Home renovations: Hemorrhaging money and loving every minute of it

This is our new 23-foot Trex deck when it was completed and before we started putting stuff on it.

We are the midst of a series of home renovation projects, all of which involve us hiring various contractors to complete projects around our property that, had I been born with the Handy Gene, I might have done myself.

Alas, though, I was not, and therefore we have a choice either to shell out thousands of dollars to these professionals or watch our house fall down around us.

Like many other homeowners before us, we have chosen to deplete our savings account.

It all started last fall when a basement flood forced us to replace all of the trim and various doors in our basement. We hired a contractor to perform the repairs, and he turned out to be...less than satisfactory. His replacement, recommended by our daughter Elissa, was the complete opposite: Fast, competent, skilled, and a great communicator.

He completed the job in a matter of a couple of weeks.

So we hired him to replace our battered old wooden deck. It's beautiful.

We would love for him to do even more work for us, because I've discovered that a good contractor is worth his weight in gold.

We're still looking to remodel our nearly-30-year-old kitchen this year, and we need a lot of interior painting done.

With each job and each batch of building materials and supplies, our bank account gets lighter. Sometimes by frightening leaps and bounds.

Yet we grin and bear it, because the end result of each job is so nice.

Nice enough to justify huge depletions of our rainy fund?

Well...I don't know. I can tell you the Trex deck is amazing, though, for what that's worth.

10 things about me I can't believe my wife puts up with

1. I get cranky when I get stressed
I like to think I can handle a lot, but when I feel like my cup runneth over, I get irritable. She generally lets it slide, God bless her.

2. I can't fix anything
I know we've been over this before, but really, how much easier would her life be if her husband knew how to repair stuff? As it is, she either has to learn how to fix things herself, farm the job out to her dad, or simply go out and a buy new version of whatever has broken. Sorry, hon.

3. I am inordinately interested in grown men playing games
My sports fandom is something I keep relatively in control, but every once in awhile I think it must bother her. Like when I stay up late to watch the end of a game and cheer just loud enough to wake her up.

4. I am an all-or-nothing person
I'll go to Terry and say, "Geez, I'm having a hard time keeping up with my running schedule." And she, very sensibly, will ask something like, "Why don't you cut back to running only a few days a week?" And I, very insensibly, will reply (in caps), "NO! I MUST EITHER RUN 75,000 MILES EVERY WEEK OR I WON'T RUN AT ALL! THERE WILL BE NO IN-BETWEEN!"

5. I hate losing to her in anything
Especially Putt Putt. She's a very good miniature golfer, I am not. But I will try my darndest to beat her because I must not lose to a girl. Trust me, I annoy even myself with this one.

6. I insist on cleaning the kitchen before we go to bed
I'll come home and the kitchen will be a mess, and Terry will tell me not to worry because she'll clean it in the morning. And I know she will. But the thought of dirty dishes sitting in the sink overnight bothers me to no end. I don't know why, it just does. So almost inevitably, I will clean the kitchen myself (and come to think of it, I have to believe she knows this and uses it to her own advantage. She's sneaky.)

7. I work my game show experience into far too many conversations
Did I ever tell you that I was on two game shows? Not one, TWO. See, it all started when...

8. I refuse to believe I am any good at anything
"Self-deprecating" is one thing. That's kind of admirable. But "constantly believing you're the worst person in the world and saying so" has to grate on your significant other after awhile. Or at least I imagine it is.

9. I can be obsessive
This is closely related to #4, I suppose. Like the Weight Watchers thing. I lost a good deal of weight and continue to track my food every day using the Weight Watchers PointsPlus system. And if given the chance, I will talk to you about it. Forever. I track everything that goes into my mouth, and I don't eat nearly the quantity of desserts I used to. I'm a weight loss evangelist. And like anyone who has discovered a new way of life and wants to tell you about it, I am annoying.

10. I write about our personal lives in a public blog
Seriously, who does that?

I can tell you where our toolbox is, but that's about it

There are two reasons we can't have nice things in our house (three, if you count the fact that we're all the domestic equivalents of bulls in a china shop and we break new items within seconds of obtaining them):

(1) When expensive nice things break, you need to hire a professional to fix them. And I don't have a job. Which means that unless the repair person is willing to accept empty coffee creamer bottles as legal tender, I can't afford their services.

(2) When less-expensive nice things break, you're expected to fix them yourself. I can't fix anything. The last household item I could reliably fix was a personal computer, and that was back when they all had monochromatic green screens and were powered by DOS.

People who know me know about my mechanical incompetence. It's part of my mystique, along with a weird competitive streak and my penchant for talking freely and innocently about inappropriate subjects, as if I were one of those brain injury victims who have lost the use of that part of your brain that's supposed to filter out socially unacceptable topics of conversation.

People who know me also know I rely a lot on my wife in matters involving tools, and even more so on my saint of a father-in-law.

Please understand, this is not a case of me simply being too lazy to learn. I've tried. Many times. But I just don't see the way things fit together like most other people do.

I still try to at least talk a good game, though. Let's say, for instance, that our toaster oven is suddenly on the fritz. My first thought is how much a new toaster oven costs at Best Buy. My wife, on the other hand, will (as she often says) first try to "assess the situation." Which just means she'll give the toaster oven a once over to try and diagnose the problem.

Here's how that conversation usually goes:

ME: The toaster oven is broken.

TERRY: Yeah, I know. I opened it up. The bitzer valve is filibustered.

ME: What?

TERRY: The bitzer valve. It's filibustered.

ME: Oh, I thought that's what you said. That was my first thought, too: The bitzer valve is definitely filibustered.

TERRY: No, it's not.

ME: Sure it is. You just said so.

TERRY: I made that whole thing up. There's no such thing as a bitzer valve.

ME (flustered): Well...uh...that just shows how much you know! I've had a surprising amount of experience with toaster ovens, and especially with bitzer valves, and that is easily one of the most filibustered bitzer valves I've ever seen.

Of course, it doesn't matter whether the bitzer valve is a real toaster oven part or not. And it certainly doesn't matter whether it's filibustered, because I wouldn't begin to know the difference. I'm already mentally taking the money for a new toaster oven out of my Starbucks Fund and heroically sacrificing a few future frappuccinos just so the family can continue to meet its monthly quota of toasted bagels.

Being mechanically inept is not only an expensive way to go through life, it's also a little embarrassing. Guys, as you know, attend a special school when they reach the age of 10. At this school, they're taught three important skills: how to spit, how to ignore household dirt, and how to fix stuff.

Or at least I assume this is how it works, and that I for whatever reason was not asked to attend this school. I don't spit well, I hate a dirty house, and I most definitely never got the memo on fixing things.

The result is that I have to rely on other people to fix my stuff. And I end up having conversations with professional repair guys in which they talk about bitzer valves and such, and my only reaction (in the name of saving face and trying to preserve some Guy Dignity) is to nod thoughtfully and in such a way as to convey the message, "Yes, that's exactly what I thought was the problem. I would fix it myself, of course, but I have to go and remount the engine on my '72 Mustang. So why don't I just go ahead and give you several pounds of paper money and have you fix it for me?"

The repair guy, who instantly knows I have no idea what I'm talking about but is a nice person who understands the Guy Code, will readily agree to this arrangement and will go along with the facade of me being a real Tool Man because he knows it makes me feel better.

And given the fact that I've already financed two of his kids' college educations with various repair jobs, it's actually in his best interest to play along.