"I tell couples: 'If you make it through a major home renovation, you'll be married for life.' "
- Lou Manfredini,
Mr. Fix-It of OurHouse.com

The other day I was sitting on my bed when one of my kids' friends came through the front door. He took one look at me sitting on the bed in the middle of our living room and quickly summed up the situation.

"My Mom once got mad at my Dad and made him sleep in the front room, too," the kid said as he headed for refuge downstairs. He was gone before I had a chance to open my mouth and correct his impression of my marriage.

Sure, I was sleeping in the front room, but so was the Truly Unpleasant Mrs. Johnston. No one is sleeping in our bedroom at the moment because the walls and floor have been ripped up. Our bathroom is also gone, and where once a toilet and shower stall stood, now there is just a large, empty space.

I think my life has been disrupted and I'm being forced to sleep in the living room for all to see because Mrs. Johnston didn't like the flocked wallpaper in the bathroom. For those guys who don't know their flocked wallpaper from their standard stuff, let's just say that flocked wallpaper is wallpaper with a 5 o'clock shadow. The fuzzy parts of it are "flowers." The flowers didn't bother me, but then I don't spend much time in the bathroom. I brush my teeth, shave my face and comb my hair. Takes about four minutes. Not a lot of time spent looking around. I've done these three activities more than a few thousand times, and I know where everything is.

Matter of fact, I didn't even know we had flocked flowered wallpaper until Mrs. Johnston pointed it out to me. I just thought we were growing mold on the bathroom walls.

I must digress a bit here. Mrs. Johnston and I have lived in and worked on three homes together. One was such a wreck when we bought it that there was mold on all the walls, not just the ones in the bathroom. Actually, I think the mold was keeping the walls standing. And the mold was the least of the shocking things we found while remodeling that house.

It takes a lot to disgust me, but apparently Mrs. Johnston is a little more delicate. I guess that's why, after working on the other homes, Mrs. Johnston decided when we moved into our present abode that she'd had enough of this do-it-yourself business. And, apparently, she'd had enough of flocked wallpaper. So that's how we ended up living in the front room. It's sort of like camping, only there aren't any bugs and everything you own is stacked in boxes so you can never find your underwear when you need it.

After living in the front room for more than a month, I started to realize a few things:

1. We sure have a lot of stuff we don't really need. In all those boxes stacked in the living room, I uncovered shirts and pants I haven't seen since Mrs. Johnston and I danced to "Saturday Night Fever."

2. You can get used to anything, even being stared at by your kids' friends as they come through the front door.

3. I could have lived with flocked wallpaper in the bathroom for another 20 or 30 years, but it's unlikely Mrs. Johnston would have lived with the wallpaper — or me — that long.

Steve Johnston is a retired Seattle Times reporter. He can be reached at stevejohnst@aol.com. Paul Schmid is a Times news artist.