The Nine Circles of Home Improvement Hell
From the daunting to the Dantean, there's always something to fix. That, plus a St. Paddy's-adjacent grill recipe, a transcontinental cocktail, music/book/TV recs, petty food fights and more!
Amidst all the uncomfortable on-this-day reminders that have crossed my feeds in the past few days, I had a nice one pop up.
Eight years ago this week, my family and I moved into our current house. It was a major milestone for us—finally becoming homeowners after a decade and a half of mostly-terrible apartments, many of which cost far more than my current mortgage. For the first time in my adult life, I wouldn’t have a landlord refusing to make repairs or rowdy AirBNB guests upstairs spilling ashtrays onto my patio or the risk of fellow tenants burning the building down anymore.
Of course, homeownership would bring its own set of challenges.
As a friend reminded me the day we moved in—“there’s always going to be something you have to work on.” I brushed it off at the time, but with the passage of time I can concede that he was absolutely right. There’s always something.
Those somethings aren’t created equal, though.
Of the projects that you can find yourself doing as a homeowner, some are satisfying—heck, even enjoyable!—and some are utter hell. In the spirit of Dante’s Inferno, I’d like to start today by taking a look at the Nine Circles of Home Improvement Hell.
The First Circle: Unnecessary, Enjoyable and Wholly-Elective
This encompasses the rare delights—the projects you absolutely want to do but don’t need to do at all. To wit: during the pandemic, my brother-in-law constructed a bar in his basement. I scoffed at the idea when my wife first told me about it, but now that it’s completed, I have to concede: it’s pretty great. It’s the locus of our family time at the holidays, and it looks really nice. I am jealous and would like one of my own.
Maybe it’s not a home bar for you, though.
Maybe it’s an outdoor kitchen. A basketball hoop. A small greenhouse. I have dreams of an enclosed patio room where I can finish my novel while sipping coffee on a cool morning and watching bunnies romp through the yard.
None of these things will happen, of course, because I have spent all my money in the lower circles.
The Second Circle: Aesthetic/Elective
I’m talking easy stuff: paint, wallpaper, new light fixtures.
They’re not that expensive, not that disruptive, and they can often be knocked out in a weekend. The payoff can be pretty significant, too! When we moved in, our house had an oddly-bold color scheme—a deep-blue living room, a blood-red dining room, a forest-green foyer—and we spent the first several years slowly correcting the previous owner’s bad decisions. The background of nearly every cocktail photo I share here is the result of a wallpaper project we did on Mothers’ Day 2020:
The only hitch here is that you’d better do a good job, because if you have one tiny misaligned piece of wallpaper, you will notice it every day for the rest of your life.
The Third Circle: Functional but Enjoyable
At this level, we arrive at the big dogs: kitchen and bath renovations. They’re beyond satisfying—they’re a news item.
Did you see Jim and Renee’s new cabinets?
Katie’s redoing her bathroom!
Geoff and Sarah’s new kitchen flooring looks great!
They’re also expensive and a huge pain in the ass. Are they worth it? Sure! But you’re also going to be without a kitchen or bathroom for a while, which is not easy.
I would love to redo our kitchen, but despite some significant aesthetic shortcomings, it’s unfortunately functional enough that I can’t justify it any time soon. This is the Valley of Ugly Granite Countertops, and one can spend years trapped in it.
The Fourth Circle: The Great Outdoors
Seeding. Mulching. Landscaping. Laying sod.
These can have a huge impact on your curb appeal, if that’s the sort of thing you’re into, and relatively speaking they’re not the biggest projects. Ultimately, though, they’re outside, and that limits the emotional payoff, especially if you’re someone like me who has spent years trying desperately to not become A Guy Who Cares Too Much About My Yard.
The Fifth Circle: Replacing a Major Appliance
Replacing a new appliance—whether it’s a dishwasher, refrigerator, stove or air conditioner—generally sucks, because you’re probably only doing it when the previous one broke. It’s an unexpected expense, and quite possibly a large one.
That said, once you get it in, it’s hard to deny that it is better.
Is the dishwasher even running? It’s so quiet!
The Sixth Circle: Replacing Windows and/or Doors
Sure, it’d be nice to have a new front door, or more air-tight windows. It’s also a big pain in the ass, and it costs a ton. Have you priced a new front door lately? It costs as much as a house. You could actually just buy a second house, take the front door off, and throw out the rest. Door companies hate this one simple trick!
Anyways, this is the perfect thing for the immediate previous owner of your house to have already done.
The Seventh Circle: Trees
Tree work is expensive. You cannot do it yourself—DON’T ARGUE WITH ME, NO YOU CAN’T—and the end result is a weird empty spot where there used to be a tree.
The major payoff is that you don’t have a half-dead maple tree crash through your kid’s bedroom during the next windstorm, which is enough to justify doing the work but not enough to be happy about it.
The Eighth Circle: Waterproofing and/or Roofing
We’re getting into the real depths now. This work is expensive, largely unseen, and usually done out of immediate and unforeseen necessity. You are paying money—quite possibly a good deal of it—simply to bring the house back its baseline purpose, “keeping you dry”.
There’s at least glimmers of satisfaction to be found, though. I had a new sump pump installed in the crawl space off our main basement to address an occasional leak in the foundation wall. It wasn’t cheap, and I was not happy to do it. Two days after it was installed, however, we got four inches of rain in 24-hour period, and the first time I heard it turn on was like the end of Independence Day for me.
(I am very lame.)
The Ninth Circle: Plumbing
I am an architect. I work with plumbers and plumbing engineers every day. I understand how plumbing works at a conceptual level that likely well exceeds that of the average person. It is a straightforward trade, in theory—predictable, based on pressures and slopes and simple connections.
I also firmly believe that the plumbing in my house is full of ghosts, and I dare not anger them by meddling in their business. Plumbing is a dark art, the kind of sorcery that should only be practiced by those who fear no gods or demons.
I am not that person.
Friends, it’s Friday again at The Action Cookbook Newsletter.
We might be living in the Seventh Circle of Hell these days, but the ACBN is here with an eye toward carving out a nice little weekend.
Today, I’ve got a recipe for the grill that nods toward St. Patrick’s Day, a transcontinental cocktail, a terrific new book, some great music, a petty food argument, reader-submitted pets, and more!
Home Depot can wait until Saturday. Let’s enjoy our Friday.
Get Your Head in the Game
It’s hard for me to resist going thematic for my cooking with St. Patrick’s Day approaching—especially when I see that the corned beeves have returned to the meat case at Kroger like the swallows returning to San Juan Capistrano.1
I almost always regret getting one, though, and find myself with a salty brick of beef leftover in the fridge for weeks afterwards. I’m trying to eat healthier in 2025 as it is, so I’ll take just a slight nod to the Emerald Isle this weekend with a recipe that foregrounds another traditional Irish staple—cabbage.
It’s an underappreciated food, and one that takes spectacularly to the high heat of the grill.
For this effort, I whipped up a Mediterranean-inspired tahini-yogurt sauce, tossing some of it with grilled-and-then-chopped wedges of cabbage, and using the rest to marinate chicken thighs. It’s not exactly corned beef and soda bread, but hey—Ireland’s a diverse, modern country these days. We can buck the stereotypes.
Grilled Cabbage with Tahini-Yogurt Sauce and Marinated Chicken Thighs
1 small head green cabbage
olive oil, for drizzling
1 pound boneless skinless chicken thighs