(from: The View From Mars)

It started with the carpet. Berber to be exact. For 15 years it stood up to periodic cleaning, trampling, holidays, rolling around with the dogs and has survived paint spills and play dough.. Its time had come.

Once we made the decision to replace it I knew instantly what lay ahead. We (she) picked out the color. My wife has the decorating talent in our family. "It will look marvelous," she promised. It does, unfortunately it didn't look marvelous with the old furniture. Of course, that was the fi rst domino falling onto the second. While looking at new furniture, which we purchased, we noticed a color scheme in the furniture showroom that would update our room from a "kid's television room" to a more age appropriate "home theater." The rest of the dominoes are about to fall in rapid succession.

While we admired a color on the wall, my wife noticed two beautiful lamps (on sale!) which would go well with the new sofa and loveseat we had just purchased. Of course, we couldn't use the same end tables that had endured bottles of baby formula and model airplane paint. (Now the dominos are crashing together in rapid succession!) Add a new wooden "sun" over the fireplace and some wall hangings and we almost complete our new carpet project.

One thing we both enjoyed was experimenting with the wooly

I should clarify lest you get the wrong idea. A 6 x 10 inch piece of lambs wool stapled onto a piece of wood that, when used to blot three colors of swathed paint, creates a textured multicolored wallpaper effect, in our case on the ceiling of the room. It was fun and virtually impossible to make a mistake. The result is a dark, masculine television room where you would half expect to fi nd Al Pacino, Marlon Brando and Robert Duvall sharing a drink and a smoke. It looks great. My biggest fear now is that we need a new showerhead in the bathroom-and I haven't picked up all the dominoes from the last project yet!