Nailed to the Wall

Is it just me, or is it true for most husbands?  I cringe when my wife tells me she wants something hung on one of the walls in our house.  The thought of pounding a nail into a perfectly good wall 
makes me squeamish.  If God wanted holes in walls, He would have made them that way. 

Years ago, I worked at U.S. Steel’s headquarters in downtown Pittsburgh.  The office walls were made of steel.  Hanging a picture was easy.  Maintenance would bring an appropriately sized magnet with a hook.  It stuck wherever you wanted it.  No muss, no fuss.  Someone now makes picture hangers that stick to drywall, yet they pull off easily without any damage if you decide to move the picture an inch or two up, down or sideways.  I don’t trust those things, though my wife has taken to using them when she doesn’t want to hear my complaints about hanging a new picture.

I firmly believed my picture hanging days were over after living in the same house for over 30 years. There’s only so much you can hang on a wall.  Then our first grandchild was born, and we moved to be closer to him.  Of course, my wife wanted pictures, plaques and shelves to break up the monotony of the lovely bare walls in our new house.  So I gritted my teeth, made a trip to the local hardware store for various hooks and hangers, picked up my trusty hammer and was ready to work.  This wasn’t a one-day project.  As soon as we finished hanging things in one room, my wife was ready with an armful of home décor items to be hung in another.

“We’ve got to drive to Target to pick up the cloud shelf I ordered for our grandson’s room,” she announced one day.

“What’s a cloud shelf?” I grumbled as I picked up my car keys. 

“It’s shaped like a cloud.  It’s whimsical.  Our grandson will love it!”

I had to admit that my wife had done a wonderful job to transform our new house into a lovely and comfortable home.  All that was left was the guest room. 

Some years ago, I had started to learn to play the guitar.  In the course of that learning, I had purchased an acoustic guitar, an electric guitar, a travel guitar and a banjo.  They all ended up in their respective cases on the floor of the guest room. 

“This looks kind of messy,” my wife informed me.  “Can’t we figure out a better way to store these instruments?”

“Most guitar shops have them hanging on the wall,” I responded, instantly regretting it.

“That’s a great idea!”  Minutes later she was searching the internet for guitar hangers.  “How do these look?” she asked. 

“They look ok,” I responded with a lack of enthusiasm. I realized ordering them was the first step toward having to attach them to the wall – with screws no less.  Within a few days, the guitar hangers arrived.  I promptly deposited them in the guest room where they’d stay until I could muster the courage to hang them.

Weeks passed, and my wife did not say a word.  Several guests came and went, and during their visits, they had to negotiate a path around my instruments and the box of hangers.  But to her credit, my wife held her tongue.  Finally, she decided to nudge me a little.

“Your family is coming to see our new house in October.  Do you think you might get your guitars up by then?”

“Sure, sure, I’ll get it done by then,” I said, knowing their visit was a couple months away.

As the days slid by, I continued to look for ways to procrastinate.  Then my wife decided to invite our son-in-law’s parents to lunch. They hadn’t seen our house since we first moved in.

Though the deadline I had agreed to was still a month away, I knew my wife would be thrilled if I got it done before the upcoming lunch.  So I got my hammer, my tape measure, my electric drill, my $25 electronic stud finder, my old-school $1.98 magnetic stud finder, a ladder and a pencil. I was ready to get this job done.

I wanted to be sure the hangers were screwed into the wooden studs behind the wall so there was no danger of my guitars falling.  Therefore, I measured, I used my expensive stud finder, I used my cheap stud finder, and then I measured some more.  I put pencil marks on the wall where I was fairly confident I would hit studs.  I was ready to start drilling holes.  But first I wisely decided to show my wife where I planned to hang the guitars.

“You’re not going to hang them on that wall, are you?” she asked.

“That’s where I figured three of them would go; I haven’t decided where to hang the fourth.”

“If you hang them on that wall, you won’t have enough room to actually play them.”

She was right.  So what if I’d just spent an hour marking up the wrong wall.  I considered calling it a day and getting a fresh start the next day, but I didn’t want to disappoint her.  So we talked through the overall plan for the room and I began again to measure and look for studs behind the drywall.  I got lucky with the first one.  I removed a cold air vent and was able to see the stud behind the wall.  So I drilled my holes and screwed the first hanger solidly into a stud.

For the next one, I figured correctly that two, side-by-side outlets were attached on either side of a stud.  Having hit two in a row, I was brimming with confidence.  More measuring, more stud finding and voila!  I hit a third one.  I had one more to go on a different wall with no vents or outlets to guide me.  Nervously, I measured.  The electronic stud finder was giving me a reading that there was a live electric wire somewhere near the stud.  I marked where I thought the stud was located, picked up my drill and hoped for the best.  And I hit it – the stud, not the wire.  Even in the Big Leagues, it’s a great day when a player goes four for four.  I proudly attached the last hanger to the wall and hung up my three guitars and banjo.

 

I still had three pictures to hang, but that was the denouement to this nail-biting suspense novel.  They went up handily.  Then my wife asked me to hang up the cuckoo clock she had gotten in Germany.  No sweat!  I got my hammer and a nail and it was on the wall in a flash.

I admitted that the guest room looked great with those instruments hanging on the wall.  As my wife pointed out, I will be more inclined to play them than if they were packed away in their cases.

Now that I’ve had such success in hanging those guitars, my wife is convinced that I can hang just about anything.  So the next time she asks me to hang something on the wall, I will just . . . ok, I admit it.  I’ll probably listen quietly and commit to doing it . . . soon.  Yeah, real soon, Honey – I promise.