The crack-up

4:55 PM, October 22, 2009 ι By Adam Bonislawski

When we last checked in with Paul and Carolyn Zweben , the couple had reluctantly downgraded their renovation expectations. Instead of having the job finished by Thanksgiving, they were aiming now for Christmas. Instead of fully renovating the kitchen, they'd decided to just slap a coat of paint on the walls and call it a day. Costs were up, spirits were down, nerves were fraying, and there were still three more months to go.

Well, there's some good news. The finish date has been moved back to its original pre-Thanksgiving estimate -- walls are being closed, the molding is up, the floors are about to be sanded and poly-coated. And the kitchen renovation is back on, as well, with Paul deciding that rather than leaving the room undone, he'd rather just buy a Viking stove, a dishwasher and a new sink and put them all on his credit card.

And, then, there's some bad news, namely the fact that the renovations have finally driven the couple insane.

"My wife and I have officially cracked," Paul says. "The wheels came off two weeks ago. It just all culminated."

"We miss cooking. We miss sitting at a table. We miss the neighbors that used to smile at us when we passed them in the hall."

And, just in case things weren't hectic enough, the couple received a letter from their co-op board the other day informing them that in the course of installing their new washer/dryer hook-ups, they'd somehow cracked and clogged the main drain pipe for their entire building. They'll have to pay to repair it, of course, though Paul isn't sure at the moment just how much that will cost.

"Right now I'm just trying to ignore it," he says, which is probably all for the best -- considering that the renovation project's price tag, which was originally set around $200,000, and was updated a month ago to $270,000, now sits closer to $300,000.

Meanwhile, the kitchenless couple is subsisting on Mexican take-out, Peruvian rotisserie chicken and, Paul adds, "a lot of alcohol."

The big finish is now just a month away -- but it could be one very long month.