When summer turns to fall each year, and reveries of leaves and football give way to deep thoughts about installing a bath and shower faucet—as they surely will—a seasonal trip to either Lowe's or Home Depot is in order.
Fortunately the big-box stores offer a host of free do-it-yourself courses meant to prep you for your next adventure in home destruction while simultaneously luring you to make many purchases and choke the lifeblood out of independent hardware stores. But none is as tantalizing as Lowe's September offering of "Making Over Your Bathroom in One Weekend."
I tell you, it cannot be done. As a homeowner who has chipped away her home's value with miter saws and power drills throughout the aforementioned paint-the-kitchen-robin's-egg-blue summer, I know enough to know that there's no way in hell you can make over your bathroom in one weekend.
No way.
We're talking about plumbing here—sinks, toilets, tubs—we're talking about the potential for disasters that affect not only one house, but nearby houses and plausibly the water supply of the entire drought-stricken city.
Other courses have their autumnal appeal: "Faux Finishing Techniques: Soft, Subtle Blending" or "You Can Save Energy In Your Home."
And there is one other course that appeals to lovers of the absurd: "You Can Install Easy Flooring Solutions." I'm here to tell you that if four illegal workers employed by a local flooring contractor can't install my flooring solutions easily, which they couldn't —in fact they struggled with it for days that turned to weeks, all the while helping themselves to the occasional plum or bottled beverage from our refrigerator and leaving chewed bubble gum stuck under the counter—then the words "flooring" and "easy" shouldn't be pushed together.
But nothing compares to the chutzpah of "Making Over Your Bathroom in One Weekend." The whimsical extravagance of it, the autumnal mid-afternoon nap dream-like quality of it, makes it the pick of picks for fall do-it-yourself home courses. You'll find it every Saturday at noon at your local Lowe's.