Meeting Sarah Amend could make almost anyone feel like a slacker. Let's think back to what we were doing when we were 25. It probably didn 't involve finding time to attend medical school while renovating and building an addition to an old house, housebreaking a rambunctious Labrador pup, getting certified in scuba diving, snowboarding in Colorado, and chronicling this blur of activity on a blog called You, Me and Debris (www.youmeanddebris.blogspot.com)

Even though Amend has an able partner in all the above, her boyfriend Lucas Tevis (who himself works about 50 hours a week at Epic Systems), Amend's life appears to be a triumph of time management and organization.

The couple, who began dating six years ago while attending UW-Madison, began thinking about buying a fixer-upper when they realized how much time they spent critiquing the faults of the apartment they shared in the Monroe neighborhood. "We were always talking about how we'd change things." They like watching home improvement shows, and thought renovating a house would be a good investment. And, above all, they wanted a dog.

A year ago, they paid $165,000 for the ultimate fixer-

upper, a 1,241-square foot Cape Cod near the cemetery on Speedway Avenue on Madison's West Side. The house hadn't been notably updated since it was built 60 years ago. The furnace, the kitchen and the bathroom had to go. All the walls begged for fresh color. And, they figured they might as well slap a new breakfast room on the back in their spare time, since the house had no real space for dining.

The only work they hired out was the cutting and installation of the granite counters in the kitchen. Tevis, 27, had helped his family with home improvement projects when he was growing up in Minneapolis, but Amend, a Portage native, learned on the job.

Before they began work on the house, they put a fence around the back yard to contain their puppy, Tato (Mr. Potato Head). Laborious plans were drawn and measurements taken. Sales at Menard's and other stores were scoped out, and they gradually accumulated the cabinets, fixtures, tiles and appliances they needed.

Then it was time for the rough stuff. With a sledgehammer, Amend demolished an old chimney on the roof, and in the kitchen. Together, they took apart the old furnace and spent a month installing a new one -- a job that wasn 't finished until October, well into chilly weather. "We had an electric mattress pad and a dog," Amend said. There were tiles, cabinets, windows, skylights and sheets of drywall to install. They dug holes for the footings of their new breakfast room, and wrestled 300-pound sliding glass doors in place to lead to the backyard mudhole that will be transformed into a patio and garden.

There were three months without a kitchen sink, and cooking outside on a camping stove or grill. "It really was like camping," Tevis said.

For a while they lived with the big hole in the house covered with plastic wrap, which has since been filled by the sliding glass door of the breakfast room. "When Tato was little we were able to use a gate to keep him in or out of certain rooms," Amend said.

"When we had a hole in the back of the house he pretty much came and went from the house as he pleased. We are still missing a remote control. He loves chewing up any cardboard boxes and pieces of drywall we leave lying around," she said.

Remodeling is notorious for driving homeowners batty, especially the do-it-yourselfers. For Amend, who plans to become an internist, it was just the opposite.

"I did enjoy using the manual labor as a stress reliever. There is nothing like knocking down a wall when you have been sitting at a desk trying to memorize facts all day. Work like this is good exercise and it gives me an excuse not to study and do something different."

Tevis said the work occupies him while Amend is studying.

Work on the bathroom, kitchen and addition was finished in April, and they estimate the total cost at just $25,000 because they did the work themselves. And although Tevis dropped a rafter on Amend and stapled his own hand, they made it through a dirty and drafty year without calamity.

"The biggest thing we have probably gotten from this experience is really appreciating everything in our house," Amend said. "Every working light, having hot water, heat and especially that kitchen sink."

"This has been like a really long road trip," Tevis added.

A road trip that's not over by a long shot. Future plans include putting on new exterior siding, creating a master suite in the unfinished second story and finishing the basement.