If you are dreaming of building your home studio with no expense spared, then I need to let you into a secret. Your partner will be more excited about it than you. 'No way' you think, 'how could they possibly be more excited than me?'

Well they are, and there is a simple reason, it's the same reason your boss smiles at you when you announced you've just signed up for your first mortgage. On that occasion, it's because as soon as you get a mortgage then your boss knows you need your job more than ever.

Your partner, on the other hand, now knows that whenever they ask for a new kitchen, bathroom, fill in the blanks, then you won't be able to say a word about it.

My partner is no different, and the first stage of that deal was a new kitchen and more recently, a new bathroom. It's not any bathroom but the kind that when we visit any hotel, the bathroom will be a disappointment. I even suggested this as a good reason for not doing it, but my partner is not stupid.

It's taken weeks as it was moving it across the house. During that time, all the bathroom fittings have been cluttering up our hallway as we waited for each trade. To fit the shower and enclosed toilet, we needed to build a frame out of timber that would hide the cistern and shower behind the tile. I approached a carpenter at the school gate and asked him if he could come and build the frame, he said he couldn't, but it wasn't hard, so I should try and do it myself. I took his advice, as I couldn't find a carpenter and was running out of time. So one weekend about a month ago, wood, saw, square, level and other tools in hand I did the work.

The frame was solid and square, two pre-requisites for any successful stud work, so I was encouraged.

The bathroom was 99% this week apart from the fitting of a huge glass shower screen, 2 meters high by 1.4 meters long. I duly fitted the frame without cracking any tiles and then asked a neighbour to come and help me move the glass into place, after all, how hard can it be? Yes, you know where this story is going.

Well, it's 27,000 pieces of glass hard.

They now live in a lot of bin bags, a two-hour cleaning operation and numerous cuts on me and my friend - thankfully it is toughened glass so it could have been so much worse. We planned it well with soft pads to rest it on during the process, but the glass slipped off one of them and BANG!

A professional would have cost me about £80 to fit the screen, who would have the right equipment for moving the glass. Hubris got the better of me and has cost me about £300 to replace, plus another week's delay when my wife can't use the new shower. That's going to cost me again!

So yes, the moral of the tail is the old maxim, if you think a professional is expensive then try using an amateur. It's a lesson that plays out in the recording industry every day with those of us either trying to save money or we think we can do things we can't.

I don't mind telling you this story so you can laugh at me - hopefully, you can learn from my mistake.