David Arquette is bugging his wife. Up until now Courteney Cox has had a perfectly lovely October day. She spent the morning rehearsing an episode of Friends, then had lunch, as usual, with costar pals Jennifer Aniston and Lisa Kudrow. Afterward she headed to the Hollywood Hills to rearrange (yet again) some of the furniture in the $4.5 million four-bedroom house she and Arquette have called home since February. Now, snuggled in a corner of a dimly lit Sunset Strip bar, she is all set to enjoy a predinner appetizer – if it weren't for the maddening way her husband is reducing a piece of paper to shreds. "What are you doing?" she asks.

"Nothing," he says, continuing to rip. She leans in closer. "Give that to me," she says, her hand outstretched. "Court," he pleads, "it's my own personal schedule. I don't want it getting into the wrong hands." Before he can say another word, she scoops the scraps off the table and deposits them into the ashtray. "There," she says. "Problem solved." Move over Dr. Phil: Court is on the case – and David is not the only one quivering in her wake. As the 10th and final season of Friends draws to a close, Cox, 39, has been rechanneling her prodigious (or, as she has said, "manic") energy, her penchant, in her mother's words, for "telling people what to do" and her passion for knocking down walls and tearing up carpet (she has bought, renovated and sold five homes in the past decade or so) into producing a cable show called Mix It Up. Premiering on WE: Women's Entertainment network on Oct. 22, the weekly half-hour home-improvement show was inspired by the couple's own struggle to create a harmonious living space with room for both her love of, oh, Moroccan pieces, art deco collectibles and elegant mid-century classics and his love of, well, Bobbleheads.

As co-executive producers who stay behind the scenes, they give their designers three days and $2,500 (considerably less than Cox's $1 million per episode and Arquette's hefty paychecks) to help other similarly stymied roomies find a happier look – and maybe a happier life. "A lot of times if you are having a problem with design," says Cox, "there is a problem in the relationship."