Now that the housing market insanity seem to have cooled a bit, homeowners who realize that they're probably stuck in their overinflated domiciles have discovered a new way to save some cash while improving their equity: Getting a bunch of friends really loaded and then having them help renovate. In a senseless tragedy that no one could have predicted, however, it turns out that maybe drinking your ass off and playing Bob Vila might not be the brightest idea.

One reveler near Chicago hung a sheet of drywall backwards, while a partygoer in Seattle messed up the host's bathroom floor by installing the tiles crooked. During her recent "Martini Bash" renovation event in Toronto, Debora Beam wandered upstairs to find one of her friends halfway through sledgehammering out the wrong wall. "I was kind of like 'oh my God,' " she says.

Yes, these remodeling parties often go awry. On the other hand, they've been a boon to both the contracting industry and the medical profession, as handymen and doctors are called in after the fact to fix these sad saps broken homes and shattered bones. We've been disgusted by this whole house fetishism for some time now; good to know that natural selection might be weeding the worst offenders out of the gene pool.

The Three-Martini Renovation [WSJ]

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