When Kellie Kozonis recently bought a family home in a suburb of L.A., she knew that making the house move-in ready would be about as easy as wrinkle removal. The mid-century rancher where Kellie spent childhood weekends with grandma was sweet but frighteningly dated. Forget Botox, the place needed a radical face-lift ASAP.

Soon couldn't come soon enough. Kellie's impatience got the best of her while waiting for a contractor to show up and offer a quote; she grabbed a claw hammer and started demolishing the hideous wall paneling in the family room herself. "My husband asked me what I was doing," Kellie remembers. "I told him, 'I want to know what's behind this!'" What she found were nasty shards of plaster, awkwardly pieced together like a jigsaw puzzle gone bad, with foul, blackened glue smeared everywhere. "It looked like arbitrary scraps from an old construction job. Just awful."

Kellie collected the unsightly remnants, piled them in a corner, then set her mind on how to brighten and update the largest room in the house. Her solution? New drywall, then a luscious coat of caramel paint that transformed the dark and dowdy room into a warm and airy showpiece.

With a move-in date less than two weeks away, Kellie couldn't be more thrilled. "It was exciting to take that paneling off myself," she says. Her advice to other Janes? "Don't be afraid to take on home projects just because you think you're too busy or haven't done it before. It all works out and the end result is worth the effort!"

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