Vicki Dame says there’s one home improvement project that she would never tackle again – even though she (finally) did a terrific job the first time around.

She and her husband built a small cabin in the mountains. She had done some tile work before, she emailed in response to my recent column about home chores better left to others, so she decided to go all in: She would build the shower.

“Having never done this, I watched DIY videos on youtube over and over again,” she wrote. “I bought the tile and all the other things needed from the Tile Shop in Charlotte. They are very helpful with DIY projects.”

An older gentleman watched as she loaded materials. He told her, “I see that someone is building a shower. Please tell me it is not you.”

She was undeterred.

Her husband installed the concrete tile backer board. She mixed and poured the concrete herself. “That was a challenge. The weight of the bag was almost unbearable.”

“I was much slower than I thought I would be. I took pictures along the way and in the end, the shower is beautiful. … I think it measures about 45 by 52 (inches).... It took many months working weekends to get the walls all done and the floor down.”

The fellow who installed the shower glass was impressed. That helped make up for those comments at the tile store.

“As happy as I am with the outcome, I will never build another shower. It’s heavy and hard work and your body will let you know that.”

Too much scraping!

Teresa Fesmire says she’ll never scrape a popcorn ceiling again.

A friend was remodeling Teresa’s master bath and she and her husband decided to scrape the popcorn off the ceiling to add crown molding. “We were able to scrape the bathroom ceiling without TOO many fights, but it sure was a mess.”

They learned that momentum can get you into trouble.

They scraped the kitchen ceiling, then the ceiling in the foyer, then the stairwell, then the man cave.

The story didn’t end when they hired help. Dust got everywhere. They moved what they could, and covered the rest of the furniture with sheets – and still ruined a vacuum cleaner.

DIY formula

I knew I’d get some ribbing after that column. A couple of guys in my retiree club said their wives waved the column at them, and told them to stay out of attics. No names – but I think falls through drywall might have been involved.

One fellow member of The Catawbans, Jim Cox, even came up with a mathematical formula that seems to apply: Estimated time to complete project = husband’s estimate + wife’s estimate X 2.