We were finally going to do it.

After eight years of making do with the threadbare, dog and kid stained, lifeless green carpet (picked out by the previous owners) in our bedroom, Downtown Dad and I decided it was time to do something nice for ourselves for once, and replace it!

But – replacing flooring is never JUST the flooring. Pffft! If you replace the flooring, you MUST paint the walls, and if you paint the walls, you HAVE to repaint the ceiling, and once you’ve changed those things, you’ve GOT to replace the bedding and the accessories… Our bedroom needed to be revived STAT with full-on CPR – Carpet, Paint, Renovate!

Luckily, in our 25 years together, we’ve established our mutual likes, and preferences in the bedroom… for a color scheme… (What were YOU thinking?) Our inspiration actually came one Sunday morning while watching the Melissa Harris Perry show on MSNBC. Her studio set is the perfect soothing shade of teal. Bright, but not heavy. Complex yet lively, with an undeniable progressive finish.

We picked and agreed on the sandy shade of low pile bedroom carpet and coordinating laminate tile for the bath and closet, with hardly a pause. We sifted unerringly through the thousands of varying hues of teal paint, ending up simultaneously with the perfect analogous color scheme for the walls. We even remembered to buy paint to brighten and freshen the ceiling.

The only thing left was to move the furniture out so the carpet professionals could remove the horrid old carpet, and put down the new flooring while we were on vacation. That done, we would paint the ceiling and walls ourselves – judging by how smoothly our decision process had been, how hard could that be? It might even be – romantic!

I mean really, have you ever noticed how far home improvement stores will go in order to make DIY projects look like the ultimate husband-wife bonding activities? Brochures and photo displays imply that laying tile, painting, or refinishing your kitchen cabinets together can do more for your marriage than 7 days at a Sandals Resort. Stylishly dressed models with nary a stray drop (or drop cloth) in sight, gaze meaningfully into each other’s eyes, seductively brandishing fully loaded paint rollers, in a hardware version of the pottery wheel scene in the movie Ghost.

Our version of painting the bedroom wasn’t anything like the brochure versions. While Downtown Dad could paint in a high wind using a mad cat for a brush and never get a drop on him, I became a walking paint chip. And while we didn’t try anything as kinky as painting in the nude, what we did wear could have landed us on the People of Wal-Mart website. But we are both more than happy with our choices, and in the end, doing something that was truly for ourselves was exhilarating. The time we spent together, while not steamy 50 Shades of Grey (or teal as it were) material, it did turn out to be a wonderful bonding experience.

And the bonus is we finally have a romantic, relaxing haven, free of dogs and kids, and someone else’s choices, plus, now we’re not making do – we’re doing it!