I hate to sound cynical, but when I started reading Simone Warne's home renovation column, which comes to us thanks to news.com.au or some other Fox thingy linked in to it, I though, "When you were renovating your home?? You gutted the kitchen and added a family room, garage and new kitchen single-handedly with the aid of some spackling and a nail-file???"

And then I read on.

And no, it was the workmen who did it all while Shane was away and she worked nights and tried to sleep while they were hammering and banging away. The poor lamb.

I dunno, it's probably just me, but it annoys me when people are like, "Ohh, yes, we did this, this and this as well as inventing a solar-powered banana-peeler," when it was actually all done by the workmen who are trained professionals who can probably tell a virgin paint-job like the one I'm doing on my home from 100 paces through a blindfold.

Things are always much more impressive when people actually do the renovation work *themselves.* One of my friends parents actually renovated their whole house before selling it and did it themselves. It looked fantastic and we all knew that the time and effort they put into it meant that rewards in a great selling price were really felt by them (rather than having forked out loads to get some people in to do it for them).

Of course there's stuff that you will have to hire professionals in for, like building, but there is quite a lot of renovation work that you can do yourself if you try hard and put your mind to it. It's a learning experience at least :)

Anyhoo... more interesting: www.coloureverything.com.