One of the things on my “to-do” list this spring was to fix the screen door on the front porch. The hinge had broken in November and I had taken the door down to fix it.
“No big deal,” I told Kathy when I laid it against the wall. “I’ll get to this weekend.”
Well, that weekend turned into six months and now that the weather is finally warm again Kathy wanted her screen door back.
“No problem,” I told her. “All it’s needs is a new hinge. It’ll only cost me a couple bucks and I’ll have it done in no time for you.”
And I really meant it - until I saw a picture of a really great looking screen door in Victorian Homes magazine and headed off to the hardware store to see what it would take to transform my plain old screen door into something more in line with all the Victorian renovations I have been doing the past five years. After all, I am an artist you know.
“A coat of red paint should do the trick,” I told Kathy when I headed to the hardware store.
But then I took another look at that Victorian magazine and decided what my screen door really needed was a set of gingerbread decorations to really spruce up the door.
“And I can have them glued on and painted in no time,” I said. Of course, I didn’t show her the bill. Artists don’t worry about bills.
But two days later when I got that project done and compared it to all those fancy doors in that Victorian magazine, I decided that was it needed was some sort of decorative carving in the center of the door.
“Another half day, tops,” I assured Kathy. “Believe me, you‚ll love it.”
And I was right, she did love it, but I still wasn’t satisfied. “I think I need to run some trim around the screen, like a decorative border.” Another four hours at the hardware store and I found just the right piece with what looked like miniature roses carved in the molding. “Very Victorian,” I told Kathy.
So that night, after I had the decorative trim in place and the door now painted a beautiful shade of red, I took one more look at that Victorian magazine and decided that my door needed more color on decorative pieces.
“I’ll have it done tonight, right after I buy some artist’s brushes,” I told Kathy. An artist needs the right brushes, you know.
Of course, I had to repaint it three times until I got just the right combination of colors. But it looked great - until I took one last look at that magazine and decided that if I really wanted my screen door to look truly Victorian, I needed to paint the miniature roses that bordered the screen - all 260 of them.
“It’ll need at least four different colors,” I told Kathy as she swatted all the flies that had gotten into the kitchen during the past two weeks while I was working on the screen door. She didn’t answer me, so I figured she thought it was a good idea. Come to think of it, she hadn’t said anything to me for a couple days. I guess it was just one of those moods that women go through.
Well, I finally finished my screen door this week, and it really does look great. Very Victorian. But for the life of me, I don’t know why Kathy wasn’t as excited about it as I was. All she did was complain about how much it cost and how long it took “and all I wanted was a new hinge.”
“Oh, that’s right. I was so busy decorating the door for you that I forgot to fix that hinge. But no big deal,” I told her as I laid the door against the wall. “I’ll do it this weekend. And by the way, have you seen my Victorian Homes magazine anywhere?”
John Graham is an Advocate Columnist. His column appears each Sunday in the Advocate. He can be reached at jgraham19@woh.rr.com.
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