It may be because both my husband and I were raised in public housing. We had no experience of DIY. Yet years ago, when we bought our first house, we rolled up our sleeves and were determined to fix up the house to our liking even though we had never held a hammer, a paint brush, or a screwdriver.
My first project was to wallpaper the upper wall of the kitchen with printed wallpaper of Mallard ducks. I found it difficult to press the wallpaper against the wall because my arm was in a cast. My husband had polished the oak stairs with bowling alley wax. After taking a nap, I had taken one step at the top stairs and became airborne, and I hit the landing and ended up with a broken wrist.
The cast, however, did not deter me from the wallpapering job. I struggled to hold the paper against the wall with my cast often tearing the paper and the paper sticking to the cast. Refusing to give up, I finished the job in the early morning hours; it was only then I realized I had papered the ducks flying downward. My husband called my work: "The Dead Duck Wallpaper."
Since I had never wallpapered before I never knew about preparing the wall first. Like cave drawings or Stonehenge, those nosediving ducks are to remain on that wall forever. I expect centuries from now archaeologists will try to understand what meaning an ancient culture gave to purposely placing ducks flying downward.
The doctor was puzzled when in removing the cast instead of signatures, I had little bits of paper with ducks pasted onto the cast.