Why Home Improvement Can Be Dangerous to Your Marriage

So, the floor has been in for about three weeks now and Gareth is almost finished with the painting. The garage and our bedrooms are still piled high with displaced stuff because (a) for some reason, my husband decided that painting the interior of the hall closet was his last priority, so he will not allow me to move its contents back in and (b) there are several pieces of furniture that are too old/too ugly/ to keep any longer, and they are blocking my way into the room where the rest of the stuff is and are too heavy for me to move.

Our living room, dining room and kitchen look gorgeous, but the clutter in the rest of the house is making me crazy.

Gareth is a little psycho these days, too. He's obsessed with keeping the new wood floor looking beautiful and has forbidden our daughter from rolling her backpack (which has nice, rubberized wheels) on it. "Do you want all that money we spent on it to go to waste?" he asks.

Of course, I don't. But I never wanted to put in a floor that was so fragile that we couldn't live with it. I would have been very happy with Pergo, and pushed for that. But Gareth was hung up on the beauty of real wood (and who wouldn't be?), as well as the thought that laminates don't add value to a home like a hardwood floor.

The problem is that we decided we could not afford a "real" hardwood floor, and opted for engineered wood, which is kind of a compromise between the other options we considered. It costs a lot less than a traditional wood floor because it's basically a thin layer of wood on a metal plank, and can float on the old floor, like a laminate installation, which makes it way cheaper.

Unfortunately, if you need to refinish it, you're basically out of luck. The flooring guys told us we might be able to refinish it once, but that's it. They also told us that nicks and scratches were inevitable - but if we were worried, we should look at the floors at our local mall, many of which use the same materials. If we thought they looked OK, we would be happy with this material in our home.

I think Gareth was so dazzled by the beauty of the wood and the idea that it would't cost much more than the Pergo that he didn't hear that part of the spiel and now he's determined to keep the floor as pristine as it was when it came out of the box. The problem is, it's not possible.

Last night, he got on his hands and knees, examining the entire floor, and was not happy with what he found. "There are big scratches here," he announced. I got down next to him to see what he was talking about. Yes, the floor has been marred a bit, but I'm not sure that's not part of what gives a natural material some of its character. You certainly can't see it unless you are looking for it.

He was in a bad mood the rest of the night.

And I was worried. Because I think I put those scratches in yesterday, after the delivery of the rug I ordered for our dining room. At 8x10 feet, it was big and bulky and heavy, and I could not lift it and I did not want it out in the rain, so I dragged it in and assumed that since it was wrapped in plastic, it would be OK. And if that's all it takes to mar the floor, we are in BIG TROUBLE.

And that's not all: I was also worried because in order to place the rug, I needed to move our ugly dining room table (which we will have to keep awhile as we cannot afford to replace ALL the furniture at this time). As I'm aware of his paranoia over the floor, I took pains to LIFT the table and set it down carefully - but it is so heavy I could only carry it about six inches at a time... and on the last try, it did not land well, and now there really is a big scratch that one could see without a magnifying glass.

The area rug is now covering it and I'm wondering how to tell him about it and if concealing a scratched floor is grounds for divorce.