I have a new weekend obsession: "Property Ladder" on TLC.

The premise is simple enough: Newbie flippers try to mine real estate gold by purchasing a property and overhauling, or flipping, it into a profitable, highly sought after house.

There are other shows that follow flippers, but I like this one best because it shows how everything can (and often does) go wrong. In one episode, a coffee-shop manager with grand plans for his craftsman hous couldn’t even get started when the bank rejected loan after loan. His parents eventaully bailed him out, but he had to seriously scale back on his plans. Some of this turned out well, such as refurbishing the existing cabinets instead of ripping them out and replacing them. Others turned into disaster, such as when he spray-painted cheap fixtures to make them look like they were made from copper.

In another instance, two friends began a flip together, but then one left for a three-month vacation and dumped the project when he returned.

Although host Kirsten Kemp, an experienced flipper, makes suggestions and recommendations, the flippers are set loose to succeed - or fail - on their own. It’s almost painful to watch sometimes when the lowest-bidding contractor doesn’t show up for days on end or the new tub has to be ripped out and reset because it’s sinking on a diagonal.

The most fun episodes are the ones in which the newbies not only disregard Kemp’s remodeling advice, but also price their homes way out of whack with the market and the work they’ve done.

I admit it. I take perverse pleasure in the calamities that befall the rookies who insist they know what they’re doing. (I do have sympathy for the ones who just suffer bad luck.) This isn’t the first time I’ve applauded misery. Several years ago, I became addicted to "Trading Spaces," another TLC advent, in which friends traded houses for the weekend to remodel a room in the other’s house. The best ones, for me, were the moments the unsuspecting homeowners returned and couldn’t hide their hatred and disdain for what had been done.

"You turned my living room into the set of ‘The Dating Game’!" I remember one angry husband shouting.

You can’t write that kind of reaction. It comes from the gut.

And it’s the same sort of horror I now look forward to on "Property Ladder" when the would-be mogul finds out that he’s not going to get any sort of return on his investment, despite the weeks (or sometimes months) of labor.

In "Trading Spaces," at least, the couples had the designer to blame if a room fell flat. But "Property Ladder" subjects are often victims of their own poor planning, unreasonable expectations and even hubris.

It’s great TV.

I know I wouldn’t do any better. My own wee condo has already fallen victim to me changing my mind a little too late on a project, and I’ve yet to paint over the patched-up wall. "Property Ladder" helps remind me that those seemingly effortless flips on other shows are probably not all that effortless. And if you don’t know what’ you’re doing, you could easily end up falling off the ladder and into a hole you dug for yourself.