After spending five years renovating a 1927 Craftsman-style house in Canonsburg, Amy Rybacki has come to this conclusion on home improvement TV: Can't live with it, can't live without it.

On the plus side, shows like "This Old House" infused the 33-year-old engineering associate with the confidence and know-how to try shoring up a drooping dining room ceiling. On the other hand, many programs promote unrealistic expectations about the amount of time -- and effort -- major DIY home-improvement projects take.

TV also didn't prepare her for the little surprises an old house coughs up during an ambitious rehab. She couldn't have anticipated, for instance, that within a week of painting the living room, the paint would start falling off in big, ugly chunks. It turned out that what she thought was painted plaster was actually four layers of wallpaper, and the top one couldn't handle the extra weight.

"I call it the 'Trading Spaces' effect," says Ms. Rybacki, who bought the house at auction for $99,000 in 2003. "You think you can do it all in a weekend, but obviously you can't."

The Pitt grad, though, isn't one to back down from a challenge. Paint scraper in hand, she got to work on this project and everything else this old house threw at her, with great results. Her home today wows not only family and friends but also the judges of the 2008 Renovation Inspiration Contest. Ms. Rybacki won first place in the small project category ($50,000 and under) of the contest sponsored by the Post-Gazette and Community Design Center of Pittsburgh.

We know what you're thinking -- how'd she give a three-bedroom fixer-upper a face-lift so cheaply? With careful planning, strict budgeting and most important, a willingness to get her hands really, really dirty. In addition to sticking with the original floor plan, Ms. Rybacki saved many original materials and replaced those she couldn't save with only what she could afford.

Choosing bright-green laminate counter tops instead of granite, for example, meant she could upgrade the kitchen's rusted metal cabinets to wood. Crumbling plaster and bowed walls were remedied with Craftsman-style wainscoting made from stock molding and beadboard instead of drywall.

"I wanted it to look just like it did in 1927," she explains, adding that her brother, Drew, and father, Dennis, occasionally pitched in.

A front room on the second floor, which Ms. Rybacki plans to turn into a study, is particularly lovely. Painted a fruity lime green, it has original pine floors and three-quarters-height judges paneling built out of poplar boards trimmed with molding.

Um, wasn't that kind of complicated for someone who doesn't work with wood?

"I just got out my calculator and worked it out on graphing paper," she explains.

Algebra came to the rescue once again when she realized the dining room ceiling was sagging at least 3 inches. Since she couldn't afford to pay someone to tear out the plaster or replace it with tin, she decided to shore it up with a grid of 3-inch-wide oak boards for a coffered effect. Faux-finished, salmon-colored walls add to the sophisticated design.

It helped that when electrician Jay Miller of Zap Electric in Houston was rewiring the house he'd cut a long, skinny hole along the ceiling for a wire run, which showed Ms. Rybacki -- a self-proclaimed "math" person -- where the studs were. It also helped that the Liquid Nails adhesive she used set up extremely fast, and that the boards were only 4 feet long, so she could hold one end up with her shoulder while simultaneously screwing in the other end.

"Only one fell and hit me on the head, so that was pretty good," she says, laughing.

Stripping all of the windows, doors and spindled staircase of 50 years of grime and multiple layers of paint, then re-staining them with a tinted polyurethane was a bit more involved. That, she admits with a sigh, pushed her to the breaking point.

"I only had one temper tantrum where I threw a hammer down the stairs. Then I realized, what does that solve?"

She shakes her head and laughs.

"There were times when I thought, 'Am I ever going to live in this house!' "

Other projects included installing a new pedestal sink and toilet in the main bathroom, which still had its original basketweave tile floors, white subway tile walls and deep soaking tub. Ms. Rybacki also covered wood window valances in two bedrooms with fabric, painted the newly paneled living room a vibrant turquoise and converted a wood-burning fireplace to gas.

Most recently, she turned an unfinished attic into attractive storage space. A series of eight doors cut into knee-walls built along the gable walls offer hidden storage under the eaves. In addition, she replaced open rails with built-in bookcases and covered the walls and ceiling with beadboard. Again, the cost was minimal.

Her only splurge was hiring Pittsburgh Stone & Waterscapes in McDonald to rebuild the broken driveway with interlocking pavers. But that's only because she knew they would last "forever."

That, she says, is how long she plans on enjoying the house into which she poured so much of her heart and soul.

"It's exactly how I wanted it and envisioned it to be," she says.