Extreme Makeover

Home improvement projects are causing me anxiety and illness. Painting walls and staining woodwork is clearly not my forte, but since my husband Jim is a jack-of-all trades he refuses to hire anyone. So he took over the job for me this past weekend. Whew - talk about toxic overload I couldn't even see straight from the chemical smells.

While I'm all for saving money by doing the work ourselves, I've decided to hire a pro to wallpaper the dining room. Jim bought into my plan - yeah!

Of course, we don't always agree on everything. We visited the local hardware/home improvement store and created quite a scene as we stood there arguing over lights. Now I know we're not the first couple to do this, but when we left empty handed I knew that we hit a wall and it was time to take a step back. On the drive home we agreed how silly the whole argument was, especially since we share a similar sense of taste and design style.

It's been 15 years since we first built our home, and we forgot the pain involved in the process of selecting everything from light fixtures to door knobs. One thing we are now remembering is that time and patience is what it will take to remodel. We'll probably be at it for several months at this rate, but when the rooms are complete it will be well worth the blood, sweat, and fears.