Fed up with crowded big-city living, advertising executive Jim Blandings (Grant) decides to seek a roomy house in the country. Construction of the new home, however, is bogged down by a myriad of problems, from doors and windows that don’t fit to plumbing that won’t function to a wife more concerned with coordinating colors than containing costs. Blandings—an expert at crafting catchy, seductive advertisements—buys into his own exaggerated sales pitch, but just as he becomes absorbed in the romantic image of a wonderful, extravagant home he becomes equally embittered over the reality of the actual product.