Do they measure this stuff like fabric? Always a little extra in case the previous cut was done at a bad angle? Or is it prefab? Never bought it myself so I don’t know.

A cousin’s story.

Bob’s mom wanted to redo the wallpaper in this one room. She picked out a pattern, ordered, and when it came it was in two rolls.

Which, it turned out, didn’t actually match: one was printed larger than the other–somebody’d really goofed.

Well, huh. Well let’s see: you could use one as a border to the other here here and here like this and that would like nice but would there be enough for that?

(Oh, the roses one? I asked. No, that was in the kitchen, he answered. I don’t think I’ve been in that house in forty years but I remembered the roses–wallpaper was a novelty to me as a kid.)

My uncle, an engineer and a gifted mathematician, measured everything meticulously and went off in the other room to work out the dimensions of each space vs the wallpaper to find out, if you cut it with this part this way you could fit that that way but if you do that then this or maybe you could try this like this other. Etc.

Meantime, my aunt and Bob, her oldest son, decided between themselves, Oh what the heck, we were all ready anyway, let’s just do it.

They were just triumphantly applying the very last piece when his dad came back around the corner saying apologetically, I’m sorry, it just can’t be…(suddenly looking up in slow motion at the walls and their hands)… Done?