My husband thinks a screwdriver's a drink. So when it comes to home repairs, I phone Dan the handyman, or I put on a toolbelt and do the work myself.

We live in a 100-year-old house built from true masonary construction. The walls in the house are 12 inches thick, and made of lath and plaster. Over the years the house has settled, causing some of the walls to dilate like varicose veins.

Dan the handyman gave me a brief tutorial on how to repair a crack in the wall: Use a hammer to tap on the crack — this will open up the crack. Then use a putty knife to remove any loose material from the crack. Apply fiberglass mesh tape, then mud over the area. After the mud has dried, sand until smooth, and paint.

My latest home improvement project was our son's bedroom. I convinced him it was time to box up the 200 trophies he had accumulated since age 4. It was also time to take down the posters of scantily clad women and ACDC rock stars, and paint over the locker room smell.

What really happened was he came home one day and found his room stripped of all its contents and stored in boxes and placed in a corner of the basement next to his big sister's boxes. "We need a nice guest bedroom for when friends come to visit."

"Does this mean I'm a guest?"

It sounds cold, but he graduated from college over a year ago and now lives on his own. "It will always be your room," I said.

Before I began painting, I looked for cracks in the walls. I applied Spackle to the divots and the small cracks. The medium-sized cracks I tapped with a hammer, then I used a putty knife and cleaned out the cracks just the way Dan the handyman had instructed me. Feeling confident, I moved on to bigger cracks.

I stared at the 12-inch crack underneath the window. Then I pulled my hammer out of the holster on my toolbelt and tapped, tapped, tapped all the way down the crack in the wall. Then I took my putty knife and began cleaning out the debris inside the wall.

Like sand in an hourglass, fine plaster seeped out of the narrow crack. I continued to pick away at it like a prisoner trying to escape. A large chunk of plaster fell and hit my foot. "Ouch!" Is that daylight?"

The hairline crack in the wall was now the size of King Tut's tomb. After I nixed the idea of adding a martini deck to the front of our house, I sprayed the hole with foam insulation that grew to the size of the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Over that I used bits of sheetrock, porch screen and a bucket of Spackle, which is fine if you're building an earth ship.

Episodes like this make me want to move into a condo. But a condo committee would vote my family out the first week for being too loud. I phoned Dan the handyman, but he was at a swapmeet, "You're on your own," he said. He did, however, advise me to take the junk out of the hole and purchase a 25-pound sack of joint compound.

"Was that Dan on the phone?" My husband asked.

"Uh huh. I asked him what I should do about the hole in the wall."

"What hole?!"

"Never mind."

Four times a day I mixed 90-minute joint compound in a fishing bucket. When the mud dried after each application, I sanded. By the end of each day, my nostril hairs were white with plaster dust. My right hand was numb with exhaustion and had curled into a fetal position. I took advantage of this respite each evening and placed a glass of wine in my curled hand.

The good news was, by the end of the week, I no longer saw daylight seep in through the hole. The bad news, I gave up mudding before the wall became completely level — I couldn't mix another 25-pound bag of mud. The good news, I moved the bed in front of the crack.

To find out more about Mimi Kopulos and read her past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

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