Ty Pennington, where are you???

I hate home renovation. I am not joking.

Five years ago, I was 7 months pregnant, and my husband suddenly decided that 5 years of renting had to stop now that we were bringing new life into the world. We talked to a real estate agent, and after finding out our financial status, she gave us keys to some of the biggest piles of steaming crapola houses you have ever seen. One of them in particular comes to mind. The floor had settled so much since the house was built by pilgrims back in the 1600's that you felt like you were drunk the whole time you walked through it. I am not joking. I was literally sick by the time we left, from trying to keep my balance. Some rooms tilted back, some to the side. The back bedroom floor was practically vertical. Not to mention, every room in the house was painted that green / blue color that was made popular by the hospital-type soaps back in the 70's.

So when we looked at the last house, it seemed something not too far off from the Playboy Mansion. Sturdy construction, a breezeway, 1100 square foot of horizontal living space. We were sucked in by the desperation of what we might get stuck with if we didn't move FAST! We made an offer and they accepted and we moved in when I was 8 months pregnant. (Just in time to be put on bedrest.)

Oh, but there were a couple of problems. The first being that nothing in the house had been updated since around 1970. The bedroom that is now my daughter's had orange shag carpeting. The kitchen had the horrid ugly orange and brown pockmarked linoleum that had been there so long that it was no longer attached to the floor and rolled up on all sides of the room. The original builders must have run out of money before they finished because the kitchen cabinets are scrap plyboard, and the trim around the top of the room is bits and pieces all nailed up haphazardly, with no concern that they didn't match up. No problem, my dear husband said. Its all just a matter of beautification.

Brings me to the second problem. Five years of living with the love of my life in houses that had landlords that we called anytime there was a problem did not prepare me for what a horrible "project" man my husband was. Five years of living here definitely has.

He never completely finishes a project. Never. Ever.

Oh, he is great at starting the project. The BEST. You know the part where you go in with a hammer and gloves and just rip stuff apart? He is so cool at that. Its the part where you have to actually put it back together that he sucks. We have door frames that are missing, none of the floors have thresholds, the kitchen floor that he completely replaced with such skill is missing tiles all around the circumference of the room. The baseboards were never put back up. The hall is half painted. There are no ceiling tiles in the laundry room, nor is there a wall on the of said laundry room. The drain pipe that he "rigged up temporarily" to the washing machine the week we moved in is still "rigged" with the same mismatched drain hoses with bread ties holding them together. He replaced one of the counter TOPS, but not the sides or the backsplash, so we have one yellow stained countertop and one pretty grey marble countertop.

And much to my horror, last week he started on the rest of the kitchen. The walls are spackled. Tonight, I got tired of the fridge being in the middle of the room, along with the stove, and my kitchen table covered in paint samples, razorknifes, hammers, spackle, etc. So I moved everything back. He is fishing tonight.

I can't stand the clutter, the unfinished rooms. It makes me want to cry.

I hate home renovation.