper on the bottom, the straitedge border midway, the plainer paper above, with the shaped border at the crown molding. I think it will work well.

Still, I'm a little sad to lose the paper that's there. Ah well, nice that the business is throwing off enough income that we can put back into the house what we took out of it in equity. Hopefully next year we can replenish the retirement funds we took out.