Living up to my wife's expectations

A year after we were married, I picked up enough courage to ask my lovely wife the reason why she married me.
I was hoping for something along the lines of: "Well, for a start you're drop dead gorgeous ... " Instead her response was: "Two things - first you can fix things, and secondly you make me laugh."
Subsequent events were to show that even these two modest criteria took some living up to.
For the first four years of our marriage we initially shared a house with a chain-smoking elderly spinster before moving on to a flat in a cold and draughty Victorian house that had once been a manse. Finally, with a generous loan from a work colleague of my wife's, we were able to afford our first home.
It was a modest two-bedroom bungalow in a small village within commuting distance of the university where I was studying industrial design engineering. The bungalow had been bought new two years previously by the vendors, who were both professional artists. They had a four year old daughter who had expressed her own artistic potential by covering all the building's internal walls with crayon up to height of her reach. Possibly this explained why we were able to secure the property at a reasonable price.
Even so, having recently paid back my wife's student loan and living on her modest salary as a graduate teacher, we were seriously poor, to the extent that for the first few months after moving into the bungalow, we couldn't afford a bed, so slept on a mattress on the floor.
As my wife's birthday approached I decided that I'd surprise her with the luxury of a bed. This was to be achieved within my budget by designing and building the bed myself.
This required a trip to the local timber yard and a great deal of haggling. On my return home I began the search for suitable nails and screws to hold the bed together.
The design and build of the new bed took until mid-evening and, as an additional treat, I'd offered to cook the evening meal. This meal fell into the category of what my wife refers to as "Boy Scout Food", being egg, chips and baked beans.
Settling back after the meal to watch a movie on a much pre-owned black-and-white 12-inch television, my wife remarked: "Can you smell burning?"
The kitchen when I opened the door was thick with black smoke, all of it coming from a chip pan resting on an electric stove I had neglected to switch off. Opening all the external doors and windows to winter temperatures, I could see when the smoke cleared that the kitchen floor, ceiling and walls were covered in a thick coating of black carbon.
"We can't leave it like this," my wife commented, "It needs to be washed off before it sets."
It took until three o'clock the next morning before we'd scrubbed all the surfaces including the stove clean.
Feeling guilty that I'd ruined her birthday I said to my wife: "You have a shower and turn in and I'll finish up here and join you. At least we have a nice new bed to sleep in."
Having finished up in the kitchen I showered and collapsed gratefully on to the new bed next to my sleeping wife. It was at that moment the mattress, along with my wife and myself, fell through the bottom of the bed and hit the floor. My ever-patient wife opened one sleepy eye and commented: "It needs more nails."