This whole mess started with a wall and a compromise. The moral of this story (and here at MarnCo, the ruthless multinational behind The Big Adventure, we are firmly committed to morals) is that one should at all costs avoid compromises and walls.

Well, as I mentioned earlier, a few weeks before Christmas aliens took over the spousal unit's body and he actually agreed to get rid of some of his junk treasures. By the time the dust settled over 25 boxes of stuff left the house.

There are no words for how giddy and unencumbered this made me feel. For the first time in years, the place felt serene.

We took down bookcases of books we would never read again. Clutter left walls. The contents of closets were pulled out and a lot of useless stuff was not put back. When everything came down, it became clear that this place could stand a coat of paint. Oh yes, we were on a roll. We Would Spruce The Place Up.

So yeah, I was pretty giddy. And then one night, during post marital duty cuddling, the spousal unit again broached a project for which he's been yearning a long time�a wall. He wanted to put a wall up to block the view of the alcove where we sleep.

Well, frankly, I have never been a fan of this wall business. We sleep in a small alcove off from our living room and I like the open flow, the way the light from the skylight above our bed illuminates our living room. Our house is tiny. Throw up a wall upstairs, I reasoned, and it would feel positively cramped. 99.9 per cent of the time it is just the two of us here. When we have people over to eat they stay downstairs at our table. I couldn't see the point to a wall.

Thus, whenever he broached the topic in the past, I would ixnay the wall project.

Well, it was pre-Christmas which is traditionally a time when I feel generous. Plus there was the whole business of him making this huge, life altering compromise after a life time of packrattage. Plus there was the great post marital duties glow. So when he broached the wall project yet again, it suddenly felt petty to stand in the way of this project he's wanted for years.

And so I compromised. I said sure, build the wall.

A fatal error.

I think we can all agree that no long term relationship can survive without compromise. I firmly hold to this belief, especially if the spousal unit is the one who does the compromising. Some would call this petty intransigence on my part. I prefer to say that I am right and he is wrong and it is my job in this marriage to hold my ground until he sees the error of his ways.

Life is all about perspective.

Fearing I might change my mind, the spousal unit raced to get drywall and building studs up here before a big snowfall closed off our road and made it very tough to get these things. It's one thing to get groceries up by snowmobile. It's a whole other deal to get 4 x 8 drywall. The day after all the construction materials landed in my porch we got a major snowfall.

The porch is where my pantry and my washer and dryer live. Mass quantities of building materials make it very hard to move in the room. The spousal unit promised that the wall would be roughed in before Christmas and all this stuff would be out of my way. He promised.

After 30 years of living in perpetual construction I should know better. Really, I should. But I believed him, really, I did. Such na�vet� can be seen as either touching or proof positive that I was dropped on my head as a child. Several times.

Again, it all comes down to perspective.

The thing is, with renovation projects it is never just "a wall". Never. And after a whole lifetime of living in a house under construction, I know this. But somehow, I went with the illusion. I'm blaming it on Christmas.

The spousal unit started marking the proposed site for the new wall. As he got down on his hands and knees he saw the truly pitiful shape our upstairs floor has descended to after 25 years of hard use. It's taken too much damage to just be sanded and refinished. Besides, it's a birch parquet and I've never cared for it.

He decided that the floor was on its last legs. It made no sense to put up the wall when it was clear that a new floor would have to go down shortly. Thus, the wall project mushroomed into a new wall project and a new floor project. Ten minutes before Christmas.

Christmas. One of the more stressful periods of the year.

Okay, fine.

We started going around to building supply places looking at floating floor, that interlocking woodlike stuff we have on the floor of my office. I'm not crazy about it, but it's relatively cheap and it's easy to clean.

Plus, it goes down in a heartbeat. We could easily have new floor before the daughter arrived home for Christmas.

As the spousal unit looked over the floating floor in a mega building supply store about an hour from where we live, I drifted over into the hardwood section and gently petted some beautiful oak flooring. Select, number one, � inch oak for those of you with a building supply bent to your natures.

"Merlot Oak" the display said. Originally over $6 a square foot marked down to $4.85 a square foot. Even at that price it was still so far out of our price range that if this wood jumped up, grabbed a megaphone and started yodelling, we would not hear said yodelling from where our price range lives.

The salesman sidled up to me. "You folks thinking about putting a new floor down?" he asked. I confirmed our intentions. He told me the oak was remaindered, they wouldn't be getting any more in. "I can give you a good price," he said. I called the spousal unit over.

I expected to have to dicker. The salesman quoted us a price that was the same as the top grade floating floor we had been considering. It's fortunate that the store floor at our feet was covered with industrial carpeting. Otherwise, when my jaw hit it, I would have had such an owie.

The spousal unit is a fan of blonde woods. This was not a blonde wood. If we are being honest here, it is a darkish, vaguely purple wood, as the name "Merlot" implies. The spousal unit had huge misgivings about this wood. Whereas I, well, I was in love.

"It's purple," he whined as if for some unfathomable reason being purple was a bad thing.

"It's not purple, it's merlot," I snapped back in a tone that said that anyone with eyes could plainly see that this floor was not purple.

It was, of course, purplish in the same way that wine is purplish, but I think I speak for us all when I say there is a world of difference between purple and purplish.

Shut up. There is too.

The salesman, clearly a married man himself, quietly slipped out of shrapnel range so that the spousal unit and I could have a heated argument full and frank discussion about the merits of this wood.

Would I get the wood of my dreams?

Ah, that is a story for another day.

--Marn