While the Jazzman was painting the kitchen, he was inspired to keep improving our circa-1927 house. When he finished pointing out to me all the improvements he made to the kitchen, he whipped some paint chips out of the “junk drawer”, saying “and this is what I’m thinking of for this bathroom.” Whattaguy!!!

I did not take Before pictures—shame on me—but if you’ve ever lived in an ollllld house, you can imagine it. The floor is classic hexagonal black and white tile with the little black hex flowers on the white background. It has a classic pedestal sink. I updated the faucet six years ago and chose the ceramic handles. The towel bar is white ceramic. The exterior wall is almost consumed by the window, so that the mirror just balances in the corner, resting on the window ledge and the towel bar.

The walls were ugly-bugly institutional blue-green. Did I mention ugly? The ceiling over the sink was flaked and flaking, tired looking and sad-sad-sad.

Jas started the work a couple of weekends ago. In his classic style, he removed all the hardware to clean it. He scraped the ceiling until not one flake of ancient paint remained. And he fixed holes and imperfections, scraping and sanding and patching until the walls looked as new as 88-year-old walls can look. The ceiling was painted ceiling white—lovely, reflective, clean! The exterior wall was painted a charcoal gray (the man loves him an accent wall), and the other three walls (two of which include doors, so not much to paint there!) were painted a medium silvery gray. Gahgeous!

On the Labor Day holiday we made a trip to Home Depot and Lowe’s and Jo-Ann Fabrics looking for this and that piece of hardware and curtain fabric to replace the antique curtains that shredded when I washed them. We didn’t find what we wanted, but figured out what we didn’t want.

This past Saturday we made another hardware trip to a different set of stores. We hadn’t figured out what we wanted to do about the old light fixture on the wall, but Jas was ready to get busy painting when we got home.

And shortly after we walked in the door, we got the call that Jas’s precious 91-year-old mother had been taken to the hospital, vomiting and in pain. The next call confirmed the worst: an aneurism in her stomach that she’d been living with for years had burst. He showered and packed for the three-hour drive to Columbus. Just before getting in the car, his brother called again and Jas was able to speak to his mother for a minute, telling her we loved her and that everything would be alright, for her not to worry about us. And twenty minutes into his drive, she was gone. Three hours from diagnosis to death. No long periods of pain and suffering. A peaceful death knowing that your three sons and their families adore you.

Jas continued on to Columbus to help his brothers make the decisions that had to be made. Sunday evening he came back home. The burial will be in Youngstown, and we realized we needed to open our home for a gathering after the burial. And here we were with the first floor bathroom in shambles.

On Sunday, while digging through all my boxes of fabric trying to find just the right piece of fabric for a bathroom curtain, I happened across a piece of white linen printed with musical notes and French lyrics. I had found this on the sidewalk outside a Paris fabric store while strolling through Montmarte a year-and-a-half ago. To make it even more perfect, this musical discovery came right after I visited the grave of my teacher, Nadia Boulanger. Inspired fabric!

I pulled it out, measured the tattered curtains, and quickly made a curtain to slide on the original hardware. And smiled!

Monday morning we awoke to a long to-do list. During the course of the day, he finished the painting, finished cleaning the hardware, and reassembled the bath. Once he replaced the window hardware, I was able to determine the correct length and finish the bottom casing. Fifteen minutes later, we had a finished bathroom. Bright, shiny, ready to host our friends after we say our final goodbyes to Jas’s mother.

But there’s one little problem. The remote for the garage door hangs on the kitchen door. When we push the appropriate button to open our individual doors on the detached garage, sometimes the doors don’t open. So we walk into the bathroom and pull the curtains aside to see whether the door is open. It’s a little family ritual. Because this is a single curtain rather than the original two, we can’t pull it open to peek out. We have to actually walk outside to look. Oh, the aggravation.

Next week, when we’re all done with the stress of this week and beginning the new sans-Mom life, I’ll pull the curtain down, slice it in half, and turn it into two curtains. And be thankful for this wonderful man in my life, and his wonderful mother who treated me as her own from the day she met me, five years ago.

A lovely lady, her loving sons, and their loving daughters-in-law.

It’s amazing what one brain can forget in six weeks’ time. As I left the house yesterday morning to go grocery shopping, I had to stop and think what the process involved. Turn off the alarm system; wait, what’s the code. Unlock the door to go to the car; wait, there’s a garage door to open, where’s the remote. As I reached down to turn the door knob to go outside, the plate behind the knob looked different, looked shiny, looked new. I looked at it for a few moments, then just figured I wasn’t remembering what it looked like. After all, I’ve only owned this house for six-and-a-half years and used that door every day I was in residence. And I let it go.

Jas got off work early and did yardwork. Leslie arrived at 4:00 to use the printer and then take her dogs to the kennel. We had dinner scheduled for 6:30. At 5:00 I started preparing dinner. Jas walked into the kitchen, looked at me, walked over to me, put his hands on my shoulders, and said, “I have to tell you something.” This phrase, spoken by any significant person in my life, whether personal or work-related, always strikes fear in my heart. The worst is always just ahead.

He turned me around so my back was to the sink and I was facing the refrigerator and the door to the rest of the house. “Notice anything?” he said. I started scanning the walls, and suddenly I realized the chipped paint that had been in the corner for two years was no longer chipped. I said, my voice showing incredulity, “You painted!”

This guy works twelve hours a day, five days a week on the railroad. He works outside where it’s hot, nasty hot in the sun. He spends time in a big shed where GM contractors are loading Cruze vehicles onto railcars. He walks back and forth on rock ballast, so that his knees hurt with every step and there’s nothing he can do about it. He leaves home at 6:00 a.m. and arrives home after work at 7:00 p.m., then showers to remove the diesel smell and puts on clean clothes and eats dinner (when I’m gone, fixes his own dinner), then takes care of the books for his union local and finally sits down on the couch to watch some news programs, where he falls asleep within three minutes. Five days a week this is his routine. And while I was gone, he spent his weekends plus an hour or so every weeknight prepping and cleaning and painting our kitchen!

Our house was built in 1927. (Okay, I own it, but this guy has put a ton of sweat equity into it since our second date!) The kitchen and upstairs bath were renovated in the early 1950s, according to circumstantial evidence such as paint color and sink styles. In the kitchen, the sheet vinyl rolls at the seams and we place rugs over the seams to keep from tripping. The stove sits six inches away from the adjacent counter/cabinet, and the floor between was gunky and gross and hard to get at to clean. The wood cabinet doors were darkened around the handles from decades of greasy hands opening them. The hardware on the door hadn’t been deep-cleaned in probably 60 years. The walls were an institutional blueish-greenish-nondescript paint color. The ceiling was peeling. (You liked that little rhyme, didn’t you?) The only thing I had done to this room since moving in was to replace the windows from old metal jalousie windows that radiated frigid air during the long NE Ohio winters to winter-friendly double-paned windows. And we put in a new-to-us stove to replace the old stove that dated from, probably, the 50s or 60s. Every time we looked around the room when we were house-talking, we said, “Someday. Someday.”

Jas had worked for three different painting contractors during earlier years, and the guy knows what he’s doing. He doesn’t paint over anything. He removed hardware, washed walls, scraped the ceiling, scraped the wall where the three or four layers of old paint were chipped, sanded and mudded and feathered the wall, cleaned the floor, scraping off old.old.old grease and grime, glued the loose formica-wannabe on the counter, cleaned all the hardware until it gleamed, steel-wooled the cabinet doors and drawers, and on and on. Preparation to the max, professional-level painting, all hardware looking like new, then perfect cleanup. Nothing was left undone. Amazing. Amazing!!!

This formerly dull, drab kitchen glows. It gleams. The buttery ivory walls reflect every wave of light. The white ceiling adds to the reflection. And the whitewhite glossy trim completes the equation. It’s inspiring. I don’t like to cook; it takes a lot to inspire me. This kitchen is truly inspirational.

How could I not have noticed this? When I looked at the walls while he was holding my shoulders and talking [proudly] about what he had done, I couldn’t even remember what color the walls were before. He had to open the pantry door to show me the old color.

And after spending twenty minutes showing me everything he had done, we walked into the adjacent powder room and he showed me the paint chips he had collected for that room. He’s going to paint my ratty 1927 powder room, too!!!!!!

I am awed at the sacrifice demonstrated in this act of kindness. I know how tired he is at night. I know how hard he works during the days. I know how he loves his weekends, playing golf with his buds, relaxing on the couch, going out to dinner with our friends.

The amount of time and effort and love that went into this project—I am humbled that that was all done for me.

(And I didn’t even notice. I had to be told. Bad on me!!!!!)
(When he got to work yesterday morning, his coworkers all asked what I thought of his surprise for me. He had to tell them I didn’t even notice. #hangingmyhead!)

Am I a lucky girl or what?!