Mr. Ed Comes For a Visit

We had received a couple of packages addressed to the old owner a little bit ago.  Ahem, by a little bit ago I may or may not mean right after Christmas.  Yup, I'm that classy.

So after many attempts to try to shove this particularly weird (to me) job off on Hubs, I realized that his m.o. would involve putting it off until he could rationalize that Mr. Ed (the guy we bought the house from) didn't even want his stuff anyway and the packages could be tossed.  So, earlier this week, I caved and emailed Mr. Ed and we decided that he would come pick them up.

Insert mini panic attack here.

See, Hubs and I have talked a lot about how it was obvious that Mr. Ed cared about the house (he updated the important things, took care of it, etc), but that he decorated like an old woman.  Faux brick wallpaper.  Grape wallpaper.  Multi-layered marble-ish looking wallpaper.  Wood paneling.  Not one but two melon colored bathrooms.  Yeah.  We haven't been able to make much progress on big changes, but what we have done, we love.

 our chalkboard wall (decorated for Christmas)

 painted the dining room yellow and added wainscoting

 completely redid the laundry room (crown molding finished soon!)

There was something a little unsettling about Mr. Ed seeing how we've changed the house he grew up in.  I wanted him to like it.  I wanted him to think we were taking good care of it.  I didn't want to let on how much I hated all the wallpaper.  I cleaned with abandon on Saturday in preparation for "the visit".  I anticipated the questions, the doubting our choices, or even a backhanded compliment or two.

But instead, his wife came.  She didn't stay long, but she did mention that as soon as Mr. Ed came home, he'd grill her about what we'd done with the place.  I don't think she hated it, but then again, she's a very nice woman and for all I know is a wallpaper fanatic who thinks we've ruined the house.

But you know what?  It's not his house.  It's not the house.  It's OUR house.  Mr. Ed may have grown up here and hung some dreadful wallpaper, but before him, there was another family.  And before that, another family whose daughter wrote on the wall in 1929 and who apparently painted everything green.  And now, it's ours.  It's where our kids will (hopefully only on the chalkboard) write on the wall and where we will have family picnics.  And if we want to do that in the absence of horribly ugly wallpaper, well then we will!  

So here's to the death of ugly wallpaper, and to doing whatever the crap we want to our house!