Well, would you believe it—my marriage somehow got a spark back after a home renovation. After sixteen years together, I’d assumed we’d forgotten how to feel anything at all. You know how it is—like an old jumper: comfy, familiar, just not exactly warm anymore.
Tom and I had settled into a rhythm so predictable you could set your watch by it: work, dinner, the occasional half-hearted chat before bed. We didn’t argue, didn’t hash things out—just existed. Steady. Quiet. Practically sibling-like. No fireworks, no mad passions. Sometimes I’d look at us and think we were like two trees planted side by side: roots tangled, but the branches stretching off in opposite directions.
Then the renovation happened.
We’d only done it because—for the first time—our twelve-year-old, Jamie, had swanned off to summer camp by the sea. Two whole weeks! “Mum, I’m not a baby anymore!” he’d declared, shoving his light-up trainers into a suitcase with all the dignity of a knight preparing for battle. Tom and I stood on the platform waving at the train until it vanished, then trudged back to our suddenly enormous, empty flat. Just us. And these walls, which remembered us as entirely different people.
To speed things up, we moved into a tiny rented flat while strangers took over ours—loud, sweaty, paint-smelling strangers. One of them was Mark.
Tall, rough hands, eyes like chilled steel. Something about him—the timbre of his voice, the way he squinted when thinking—reminded me of a younger Tom. But where Tom had always spoken gently, never raising his voice even in anger, Mark yelled at his wife over the phone like she owed him money. I’d never heard a man speak to a woman like that before—let alone the mother of his two kids. Clipped, irritated, like she was an inconvenience. And then it turned out he had a mistress.
One afternoon, I popped back for forgotten blueprints and caught him in the living room with some young woman, shrieking with laughter at a crude joke before he grabbed her waist and pinned her against the still-unpainted wall.
That’s when the fear hit me.
Not for her. For me.
What if Tom had some airheaded girl tucked away somewhere, thrilled by his attention like it was some grand prize? What if he’d been living a double life all this time, and I was the last to know?
That evening, I studied him over dinner, searching for the same indifference, exhaustion, the itch to escape. Then out of nowhere, he said, “You all right? Not too worn out from all this chaos?”
Meanwhile, the workmen had stripped the old wallpaper in our battered flat, revealing traces of our early years. There—a faded pink stain. That was us, drunk on cheap bubbly, celebrating our first home. He’d lifted me up, I’d squealed, the bottle slipped—half of it ended up on the wall. And there—nail holes from that shelf Tom spent a whole weekend building while I visited my parents. “Don’t come in!” he’d barked through the door as I giggled and stomped impatiently. The shelf was lopsided, but it lasted a decade.
Three days later, we went wallpaper shopping.
Tom, who usually delegated all decisions to me, suddenly came alive. Comparing shades, asking, “Which ones do you prefer?” No rushing, no penny-pinching—just choosing. For us. For our home. He ran fingers over samples, musing, “D’you think this pearlescent one will catch the light right?”
Then, at the bedroom section, he reached for pale blue paper with a faint silver pattern.
“Like that hotel in Brighton,” he murmured.
I gasped—years before our wedding, on our first holiday together, we’d stayed up all night on a balcony listening to the sea. The walls had been exactly that shade.
Next, the furniture shop, where he insisted on a high-backed chair—”So you can read in proper light.”
“How’d you know I’d want that?”
“I’ve lived with you sixteen years,” he smirked. “Should’ve picked up something by now.”
No irritation in his voice. Just warmth. The kind from our early days. And suddenly, it hit me—he still loved me. That feeling had just gotten buried under chores and routines and identical days. But it hadn’t gone anywhere.
“Let’s wallpaper the bedroom ourselves,” Tom announced unexpectedly near the end of the renovation.
I blinked.
“You hate wallpapering.”
“Used to,” he grinned. “But I put up with it for our first flat, remember?”
Yes. Under the weight of years and habit, that same man who once carried a thermos of coffee halfway across London for me was still there. We’d just forgotten where we’d left each other.
Now here we were, mid-bedroom, and Tom—just like years ago—was mixing up the top and bottom of the wallpaper.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered. “Why do both sides look exactly the same?”
I laughed, handing him a fresh sheet. Outside, a July drizzle tapped the window; inside, memories swirled. Us painting our first flat, Tom leaving a palm print in fresh magnolia. Him secretly re-wallpapering my childhood bedroom while I was at uni.
“Just needs to be done by the 25th,” I said. “Jamie’s back then.”
Tom nodded, then suddenly took my glue-smeared hand.
“Remember his school’s PTA wallpaper disaster?”
As if I could forget. Model parents that we were, we’d volunteered to wallpaper his Year 1 classroom. The walls were coated in some ungodly gloss paint we didn’t realise needed sanding off first. By morning, every strip had peeled away, mocking our efforts. We’d had to frantically scrape and redo the lot.
“Proper cocked that up, didn’t we?” I grinned, spreading paste on the next strip.
Tom snorted. “You swore you’d never touch wallpaper again.”
“…And yet, here we are,” I finished.
His hands—rougher now—smoothed each seam with practised precision. Still remembered the motions after all this time.
“Just hope it sticks this time,” he mumbled, and we both shudder-laughed at the memory.
“Experience on our side now,” I joked.
As he pressed the last corner into place, it struck me—we weren’t just fixing up a flat. We were making a home ready for our growing boy’s return. And ourselves—for a new chapter where we’d be just us again, but different.
Outside, summer hummed. Somewhere, a train carried our son home. And here we were, knee-deep in paint tins and memories, relearning how to be simply husband and wife.
But this wallpaper’s different. So are we. It’ll hold. Just like our imperfect, time-tested love—sometimes buried under daily grind, sometimes surfacing like those stains on the walls, witnesses to our shared history.
Now we’re waiting for the renovation to end. Waiting to start anew.
Between fresh walls. With the same old feeling.
Maybe renovations are like life: feels like you’ve torn everything down to the studs, then slowly, painstakingly, you rebuild. And somewhere beneath the plaster, those same people who once believed they could handle anything are still there.
Turns out that old song was right all along:
*All things pass, sadness and cheer,
All things pass—so the world goes round.
All things pass… just hold on, my dear,
Love won’t ever leave you, no—love sticks around.*
