Warning: Home Repairs Can Be Hazardous to Your Health

Here's my take on home renovations: The results are fantastic and -- hopefully -- create peace, but in the meantime you'd better be prepared to face an emotional wasteland. Surprise, this ain't a cheery post.

Scott and I, with huge help from our dads, ripped out the floor in our kitchen, our entry hall, and the side hall on Sunday. We thought we were going to have our much-anticipated new floor installed today. Think again. After the installers left this morning, breaking the hard news that our floor is so warped and unlevel that we can't put down the flooring we chose, it's as though all we really heard was the sound it makes when someone touches the tweezers to the side of the funny bone compartment in the game of Operation -- incessantly. Or if that grating sound is unfamiliar to you, maybe you know the wah-wah buzzer from The Price Is Right game show, which is often accompanied by a big fat red X across the TV screen.

Back to the drawing board and the dread of having to go out shopping together again to find something we both mostly like and that will cooperate with our uncooperative floor.

Until such a time, we're stuck with a grimy-dirty, splinter-ridden, gotta-wear-shoes-on-it wood subfloor. And did I mention our stove is in the living room? Our kitchen table and chairs is in the family room? The kitchen counter's covered in a measurably thick amount of dust?

Yes, I would like some cheese with my whine.