I’m celebrating by running the mop over a few times a day, gazing lovingly at my floor as often as possible in between. 

Although still cooking in one pot over the carpet in the lounge room at present, I think I’ll have a functioning stovetop by the next school holidays.

Apparently I nearly didn’t have a husband to share it with, though.

Unbeknown to me, some of the old tiling grout and glue needed to be removed to make room for the bamboo. 

And so, Kym carried his trusty angle grinder in one door while I waltzed out another with the children. 

My husband created so much fine concrete dust that he couldn’t see or breathe. This heavy cloud of particles led to a potentially fatal accident in which he came close to cutting through a power cord.

I knew nothing of this incident at the time, and arrived back from school drop off to find my home literally choked with dust. 

No doors had been closed or sheets applied to furnishings. Every knick-knack in the house was suddenly sporting a dirty, white mist of powder. The doona covers were crunchy and the piano keys were gritty. 

I was speechless with anger, quite unaffected by the love of my life’s “I could have been killed” statement, and devastated by the hours and hours of clean-up work that had been carelessly created for me.

Kym was well aware, I am told, that as the air cleared enough for him to see the plumes of dust wafting up the stairs and into the girls’ bedrooms, that his life was most in danger from the wrath of his wife.

I wasn’t intentionally indulging in the age-old art of the silent treatment for the first couple of hours, but just couldn’t trust myself to speak without saying something detrimental to our marriage. 

Lots of deep breathes and dusting later, we are still approaching our 25th wedding anniversary with confidence.

Heck, the man laid me a beautiful new floor to live on. You’ve got to forgive a fella who does that for you. 

The clouds of dust are forgotten and now I’m on a cloud nine of floating floor boards.