When your dream house turns out to be a nightmare, the only thing you can do is laugh. That's the tack Margo Kaufman and her husband Duke took when they attempted to remodel their ninety-year-old Venice, California, bungalow. A humorous chronicle of their costly trek through renovation land, This Damn House! tells of contractors, subcontractors, and sub-subcontractors; thousand-dollar doorknobs and unbearable bearing walls; and everything else that can go wrong when you try to remodel a house. Once you read Margo's Rules of Remodeling (contractors NEVER clean up despite what they say "The more you fix, the worse everything else looks"), you'll think twice about picking up a hammer—or a contractor's bill. Witty, wise, and more fun than spackling, This Damn House! presents the flip side of "home sweet home."