There are just some things...

... you shouldn't put into a bathtub. Hairdryers, radios, toasters, cats -- and ladders. Ladders do not work well in bathtubs, regardless of whether or not there's a bath in the tub. How do I know this? Because I tried it, of course.

Anyone who's talked to me recently has been subconsciously waiting for the wallpaper post. They knew it would be coming sooner or later. And I would never disappoint...

Two days after the bottom dropped out of the mortgage market, my boyfriend decided that he wanted to sell his house. For the first time in recorded history, every economist in America is in agreement on a single point: now is THE WORST possible time since the Great Depression to even dream about selling a house. But my boyfriend has never before let common sense get in the way of his enthusiasm. Why start now?

Fresh from many nights of HGTV research, I compiled a five-page pre-sale to-do list. I figure that by the time we get it done, the housing market will be well on its way to a rebound. Or the house will have fallen down.

First on my list: the wallpaper has to go. I convinced my boyfriend on this point with my large, and still growing, collection of quotes on how much homebuyers hate wallpaper. I had no idea how much I would come to hate wallpaper. Someone else who had lived in the house before had liked wallpaper, but apparently another someone did not, because he or she had painted over the old wallpaper. My boyfriend subsequently made a paint-and-wallpaper sandwich. And now it was up to me to clean the plate.

The kitchen wasn't that bad, mostly because I got to leave large piles of soggy, shredded, sticky paper all over every inch of countertop and most of the floor. My boyfriend is, by his own admission, obsessive-compulsive about cleaning his kitchen. So obsessive, in fact, that he's never actually cooked in the kitchen, because he doesn't like to mess it up. Not to worry, I had no such qualms. After all, I got to go home and cook in my own kitchen without being afraid that I'd end up picking wallpaper out of my dinner.

My boyfriend, being obsessive-compulsive, rarely cares to engage in projects that may upset his well-ordered world. I learned very quickly that the best way to cajole him into action was to start the upsetting process in as dramatic and disruptive a way as I could manage. That way, he'd have to finish the project as soon as possible to restore his order to my chaos. Hence, I started the de-flowering (as in magnolia-print) of the bathroom by tugging at a large piece of wallpaper that had already started to come loose above the shower. I left it hanging as obtrusively as possible, and waited for nature to take its course. Two days later, the vast majority of the magnolias had vanished, leaving behind a sticky residue of wallpaper glue that became my next home improvement project.

I came armed with iPod, scrapers, sponges, and a ladder. Six hours later, all of the above -- and every inch of me -- were covered in a sticky residue of wallpaper glue. Not that it stopped the ladder from sliding around in the bathtub, of course. There are just some things...