I repainted the entire ceiling and walls of our dome house without my wife ever noticing.

Call it an illusion, a con job, a scam – it was the greatest surprise project I’ve ever pulled off on my dear wife, and I did it right before her eyes.

The two grandsons who get off the bus every day at our house were the first ones to hear my secret plan, and they were the almost daily witnesses over six weeks as it improbably moved to a successful conclusion.

“Does she know yet?” grandson Lamppost Head would whisper, casting his eyes up to the ceiling 24 feet above. Anyone looking up could see part was newly painted bright white and part was still dingy white with cobwebs.

“I don’t think so,” I would whisper back. “She keeps bugging me to call painters.”

“How could she not see it?” said his brother, The 747.

“I. . .don’t. . .know,” I said, emphasizing each word to show I was just as mystified as they. “I don’t think she ever looks up.”

This is how it happened.

For years Honey has been pleading for new vinyl flooring.

But we couldn’t do a new floor until the ceiling was repainted, and couldn’t paint the ceiling until the chimney leak and the ceiling drywall damaged by roof leaks were repaired. There was no point in repairing drywall until the roof was replaced. Each domino had to fall in turn.

Honey wanted me to hire everything done, but I built this dome house 40 years ago and stubbornly said I would be the one to fix it. So I did the roof. It took months. That was two years ago.

This past summer Honey began pushing again to hire out the drywall and painting so, as she delicately put it, she could enjoy a new floor and nice house before she was dead. I compromised, agreeing to use a painter after I patched the drywall.

I began on Oct. 25 with son Seed and grandson Bob helping me put up three sections of scaffolding in our living room, working around the chimney leak first. My repair looked so nice I scrounged some old primer from my hoard of yard sale paint in the basement and painted it. It looked good, so I repainted the tall, white-painted chimney, too. Knowing my wife’s poor opinion of my painting skills, I didn’t mention it. Significantly, she didn’t notice. Hmmm.

That’s when the idea came to me. What if I painted not only the drywall repairs, but the entire area I was working in? Among my yard sale paint inventory I found white interior acrylic paint, some in never-opened cans, and came up with four and a half gallons. I mixed them together and began painting my way around the domed ceiling. When that ran out, I bought a five-gallon bucket of white ceiling paint at the lumber yard. All the paint, old and new, looked the same: bright white.

After painting around the chimney, I moved to the loft, where I could hide what I was doing. Generally I worked on drywall when my wife was around and painted when she wasn’t, but I soon found she didn’t pay much attention to what I was doing up on that scaffold. Using a long-handle extension on my roller I could reach a wide swath of ceiling. Sometimes I painted when she was down below in the living room. (Later she said she saw me painting but thought I was priming drywall.)

I figured if I could get far enough along on the project before she caught on, she might relent and let me finish it. If not, I had wasted only my own time and a few gallons of paint.

After a few weeks most of the close family members were in on the secret. They, too, were amazed she hadn’t noticed. Some suggested she knew and was just playing me, but I said no, a reverse con is not in her personality. Plus, she solicited recommendations and was happily compiling a list of painters for me to call.

There came a crucial point when I needed help to paint walls behind cumbersome furniture on the main floor. On the Saturday before Thanksgiving, son-in-law Snickers and his boys, Lamppost Head and The 747, came over. Their cover story was to help put up scaffolding in the kitchen, which was true. During her Saturday shift at the Book Nook and we had a four-hour window of time.

As soon as she was gone, the crew moved furniture out from the walls and took down pictures while I began painting. Then they left because they had promised to help a friend move, but said they would get back in time to put it all back.

The paint dried quickly. They came back and the plan went like clockwork until we started putting pictures back on the wall. I’m still not sure if all were put back on the same nails, but again, my wife noticed nothing.

Honey and I spent Thanksgiving week in Alabama with Worshrag and Busy Bee. Upon our return I spent a few days wrapping up the loose ends, but the time had come to tell her and I didn’t know if she would be pleasantly surprised (unlikely) or fit to be tied (probably).

When Honey came back from the bookstore that Saturday, she caught me roller painting and bawled me out, asking what in the world I was doing and sure I was getting splatter on everything.

I asked her to sit down, and spoke the line I had carefully rehearsed: “I have news, an apology, a confession and we have a decision to make.”

She looked confused. I pressed on: “The news is the painter who was here two days ago turned down the job. Too high and too much up and down, he said. The apology is, I’ve been keeping a secret from you. The confession is I’ve painted the dome. All of it.”

“What do you mean, you painted all of it?” she asked, gazing around. It was late in the day and light was dim as she gazed up at the finished ceiling. Then she looked at the walls and said, “What about behind the computer desks?”

“Painted.”

“The entertainment center?”

“Painted. And the kitchen cupboards, painted. The decision is, if you still want a professional to paint it, that’s okay. But if you don’t, we can tear up the carpet and tile after the holidays and you can get your new floor.”

Her logical mind was quick to see the advantages.

“Whatever it is,” she said, looking around, “It’s probably good enough for us.”