The Ugliest Wall in the World

by tess

The Hubs had exactly one day to find our current home in what was then a 100% seller’s market. He looked at 3 houses and the 2 we could actually afford made him cry. So we spent every penny that we could beg, borrow, or steal to buy a house that’s now worth less than half of what we owe. So that’s nice.

As you walk into the open concept living/dining room there is this built in mirror extravaganza of horror that we have lovingly referred to for more than 5 years as The Mirrorstrosity. Its beauty is hard to describe. If one of the “designers” on Trading Spaces added The Mirrorstrosity to a dining room, calling it a “feature wall,” you’d shriek at the television, “Nooooo! Those poor people! Their house is ruuuuuuuined!!!” It’s this 6’ x 6’ mirror with this weird arched crown molding-ensconced “decorative” paneling around it and an enormous hip-height shelf (6’x4’x3’) which juts into the room ensuring that even a small dining room table can’t be placed directly beneath the light fixture.

We’ve chatted on and off throughout the years about what to do with The Mirrorstrosity. But since we’re people who prefer to chat about doing things rather than actually doing them, we’ve done nothing except pile more crap in, around, and beneath The Behemoth of Beautiousness.

While we were in Indonesia, The Hubs bought an enormous statue of Garuda (it looks like the wooden piece here http://bintaraindoart.com/wood_carvings_1 only ours is a lot bigger and a lot more colorful … if you can imagine that!). And because it apparently didn’t make enough of a statement (yeah, I know), The Hubs built a large black stand for it. Now it’s even … less subtle. I removed several boxes worth of miscellaneous tchochkes from The Mirrorstrosity shelf (it’s all still in the room, it’s just piled perilously into boxes now) to give Garuda more space and focus. Because that’s what a small room filled with an orange leather couch, a pool table, a red 120-bottle wine rack, a glass credenza holding around 200 bottles of liquor, and an extremely over-the-top post-modern table and chairs needs, right?

Now that The Hubs spends so much time admiring his statue, we’re revisiting how to make The Mirrorstrosity more palatable for Garuda. Actually I’m revisiting how to make the house more palatable for the next owner. (It makes me feel warm and fuzzy to think we might ever be able to sell it. I have a rich fantasy life, what can I say?) Since the beginning, The Hubs has maintained that we “just need to take a couple of hammers to it.” The Mirrorstrosity, not Garuda. I guess I’m just not a take-a-couple-of-hammers-to-it kinda gal because that sounds like a plan destined for spectacular failure. I suggested that we remove the improbably placed crown and picture frame molding (these elements exist nowhere else in the house), build covered storage at the very bottom, and add a slab of cheap granite to the shelf, then stage it (for those nonexistent buyers) like an extremely efficient space-saving built in sideboard/buffet.

So he removed all the molding. He did so on a ladder that is not rated to hold his weight. He also did so wearing a sarong. One shouldn’t climb ladders wearing skirts that fall below the knees. Just sayin’. He thinks The Newly Denuded Mirrorstrosity looks plain; I think it looks better. Of course now there are indelible lines and divets all over the paneling from the pieces he removed but I’m pretending that somehow paint will make those disappear. Fat chance.

Marginally successful with phase one of Revamp That Hideous Wall, The Hubs decided that the shelf shouldn’t infringe so deeply into the room and Sharpie’d an enormous black line where he planned to “cut it off” with an as-yet-unnamed tool. I know less about construction than him, but that seemed … challenging … in the “opportunity to meet and greet disaster” kind of way. I encouraged him to cut a little hole out of the bottom of the gargantuan shelf to see what he’d be facing when he started cutting. And what did he discover? Steel. Lots and lots of steel. Not enough steel to actually withstand the weight of a granite slab, mind you, but lots of steel that’s going to say “Hell no” to being “cut off” or beaten by any tools we own.

So. The net outcome of our weekend’s work is an entire wall worth of paneling permanently pockmarked by vast nail holes and disfigured by the outlines of now-removed trim. Approximately 8,542 hours of sanding should repair it. Oh yeah, and we have a metal-reinforced shelf with a crooked black line on the top and a gaping hole in the bottom.

But there’s an upside. We discovered at 3 AM that the hole is just big enough for the kitten to jump inside the shelf. And cry. From anywhere in the house you can hear his tiny leaden feet thump-thump-thumping throughout the interior of the shelf. Well, you can hear his stomping paws when he takes a quick breath to begin the next chorus of “I Might Be a Little Cat But I’ve Got the Biggest Mouth in the Whole Wide World.” This is followed by the crash as he jumps back out of the hole into the piles of crap beneath the shelf and the requisite running and pouncing on his sister. Then another crash as he leaps back into the shelf, stomping, crying, crashing, running, pouncing, crashing, stomping, crying. You get the picture.

At 6 AM The Hubs tried to jam the piece of wallboard back into the hole but Quinty’s not buying it. There’s a “hole” lot of unexplored fun to be had. And life as I knew it is over. I sure wish we’d left the damn wall alone.