My friend, Zorbina, and I, under the influence of HGTV’s all-day marathon on home improvement, decided she had to have insulated draperies for her sliding glass doors. Episode 15 convinced us they would lessen her heating and cooling bills and enhance the beauty of her home, while reducing her carbon footprint.

The ten-hour, do-it-yourself course, on everything from adding a second story to your house with a handsaw and a claw hammer, to creating an English garden, imbued us with the same sense of confidence I’m sure Custer had riding into Little Bighorn.

Since HGTV projects take 30 minutes start-to-finish, we knew our curtain rod supports, and curtains would be up in about two minutes, tops. On project day around “o’dark thirty,” when normal people are still asleep, my phone rang. Zorbina was on the line.

“Well,” she said, “I can’t go on. I’ve hit a stud.”

Being as how I was asleep, I responded, “Is he alright?”

“Not a STUD,” she says, “a stud, the kind that’s inside the wall!”

I used my HGTV-acquired lingo to ask if she had a stud finder.

“I drilled into the wall and there it was, right where I want the middle rod support. Then the drill wouldn’t go in any farther, so I stuck a screwdriver in there and dug around. Trust me, it’s a stud. I pounded in the screw anchors but they’re too long.”

Do any of you see “I used a stud finder” in that? What the heck was Zorbina doing using power tools before dawn, and without supervision? I talked her down.

“Make some coffee, touch nothing with a power cord attached and don’t go near any walls having electric wires coursing through them until I get there.”

It was worse than I imagined; three holes, plastic screw anchors protruding, marched vertically about an inch apart up the wall.

We eyeballed the sorry mess, drew up flowcharts outlining various options and conferenced about whether the rod supports had to be attached to the walls or could be affixed to the trim around the doors. Wall attachment won out over reason. But the stud and electric wire (S/EW) finder triumphed. I cringed as Zorbie randomly drills into walls and risks electrocuting herself.

Why we completely screwed the middle support into the stud above the door before assessing the availability of studs beside the door, I do not know.

However, once the S/EW finder started going off like a Geiger counter at Chernobyl,we conferenced again. Screwing supports to the walls was not an option, and a very good suggestion to superglue them was tabled.

We ranted about removing the middle support, raved over scarring the molding around the door and realizing we needed drywall putty. Four hours later, we had two supports in place. (We even used a level.) We could not; however, drill through the trim to secure the third support.

After three trips to the hardware store, two different drill bits plus four holes that—despite pushing on the drill with the strength of Hercules—would only penetrate to 1/16th of an inch, we discovered one of us (not me) had switched the drill setting from ‘drill into’ to ‘back out of.’ Words were spoken.

At day’s end though: curtain supports, rods, paraphernalia and tools—$180; curtains—$250; the thrill of a do-it-yourself victory . . . priceless.

Cohea, a freelance writer, can be reached by e-mailing a37_tao@hotmail.com.