<p>My husband and I always thought that tackling DIY projects would be the surest way to marital troubles.&#0160; After all, neither one of us knows what we&#39;re doing so there are WAY too many opportunities to screw things up and get on each other&#39;s nerves about things and the way they should be done.</p>

<p>So we bought the house we did precisely because it had been updated and we only needed to do a few things.&#0160; Such as:</p>

<p>1.&#0160; Paint a bedroom and bathroom which had, inexplicably, been painted purple.&#0160; The rest of the house is tastefully done in Navajo White and soothing shades of green, blue and yellow - but these two rooms were a strange zombie-like purple.</p>

<p>2.&#0160; Put a chandelier in the dining room.&#0160; Not a big deal because we didn&#39;t even have to buy one since a chandelier had been installed, inexplicably, in the middle of the kitchen.&#0160; (I&#39;m 5&#39;8&quot; and my husband is 6&#39;2&quot;.&#0160; Needless to say, our skulls couldn&#39;t take this anymore.)</p>

<p>(Who needs a chandelier in the middle of their kitchen?&#0160; Our house is full of little oddities like this.)</p>

<p>3.&#0160; Replace the kitchen chandelier with recessed lighting to match the rest of the kitchen.</p>

<p>4.&#0160; Re-caulk a few spots in the two bathrooms.</p>

<p>And that was it.&#0160; Simple!&#0160; We&#39;ll just hire a handyman and be done with it!</p>

<p>So I took it upon myself, as Chief Executive Officer in Charge of All Household Operations and Negotiating Minx, to call every single handyman, painter and electrician in the Boston suburbs.&#0160; My plan was to screen a few companies, schedule a few appointments for estimates and then hire a professional based on who could give me the best quality work at the best price.&#0160; </p>

<p>Oh, how innocent I was!</p>

<p>(This is the part where experienced homeowners try to suppress a little chuckle, amused at my naive belief that I would be in charge of this process.&#0160; Ha!)</p>

<p>I&#39;m convinced that home repair contractors live by a code, and that code is:&#0160; ESTIMATES?&#0160; HAHAHAHHAHA!&#0160; </p>

<p>Either the contractor flat-out refused to give me an estimate (or even better, they wanted me to PAY them $60 just to <em>hear</em> an estimate!) or they did what the handyman I ultimately hired did - they just pulled a number out of thin air and told me the work would be done in 10 hours.</p>

<p>In the end I spent 3 days at my house without internet access or showers, and the cost was 3 times the original estimate (HAHAHAHA!&#0160; ESTIMATE!)</p>

<p>I&#39;ve learned my lesson.&#0160; Next time, I&#39;ll learn to love the purple. </p>
