If you have ever built a new home, you understand "PROJECTS!!".

We built our first home recently and are learning a lot about home repair. There are no "broken" things to fix, but we found our local home builder would not make even minor changes to the home to better fit our needs. This left several "improvements" for us to take care of ourselves.

My husband has always proved to be a handy guy to have around. He has painted houses while in college, worked as a mechanic, been a Chem-lawn guy and even volunteered with Habitat For Humanity. None of this prepared him for our home "projects".

Our home builder is known for quality homes and great customer service. However, they build so many homes they just are not able to make every change their customers ask for. In fact, we were not able to get them to make even ONE change.

We found a local remodeler to do a few of the larger projects, Johnstone & associates to complete our landscape, Unfinished wood furniture to make built in cabinets in the den and a local irrigation company to install lawn sprinklers.

Well as you can figure, these items cost quite a bit and a few were budget busters. So to save money we (my husband and I) decided to finish the garage ourselves. Our first mistake, we had no idea what we were doing.

We bought insulation at Home Depot, tools from Lowes, dry wall from 84 lumber and cabinets from Andersons. That was in September.

We worked all day to put up the insulation. The next morning we walk out into the garage only to find almost all of the insulation had fallen from the walls. My husband expressed every feeling he had via a four letter vocabulary and I felt like crying. We took it all down and started over. The next day, a little more success, but we found about half on the floor.

We decided to put up the dry wall. We talked to several people who claimed they knew how to put up dry wall. It all sounded simple, then we did it. Oh my! What a job.

We could not get dry wall to go to the ceiling so we had to have seams, they looked horrible. We clearly were in over our heads. We hung all the dry wall, but due to no place to nail to, we could not cover every inch as we wanted. But we progressed forward.

Next came hanging cabinets, the first one went up easy as we hit a stud the first time we drilled. The second one we drilled about ten times and finally found a stud. The third one created a problem.

When drilling for the third cabinet, my husband drilled into a water line. We called a plummer to repair the pipe and decided to find someone to complete the garage for us as we were in over our heads.

The plummer gave a card for Garage Pro, a local company that finishes and remodels garages only. That was worth the $300 plumming repair.

My husband would not call or even be here when they came out, but he brags about their work now.

When they came out, they recommended removing everything we had done to ensure the job would be done right. They also recommended that additional bracing be done inside the walls to support the extra weight of the cabinets and their contents. We never even thought of that before.

We had them add electrical outlets, infrared garage heaters, built in the hot water heater the builder had placed in the garage, tan and brown floor epoxy painted in a large checker board pattern, custom built oak built ins, a thick butcher block top working surface, beige paint on walls and ceiling, crown molding and base board, track lighting.

My husbands friends ALL went crazy when they saw this area of our newest living area, the garage. (?) He now wants a tv and refrigerator in the garage. It must be a guy thing. It does look good and is very crisp and clean. I like all the storage areas we had built in.

My husband is still handy to have around, I'll just put him on less complex projects, like giving back rubs.