What does a router saw, a butter knife, a sliding compound mitre saw and an air compressor all have in common?

Well, besides the ungodly amount of money I spent on all of them (or rather, winced as the hubs forked out the cash), they are all in my kitchen. Right this second. Apparently, they’re more useful to me than say, a stove. Or a countertop. Both of which are covered by an assortment of tools, wood pieces, carpenters glue and sawdust.

This is what happens when I have a dream. Or a delusion. A vision of a perfect kitchen. All it took was fifteen hundred smackers on a few pieces of cabinet trim, a henpecked husband, some patience and an iron will.

Sure, the hubs and I will probably murder each other before he goes back to work. Sure, we have neglected the kids and fed them cereal while we farted around with measurements and tools and argued with one another while our kids rotted their brains out playing video games.

All in the name of progress, baby.

What the hell was I thinking when I decided my kitchen, just three years old and in perfect working order, needed an upgrade?

And just how deep are my husband’s balls buried in my purse that he actually agreed???

It’s all fun and games around here. Until some one loses a finger. Courtesy of the power tools sitting in my kitchen and the hubs and my mutual annoyance with one another until this task is finished.

In a fit of desperation, I called my brother, Stretch, and asked him for his professional assistance. After all, he’s a carpenter by trade. Surely, he wouldn’t mind spreading the love, enlightening his favourite sister, and in the process, save her marriage.

His advice?

Don’t cut the fifteen-dollar-per-linnear-foot trim in one inch chunks. It’ll look bad. Remember, any project you think will take six hours will unerringly take three days and a pound of flesh. Oh, and my personal favorite? Remember to measure before you cut. Apparently, it’s important.

With those little gems, the hubs and I set out to kill one another finish our cabinets.

Cabinets that looked fine before we started screwing around with them, my darling husband snarled at me as he Brad nailed his finger to the trim.

At that point, it was hard to disagree with him.

I almost felt bad. I mean, the man is only home for 96 hours every 24 days. This is his down time. He should be kicking back, with his feet up and tossing back a cold one while I make gourmet meals for him wearing nothing but an apron and a pair of stilettos.

Or at least, this is what he keeps telling me.

I keep telling him the only whip I’m gonna wield is the one that is gonna motivate his ass to get my cabinets done, the garbage moved to the dump,and the wood chopped and stacked.

Apparently, we are having a bit of a break down in communication. And not a lot of sex. It’s hard to get close to one another when we are both covered in sawdust. Neither of us wants slivers in sensitive places.

We have made some progress. (With the carpentry. Not the sex, sadly enough.) By the end of today we should be finished. As long as no digits are forcefully removed by rotating blades, no eyes are lost with flying nails and no lives ended by the throttling hands of an angry, annoyed spouse.

Soon we will be back to our regular, loving selves, ready for some romance as we take in our newly completed kitchen cabinets.

The question remains, will we be romancing each other or new spouses? At this point, I’m thinking the odds are fifty-fifty.

Remind me of this nightmare the next time I have the urge to start a do-it-yourself (or nag your husband until he does it) project. While you may learn new tricks and skills about home improvements, you may also learn that you and your husband morph into scary, ten feet tall, angry monsters; each capable of shooting death rays from your eyeballs while attempting to destroying one another. Or just to shut the other one up for one freaking moment of peace.

I’ll have to remember to try and avoid getting any blood on my the cabinets during the carnage.