Sitting on a Barbed Wire Fence

The missus and I have a running bet to see which of us can come up with the most practical, the most necessary and the most costly home improvement project.

We had to add "practical" to the mix because I came up with bronzing all the bedding and linens, then having the bronze covered in gold, because, ya know, if you're going to turn your linens into metal, might as well be gold. And then I decided that we'd want to protect the gold with a nice titanium-alloy, so that they could conceivably last forever and double as high-altitude airplane parts. I was informed that sleeping under sheets of metal is not very comfortable, and I'm a man who loves his comfort.

I own a double-pillow top, Serta king-size matress, with cashmere on one side for the winter and silk on the other for summer.

Yeah, it's that important.

Currently, neither of us is winning this little contest, since we both agreed to remodel the kitchen countertops, and then agreed to replace all the base cabinets at the same time. This effectively doubled our little project, and forced us to declare ourselves an independent country to avoid paying Home Depot. Robtonia has declared Home Depot a rogue nation and placed them on the top of our Axis of Near-Evil nations.

Robtonia is now in the market for building an L-shaped wall in the master bedroom which will become our new walk-in closet. This seemed a perfectly logical step, since we've been making due with the IKEA purchased standing closets that we got about two years ago. That's about the life-cycle of a fully mature IKEA furniture product, after which point it rapidly bio-degrades to rejoin the soil.

It's the IKEA Circle of Life.

It's the wheel of furniture fortune.

But I digress. The point here is that we needed a contractor to build our little dream wall. A simple matter, I figured, since contractors are always eager for building things ever since they wrapped their mitts around their first Fischer Price "I Can Build or Destroy It" playset. I right-clicked through the Yahoo Yellow Pages and pulled up any number of contractors that serve our area. I rattled off a list to the missus, who then promptly called them all. One was able to set up an appointment to give us a quote, the others promised to call back.

Oh woe. Oh sadness!

No one called back. The appointment rescheduled for Friday and then failed to show up. I called, left him a voice mail and have never heard back.

One "handyman" agreed to come that day and said he would call when he could swing in and give us a quote, but he mumbled heavily and made me think of Steve Buscemi from Billy Madison. I can't say that I was sorry when he never called and never showed up. I'm all out of rouge lipstick anyhow.

So here I sit, sad, forlorn, unloved by the general contractor community who are probably all sitting at Dunkin' Donuts having a laugh at my lack of experience with their ilk. It must be a right of initiation into the realm of contractor-dealing.