Wing wall?

Shield wall!? (Wait! Wrong TV genre; I'm thinking of Vikings!!)

The Block would have you believe you can make over your modest lounge room into a stately parlour within a week.

My House Rules would have us think we can tackle three rooms in that same amount of time.

In recent seasons they threw in a Bonus Room, making three zones look like a walk in the park.

Kitchen. Tick.

Kids' bedroom. Child's play! Tick.

Hallway. Paint it black, hang some art or a mirror on it. Tick.

Rumpus Room. It's recreation by definition. Tick. Tick.

Obviously, there are umpteen tradies on site, bringing all of these renovations together.

But blink and you can easily miss them; the workers are not the subject of most of the TV drama.

Makeover shows should come clean with a warning:

Do not try this at home!

Renovating can ruin your whole weekend if you're not really, very careful!!

However, they don't come with a warning and you can be elbow-deep in regretful, renovating by as early as mid-morning Saturday.

Seven years ago when we moved house, our new-old mud room became the depository for a few random items.

It has a drinks fridge, chest freezer (storing for my sister), church pew (storing for my mum), reindeer-shaped coat wall hooks (damn you, IKEA!) and a metal filing cabinet (full of papers from when my husband, his mum and I ran a little cafe from 2008 to 2010).

MORE MATERIAL GIRL:

Having decided to make a bit more of the space in the mud room (thanks go to My House Rules), we tackled the filing cabinet first recently.

When we opened the first drawer, paper dockets for coffee, meal and catering orders spewed out everywhere, covering the faux timber floor.

Flat white and orange cake (gluten-free).

Chai latte with honey on the side.

Cappuccino with cinnamon, not chocolate.

8x Ripe Breakfasts (14x poached eggs and 2x fried); that's 14 perfectly poached eggs to be served simultaneously with a range of sides to hungry and very likely-hungover strangers.

For a journalist, part-time, casual cook-baker, that order on Australia Day morning a decade ago still sends a shiver down my spine!

Hospitality is hard work with no room for error.

Even if you feel you've got an order pretty well perfect, the customer will be the judge of that.

The coffee is too hot, too cold, too strong, too weak, took too long to turn up, came out too quick. There are as many possibilities as there are people.

We had a funny group of patrons in their 70s and 80s, who used to come into the cafe routinely for coffee and cake.

When I was struggling to operate the vintage cash register, they were the first to make excuses for me.

"She can't be expected to use that thing, she does all of the baking!" they'd say.

I never told them I had a journalism degree and could use computers.

It would have ruined a good story.

Anyhow, the till also appeared during the mud room makeover.

It's now off to a good home; a five-year-old somewhere may find it useful for shops. It did have a good ring to it when I got it to work.

Anyhow, we may have finally straightened out our mud room but now I've got coffee, drink and meal orders a mile long on my mind.

Who had the skinny latte?

Shiraz chocolate cake?!

Anybody?!!