This weekend, like most of Americans, I will be outside cooking on my grill. Unlike most Americans, I will be cooking outside because I don't have a working kitchen. So far it hasn't been that much of an inconvenience, because who doesn't like to have a break from cooking every single night. Though tonight when a huge storm rolled through right before I was set to cook I was at a loss of what to serve for dinner. Finally I pulled out the cold cereal. And my children cheered.

See that ladder there? My husband bought it this past weekend to replace the rickety old ladder we have had for almost 14 years. A ladder that came with our previous house. It was wooden and you had to stand on it very carefully because it would sway from side to side.

This week I said goodbye to my ugly kitchen. Look at the harvest gold sink? This kitchen was remodeled in the late 80's, long after harvest gold had fallen out favor. It is a double sink, yet each side of the sink is too small to fit anything into, causing untold numbers of expletives to fly out of my mouth over the past 5 years. And the white vinyl floor. Yes, I know it doesn't look white, but that is because I have a life other than mopping it every time one of my children looks at it.

Most of us think of home renovations and imagine huge projects that cost buckets of money and lots of time. But the truth is that most homes can benefit from smaller projects.

Tomorrow morning I have a contractor coming over to give us an estimate on for doing a bunch of sheetrocking around our house. I realize this may now make me a do-it-yourself poser. Though who knows, his estimate might shock me back into the diy mentality. Home Restoration writes about the challenges of sheetrocking an older house where nothing is level, plumb, or square.