Does anyone know how many people are murdered each year during home renovations? Offhand, I’m guessing about a million. And most of them probably had it coming.

My partner and I are remodeling a couple of bathrooms in our house. (If you saw them, you’d wonder why we waited this long.) To be clear: we’re not doing the work ourselves. Although I assisted my father in all manner of home building projects as a kid – “assisted” being a relative term since I mostly just sat on a cardboard box eating Ding Dongs and recapping episodes of Wonder Woman – this valuable how-to information apparently went in one ear and out the other, because I can barely turn a screw without requiring an instruction manual and emotional support. (My employees may disagree on my ability to turn a screw.)

And my partner, who actually has a lot more common sense than I do, is, in this case, also useless. We have to call a handyman to replace toilet seats and security light bulbs on the roof (the security lights are on the roof, not the toilets – never mind).

I’ve always called my other half a Useless Mexican, since he’s third generation American and speaks less Spanish than I do, but I now have to add Useless Home Renovator. Really, what’s the point of marrying a Mexican if he can’t build anything? (Oh, I’m sure he has any number of “Useless [insert noun here]” labels for me as well, but fortunately he doesn’t blog, so it takes him a lot longer to spread the slurs around.)

But I digress.

The irony of this situation is that not only are we not doing the work ourselves, but we haven’t even begun the actual demolition and reconstruction process. And that’s usually the point – when people have to shower in the back yard with a hose, or scrape tile dust out of their crack – that they begin to scream and cry and consider the legal ramifications of shooting someone with a nail gun.

34 times.

No, in our case, it has been the process leading up to the point where construction begins that has been fraught with challenge. Because redoing a bathroom from scratch requires agreement on décor style, layout, tile, lighting, vanity and fixtures. And each of those elements, I have discovered, gives the other person a delightful, even welcome opportunity to comment on who you are as a person.

And who Sandy apparently thinks I am, as a person, is a bully.

Now, don’t misunderstand. It’s not that I want my way, come hell or high water – I just want my way and I want everyone to be happy while I’m getting it. Is that too much to ask? Is it too much to expect that others just sit there and shut up and let me make my exquisite design choices? I have extraordinary taste (just ask me), so they (my partner) can rest assured that the room in question will be handsome and tasteful, if they (my partner) would just back off and let me pick everything out. It’s really the outcome that will make everyone the most happy.

And by everyone, I mean me.

You’d better start drawing the police tape around us now. You can find the bodies buried under the beautiful new tile.