Once upon a time I used to consider myself handy. I worked for a contractor doing renovations when I was younger and I knew which end of the hammer did what. Somewhere along the way I lost my edge and turned into every other guy on the planet that tries to do his own home renovations.

My wife and I got married some years ago. We didn't live together and we bought our house before we got married. She lived there and I kept my apartment until after the wedding but I was still responsible for any work that needed to be done on the place. It was an unspoken agreement. She cooked for me and I fixed what needed fixing.

The house that we bought wasn't much more than a row house and it needed a lot of work. One of the first big projects that we tackled was before she even moved in. You see, it was an old house with narrow stairs and doorways and my wife had some big furniture including a rather large bed that wasn't going to make it up the enclosed stairway.

We decided to open up the stairway by removing the wall that enclosed the stairway. This job was accomplished quite easily thanks to my future brother-in-law and a big saw. While the problem was solved, the task of cleaning up the mess and finishing off the job was left to me.

I took a day off from work to complete the carpentry. I carefully measured everything and came up with a plan inside my head. A piece of lumber to cover the stumps left along the stairway along with some more wood to create a post at the bottom of the stairs would do the trick. Some finish stock, some stain and a few coats of polyurethane and I figured I'd be done by noontime.

Like almost every other home improvement project that I've ever done though, this beast wound up being a little more tricky than I had expected. You see, with old houses, nothing is square or plumb. Also, trying to get new carpentry to match the old is seldom as easy as it might seem. For me, a little wood filler and some caulking and we'd call it a day. Women are seldom amused by such antics and often your best efforts will simply not be appreciated and so it was with my betrothed.

After six hours of working like a madman she came home. She was glowing at first and I could almost hear her thoughts. Her future husband was doing manly stuff and fixing her house up. I knew that the job looked like a drunken monkey had done it but I was too tired and frustrated from trying to shim things and cover mistakes made with scraps of quarter round. I know that the job looked like garbage.

As my future bride too one look at the finished job and searched for the right words to say, my temper began to get the better of me. Her mouth opened and what she said wasn't terrible or mean but it was a rejection of my work.

In a moment and with a single blow from my framing hammer the post at the landing of our stairway was decimated. With shock, my beloved covered her mouth and quietly said that I didn't have to do that and that the job wasn't that bad.

It was then that I decided that for the rest of my married life I would hire someone who knew what they were doing to do any finish carpentry or remodeling in our home. I've resigned myself to building birdhouses at the most and I leave anything that a human will have contact with to the professional. Time and money aren't wasted and I can lie to myself and tell my wife that once upon a time when I was young that I used to be able to do that same caliber of finish carpentry. I know that my wife has a mind like an elephant and she remembers my remodeling skills but she rarely reminds me these days.