I Found a Hidden Safe in My Closet

And other great ways to get people to notice you…

Photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash

Home renovations might get some people’s juices flowing, but I would rather be forced to watch 10 episodes of SNL with Elon Musk as the host than choose between a standard or a linear drain. The humanity!

But also, I hated the worn-out flooring in our house. Sometimes life is just hard. (*When you have no substantive problems and recognize you are a privileged a-hole.)

At any rate, after a couple of years of dragging our feet, and over a year stuck inside staring at said rotting flooring, my husband and I decided it was time to replace the floors. We went to exactly one flooring store and bought the first type of flooring the salesperson showed us. It took us about 10 minutes to decide on which color. I’ve never spent so much money on something I decided on so quickly since I chose to go to USC.

My husband used to be a handyman so yes, I’m very spoiled. It’s also why he was confident in purchasing the first flooring we were shown. Our bigger decision was whether we were going to install the flooring ourselves, or hire a person who knows what they’re doing. After about three seconds of discussion, my husband said, “No way I’m doing this.”

A lovely man gave us an estimate. We hired him. Our last decision was whether we should float the new flooring on top of the old laminate floorboards. The lovely man said he didn’t recommend floating it and advised ripping it all out and starting fresh. But former handyman husband said, “I’ve watched a lot of YouTube about these floors. Feels like we can just float it.”

An appointment was scheduled with lovely man and he said he was happy to do whatever we wanted, float or not, when he came back to install the floors. But Dr. YouTube wanted to pull up a couple floorboards to verify lovely man’s conclusion. After lots of eye-rolling and heavy sighing, I poured a glass of rosé and turned on Netflix in hopes of ignoring this foolery. Not long into episode three of Bridgerton, Professor Floating Floors said, “Honey. Come look at this.”

I downed my glass and after more eye-rolling and heavy sighing, I looked over his shoulder. Holy shit. Under the floorboards was a goddamn floor safe.