I knew we would put an offer on our house even before I saw it.  Not because it was my dream home or in my dream location.  I knew it because the universe told me.  No, I haven’t a run in with Heaven’s Gate or Ayahuasca.  Hear me out.  Not long after we moved to Boone an acquaintance from Ohio posted a link of a house in the mountains on her husband’s Facebook page.  Why you ask?  Hell if I know.  I clicked the link, looked at the house.  It was adorable, but not perfect.  I moved on.

A year later when we began our home search I kept thinking about that house.  I asked our realtor the beautiful and amazingly talented (really pushing for that raise) Susan Chaney to check on it.  It sold.  I was oddly heartbroken.

Then one Friday night we were heading home from dinner with friends.  I was neurotically updating Zillow to get the newest listings.  Wouldn’t you know, my house was back on the market?  I call Susan at 10pm on Friday night (she loves that!) and asked her politely (aka demanded) that she get me in the house.  We scheduled a showing for Sunday.

On Saturday my family went to a park about a half hour away from our future house.  The townhouse we were renting had a showing that day.  Kids ran over to us at the park and started playing with our dog. Their mom asked if we would ever get a second dog.  I told her we were house hunting, but would consider it once we were settled.  She told me the home she was renting just went on the market, but it was far away.  She then rolled her eyes and said she needed to clean it for the first showing the following day.  We put the pieces together and it turns out we were the showing.

Fast forward a few months.  We get the keys to our new home!  It was so exciting.  My dear friend came over and helped me rip out carpet and 100,000 staples.  Her husband helped put in new flooring.  Other friends came over for a painting party.  We hired an amazing carpenter to finish our basement and build an office for my husband. Life was grand.

Until I realized we knew nothing about remodeling.  What started with carpet removal, turned into trim removal.  Once the trim was removed we were like “Oh man, these doors are gross. We should replace them while we’re at it.”  We tore off all of the interior doors and threw them off the deck.  ALL of the doors.  We took some measurements and went on our merry way to a large chain home improvement store to pick up new ones.

We found our way to the door aisle and checked them out.  They were all standard.  Who wants standard?! While my husband was calculating the cost I picked up a special order catalog.  And would you know I saw the doors of my dreams!  I didn’t even know I could love doors until I saw these.  I snuck away and asked the door dude how long the wait would be.  He told me three weeks, but sometimes it’s four.  That sounded totally reasonable to me since we weren’t moving in for two weeks anyway.  An hour and a half later we had 12 gorgeous doors ordered and a lot less money.  We skipped out of the store with smiles on our faces.

Fast forward two weeks.  We’ve moved into The House with No Privacy.  The carpenter and his team have started work on the basement.  My husband has his home office set up in an upstairs bedroom.  My kid was home for the summer.  Our sweet old dog had a hard time adjusting and barked at absolutely everything and everyone.  It was CHAOS.  But I kept my cool, the doors were going to arrive soon. Everything would be more manageable when the doors came.

It was the big day.  I made sure we were the first delivery in the morning. The truck arrives and the doors opened.  I was so excited I couldn’t contain myself.  They began to unload and that’s when I caught my first glimpse of the wrong doors.  WRONG DOORS.  It was devastating.  I took a moment, talked to my husband, talked to our carpenter, took some deep breaths and sent them back to the store.  It was just a mistake and it was a luxury to have this problem.  I found my Zen place and headed to the large chain home improvement store to find a solution.  I walked back to the door department, spoke with a manager, and began the process of reordering the doors.  We had to wait four more weeks.

The next month sucked. Seriously. I tried to keep things in perspective, but when your house is full of construction, kids and animals and you have no way to manage noise to avoid disruption to conference calls it’s miserable.  Anything that needed to be done in the bathroom that I didn’t want to share with others had to be done before 7am or after 5pm.  I did manage to find a way to use the top floor bathroom.  I mastered the “squat quickly, don’t sit, panicky peeing in a rest area” move. My quads were in the better shape than an Olympic speed skater.  I tried my best to stay distracted which was easy enough with managing a construction project and organizing playdates.

Finally, the day came.  I took a shower before construction crews arrived at my house like I did every day cause, ya know, no doors.  On went my nicest dress and my grandma’s pearls, I blew up balloons, and set out a lunch meat platter.  I wanted the doors to know they were home. The truck rolled up, doors opened and you got it. WRONG DOORS AGAIN.  I lost my shitakes.  I lost the ability to speak and my body shook violently.  Removing myself from the situation was the only option. I turned around, went inside, and held onto the kitchen counter and took deep breaths.  I sent the doors back, got in my car, and headed straight to the large chain home improvement store.  This is where things got ugly.  I requested to speak with the general manager and when he walked up and introduced himself I began sobbing, right there in the front of large chain home improvement store. Loud, ugly, hysterical crying.  The kind manager placed his hand on my back and guided me to the back of the store.  It was like a scene from a funeral.

So, three months and a huge refund later we had our doors.  A year and a half later I can look at them without a feeling of rage.  The door story is a thing of the past and when I ran into the manager of large chain home improvement store this weekend I chuckled and shrugged off the door incident like it was no big deal.  I’m sure he was fishing around in his pocket for a can of mace, but he played it cool.  I know we were beginners and a lot of lessons were learned, but I suppose the moral of the story is remodeling is not for the faint of heart. Remember the old saying, “when a trashy old door no longer closes, be sure your adorable new craftsman style door is delivered and opens.”