Here's what she has to say…

About 18 months ago, driven by nothing more than a whim and a couple of beers, my husband signed with a flourish on the dotted line of a genius real-estate marketer's purchase agreement - of all things for a house in Kodaikanal.

I must admit I spent the first few weeks dreaming of retiring in a cosy cottage surrounded by the zillion books I had lustily hoarded but had found no time to read…

But reality bites… Mr. Husband who swears by equal opportunity and fair division of labour neatly segregated our responsibilities - his task was to sign cheques, while mine was to do the "inspection" trips (Friday night to Kodi and back on Monday to work).

Can one be any fairer?

Initially I enjoyed the two-day break. But soon I found myself spending practically all my weekends with the mason, the contractor, the plumber and the electrician.

As I'm neither an architect nor an interior designer, my security blanket was my retired engineer father. But once in the thick of it, I enjoyed the unravelling of form - the brick-by-brick exposition of the several solid, dotted, thin, thick lines and curves I had struggled to grasp on paper.

Foolishly excited by the experience, I dared to redo three bathrooms simultaneously in Chennai, which effectively took care of weekend number four of the month!

Have you ever spent sleepless nights thinking about tile patterns or how to achieve a designer effect using economy tiles? Have you worn your fingers to the bone, dialling your nimble plumber who has disappeared for days on end leaving no forwarding address?

Have you heard "just two more days" for 10 weeks with the fittings still lying unopened in your garage? Now compound that agony five times over to gauge my plight. "One trip" to the store ended up becoming 20 trips...

By the third trip, my vision started to blur, my ears started to ring and my head started to spin. I couldn't for the life of me remember which floor tile for which bathroom, which for Chennai and which for Kodi.

Status update: It's been 10 weeks - the master bathroom is still waiting for the plumber, the guest bathroom for tiles and bathrooms in Kodi for the water connection to be turned on…

For those of you contemplating bathroom makeovers, here's some free advice - or "best-practice sharing" in corporate terms - just pay someone and get the job done!