Lee and I are doing some big renovations on our house trying to get it ready to sell. After raising 5 kids in this house for the last 11 years we have carpet to replace, walls to repaint, holes to patch (especially in bedrooms where kids can’t seem to open a door without plowing their doorknob through the wall regardless of doorstops), new doors to hang, kitchen cabinet doors to repair…pretty much everything. In fact there have been moments where I thought it would just be easier to gut the whole house and start over. Or, you know, burn it down. Not that I overreact or anything.

Earlier this month we made a trip to Menards to pick up some new interior doors. We live in kind of a lower middle-class neighborhood filled with smaller, older houses so I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on fancy doors knowing I’d never get that money back when we sell. So, after talking to some young kid at the store who clearly knows jack shit about doors (or anything for that matter), I picked some nice doors that are far from solid wood (or, you know, real wood at all), but they look nice and were inexpensive (ok, cheap). And by “picked some nice doors” I mean I scanned the price tags, found the cheapest price and decided those were “nice doors” cause that’s how us frugal (again, read cheap) girls shop.

We paid for our purchase and then drove around to the back of Menards to pick up our doors. I waited in the van while Lee got out to help the dense young kid and another guy piled our doors in the back. The other guy, then Lee, then the dense young kid placed a door in back. Rinse and repeat and all six doors were loaded. The two workers went inside as Lee approached my side of the van. “I’m not happy,” he said as he motioned me out of the van.

We’d already spent about 45 minutes at Menards, which is about 40 minutes past my limit, so I was not at all amused by being summoned out of the van. But I put on my best “I’m such a loving wife” face and shuffled to the back of the van. There in the back of the van were our six cheap doors. “Yeah?” I asked with my best annoyed look, “So the doors are in the van. Big whoop.”

Lee told me to look closer as he pointed to one of the doors. I humored him and leaned in closer. And what did I see? One of the doors was completely missing a corner of wood. And laying at my feet was that corner of wood. It was laying at the end of a scrap on the concrete. That dense kid dragged one of my cheap doors across the pavement before lifting it in to the van. So not only does he know absolutely nothing about doors. But he also has no upper arm strength and can’t lift a hollow door off the ground. Perhaps they should move him from the door section to something a little more dense kid friendly. Like the light bulb section. I’m just sayin.

So we got the door replaced (after taking every door back out of the van since the damaged door was near the bottom and then putting them all back in) and headed on out of the lumber yard. Before you can leave the yard there is a guy in a teeny tiny little glass room that comes out to make sure you aren’t stealing anything. So we opened up the doors so he could check out our doors. (Did that sound dirty or is that just me? Just me? Ok. *shakes head*) As Lee was looking over the doors he noticed the side of one of our cheap doors had fallen off. For the love of all things holy, why is so freaking difficult to buy cheap doors at Menards. We considered going back to replace yet another door, but after spending 45 minutes inside Menards and another 30 minutes in the yard, my left eye was starting to twitch and my speech was beginning to slur. Lee wisely decided he could just hammer the door back on when we got home.

As soon as we got home and carried all the doors in to the house (even I carried a door in without dragging it on the pavement, so take that girly boy from Menards), Lee began figuring out which door went were. And that’s when he realized he got the wrong size door for the linen closet. [This is where I'd like to point out that he measured the door before we left. Knew what size it should be. But when we were at the store he thought that looked to small so went a size bigger. Because men? Are dumb like that.]

Since the door with the side that fell off was the size we bought to big I had this super awesome idea that Lee could just take that door back and get the smaller door. That way Lee wouldn’t have to wrestle with any wood glue or anything. Smart, right?

Wrong. See doors comes in right-side doors and left-side doors depending on which direction they open. And the broken door was a right-side door. The linen closet door? You guessed it, is a left-side door. So Lee took it back and it still wasn’t right.

At this point I was beginning to go back to my original idea of just burning down the house.

Eventually we got all the right doors. And Lee’s friend came over and hung all doors. But now we are terrified to work on any other projects. We can’t even buy doors people. Imagine how we’ll be when it comes to painting. Or, god forbid, new hardwood floors. I’m scared for us.