I love to watch home remodeling television shows. They give me confidence that I really could remodel a kitchen, build a shed, or even install new windows all by myself. Usually, the feeling passes quickly, but I do find myself feeling comfortable around power tools, and I enjoy a good home improvement store. Recently, the host of one of the more extreme house “rescue” shows said something so profound that I wrote it down so I wouldn’t forget how he phrased it. There he was on the roof of a house, totally exacerbated by one problem after another created by previous homeowners or contractors—problems he would have to rectify before the job could move forward. None of these problems on its own was serious enough to derail the job, but each problem, piled one on top of the other, was putting this job in danger of going way over budget. …