After 16 years of home ownership, I've found that almost every home project is a balancing act. If I do the entire job myself, I gain an immense sense of self-satisfaction. For years afterward, I'll be able to say, "... I remember when I put those steps in ..." or "You should have seen the old light fixture we had! I remember... ."

But there's the other, darker side of D-I-Y. It comes out when I have to warn guests, "Watch that step! And that one! Tell you what, use the other door!" Or lecture the kids with "I told you not to touch that light switch unless you were wearing sneakers! Now Daddy has to go reset the circuit breaker! Stop crying, will ya?"

If I hire someone else to do a project, I won't be able to brag about doing it all by myself. On the other hand, if someone who knows what they're doing does what they're good at, I might actually have something to brag about.

When someone else does part of the job, it presents a moral dilemma. I want to brag about my work, but I hate to admit somebody else stepped in and did the hard parts. The only solution is to develop a slow but steady case of selective amnesia. With each retelling, my part gets bigger and their part smaller. In a year, I'll tell you I did it all by myself. And the best part? I'll believe me.

This kind of balancing weighed heavily on me this summer as I set out to rebuild our back deck. I'd put it in nine years ago, and it was starting to sag, crack and smell funny.

In addition, I had to build the deck over the only outside entrance to our basement, the kind of sloping doors that people only really open when they need to move something big or when a twister is on its way. In order to maintain access to the basement, though, I devised an ingenious system: hidden panels in the deck -- two trap doors that could be lifted out.

My trap door design was inspired. To make the point, when I drew it out on paper to show my wife, I even drew a little stick figure of me, smiling with a big light bulb over my head. My wife, who is used to ignoring my detailed plans for things that never really turn out the way they should, just shook her head and frowned.

"Why does that stick guy have two heads?" she asked before walking away.

What looked good on paper didn't pan out in wood and nails. I'd built the doors properly, but at 3-foot-by-12-foot each, they were so heavy that not even two people could lift them. The only way to open them was to crawl under the deck, lay on my back in the mud and dirt, and push with my feet until the deck moved or my intestines popped.

So when it came time to rebuild the deck, my wife ordered me to call Dan. He's a friend who actually works in construction and will -- because he's a nice guy and doesn't seem to have caller ID -- help me out when I'm in over my head.

A couple evenings later, after dinner, Dan showed up with his truck, professional tools and skills, and effectively reframed my deck. He built out a trap door that was lightweight, strong and, amazingly, worked properly. He even put in a couple of recessed handles so we wouldn't have to strain to open it.

As Dan pulled away in his pickup, I stood back and looked at his handiwork. The rest of the structure would be all me, crooked rails and bumpy decking, but this part ... this part looked positively professional. My wife came out and nodded.

"Dan does good work!" she exclaimed. I turned and looked at her, amazed at her naivety.

"Dan?" I said, frowning. "Dan who?"