HGTV has ruined my weekends.

So this past Sunday, Zac and I laid in bed for two hours watching a Bath Crashers marathon on the HGTV.  This show goes to stores like Lowe's and Home Depot and offers people shopping in the store an opportunity to get a WHOLE NEW BATHROOM in three days, for FREE.  And people turn this shit down!  "No, not interested" or "I can't talk I need a screwdriver STAT" or "I'm in a hurry because I left my baby at home in the middle of a pit of poisonous vipers but I really needed to pick up some light bulbs."  Maybe that poisonous viper pit could use a makeover, ehh?  Some stainless steel, wainscoting, a few niches here and there for poisonous viper hygiene products to be displayed tastefully, and an ergonomically correct sling for the baby made of recycled plastic shit/hemp/Ikea products.

We watch a remodeling project on HGTV and get all energized and say "WE CAN TOTALLY DO THAT." Then we start a bunch of really ambitious projects, get angry and frustrated when our skills don't match TV people skills, and I start to throw shit and Zac takes an X-Box break.

The one project we did finish was laying hardwood floor on both levels of the house.  We ripped out the carpet and vinyl and a zillion nails.  We rented one of those huge garbage troughs you put in the driveway and got to throw rolls of old carpet and padding into the trough from our bedroom window.  Funnest thing evar.  I lovingly selected and placed every floor board where it would go and Zac hammered it in.  Two years later our floor job is still functional, but the wood has become *gaptastic* in places as well as dented and scratched all over.  Whatevs, right?  It's character, yalls.  Hardwood floor is totally going to make our house stand out when we have to sell, right?  Totally.

Here is a list of projects which have been started and never finished:

Painting the interior of the house.
Zac hates white walls and I like consistency so we decided to paint the house, but all one color.  After buying an endless supply of paint samples, I found the right color--Oatmeal, by Ralph Lauren.  I still love this color.  It sets off our new white trim and it doesn't ever look pink no matter how the light hits it.  So we paint.  And paint.  And argue.  And paint.  I realize that I fucking hate painting.  So we ran out of paint after doing the first coat which looks super shitty and then we were like, "Let's take a break from painting.  You know what we should do?  Wood stairs and trim!"  So the paint job looks awful because my walls are textured and we got sloppy toward the end and now Home Depot doesn't carry Ralph Lauren paint anymore and I have to special order that shit.  Someday I'm going to hire professional painters who will use a paint blower and not get it all over the ceiling and kitchen cabinets like we did and it will look SWEET.

Installing brand new trim around the bottom of the walls and around the doors.
We bought a crapload of expensive trim because I WANTED IT.  Zac and I had already pulled off the old trim when we were pulling up the old carpet, so we were ready to GO.  Turns out that cutting and installing the long straight pieces of trim is easy, but the angles needed for corners and stuff are HARD.  Gave up.

Installing wood stairs.
We still had carpet on one set of stairs, and the basement stairs were just roughed in.  So we pulled up the last of the carpet, purchased a ton of treads and risers, and set to work.  For a day.  Gave up.

Now we decide to bring in professionals.  Be prepared to yell at me while I tell you how we did this, but just know that there is no shame you can bring upon me that I haven't visited upon myself.

1. We decide to look for carpenters on craigslist.  BAD.
2. We interview them in our home and get estimates.  GOOD.
3. We (Zac) decide to hire the two man team based solely on the decision that one of them is wearing a NOFX t-shirt.  BAD.
4. We don't fire them after the first day of laziness ensues.  BAD.
5. We (I) give them a check for the full amount before the entire job was done.  BAD.

Additional problems include me insisting that Zac be around whenever they are in the house after the first day of their shitty work because I was too scared to stand up to them by myself about their shitty work.   Yes, I know, I am woman and I am supposed to roar, but I was intimidated and stuff.  I still am.  Zac is away a lot, further hindering job completion.  So here it is over a year later and our stairways and trim are still not finished.  Every time I think about this I start feeling helpless over the situation and that makes me frustrated and then angry and this gives me another reason to have Zac around the next time these assholes show up to finish the fucking job they were already paid to do!  Right at this moment I am fighting the urge to text Zac and tell him to call the "carpenters" right now. 

Update.  I just texted Zac.

So we got completely uninterested in home projects for a year.  Then just a couple of weeks ago, we start talking new kitchen appliances.  Then we bring up other old plans--painting the "golden maple" kitchen cabinets, replacing the bathroom vanities, tiling the bathroom floors with tile we bought over a year ago, and tiling our master shower with *gaspOMGWANT* glass tiles, and pulling out our monster of a bathtub and putting in a smaller one to gain some room.  There is nothing master about our master bathroom.  I hate taking baths anyway; soaking in a hot bowl of my own filth soup is not my idea of relaxation.

To me, the worst part of this home renovation situation is that I HATE this house.  This was our first house purchase and I had no idea what to look for.  And Colorado is definitely NOT my forever home, so this house will eventually need to be sold.  We thought ripping out all the old cheap builder materials would make our house more valuable, but I think the most we can hope for in this shitty real estate market is that our improvements will make our house stand out in a neighborhood of cookie-cutter houses.