HGTV Too Perfect

Since I met Lauren, my media consumption habits have changed a bit. I'm watching a good deal of HGTV, which I wouldn't normally watch. All these home improvement projects they do on shows like "Design on a Dime" and such never seem to run into any snags. You see a bunch of homeowners and designers happily spackling away and never running into a sagging wall where the tops of the screws have popped the spackle off. You never see corners that aren't perfectly square, caulk lines that aren't absolutely perfect or p-traps that don't line up perfectly with sink drains.

The closest thing I ever saw to a snag was when someone drilled a hole for a light fixture with a hole saw and hit a floor joist. And, of course, they had all the tools at the ready to immediately fix it and try something else.

This is what they don't show you. And you end up making trip after trip to Home Depot because you need a few extra drywall screws to fix a bad seam, or because the molding corner pieces you bought apparently don't have a mounting mechanism of any kind.

It always goes nice and smoothly on TV, and it almost never does in real life.