Celia Hayes – The Accidental Texan

I have to say that the first three projects – part of my Five Year Home Improvement Plan, and supposed to have been spread out over the first six months or so of 2018 – have all come to completion in the space of three weeks and some days. This is a matter of some surprise to me. I was impatient of ever getting started on the Catio of Splendor, for which I bought the materials late in January. Neighborhood Handy Guy kept being delayed by other projects, and so in exasperation with this, I thought I would explore the cost of the next substantial item: a new roof, being that the old one was likely on it’s last gasp. I wanted an estimation for replacing the asphalt shingles with a standing seam metal roof, so that I could begin setting aside money for it. I went to the company which replaced the last roof, on the grounds that they had done a great job then, and that the owner of the company had lived just four doors away from me at the time of the Great Hailstorm of March, 2005. A good few of us opted for that company, seeing that we knew where the owner lived.  Practically everyone in the neighborhood got a new roof out of that storm, which featured violent hail the size of large and small marbles. I was informed at the time that the new roof would probably only be good for ten years; this was why I included a new roof in my Five-Year Plan.

The estimator brought out his ladder, camera and measuring tape, and after a short voyage onto the roof, informed me that not only was the 2005-installed roof much decayed, my house seems to have taken some damage from the tornado which struck a year ago. I didn’t note anything at that time, but some dead sticks brought down from the tree – all the substantial damage was done by that storm to houses a good third of a mile up the hill. But it appeared that something had whanged into my roof at top-speed, punched a gouge through the asphalt tiles and into the plywood underneath, and bounced over the roof-ridge, slightly denting the chimney top in the process. I should note that I slept entirely through this event, only waking up and hearing the thunder in the wee hours, and then going back to sleep again. It’s a gift, sleeping through stuff like this. Not the first time I have slept through interesting/momentous events.

The short version turns out to be that a standing-seam metal roof on my place would cost a bit north of $20,000, whereas a better grade of composition shakes would only be about $7,000, of which the insurance company would pick up all but the deductible. As the estimator prepared to depart, he asked, casually – if there was anything more he could do. I asked him to price out and estimate the cost of the covered back porch-catio, considering that I had already purchased the necessary materials, and I was tired of waiting to get on Neighborhood Handy Guy’s crammed work schedule. So – the Reliable Neighborhood Company’s bid for a replacement roof plus addition of Splendid Catio was … reasonable. This week I was on the schedule for the roof, which was knocked off in a day, starting first thing. Which actually meant ‘first thing’. They worked full-out, four or five Hispanic guys (of whom only one spoke colloquial English) and bashed it out by early evening – even to installing the rooster weathervane on the roof-peak over the garage. And better yet – on Thursday for Reliable Neighborhood Company’s carpenters to come and begin on the  Catio of Splendor. Which they did, on the dot of half-past eight, and had the corner support post installed before I even came back from walking the dogs. But Thursday was the first day of Summer Brutal Heat in Texas, so they knocked off in mid-afternoon, returning on Friday (also first thing) to finish installing the tin roof panels, and tying the whole thing into the existing new roof. Which I can totally understand and empathize with, as I agreed to paint the resulting structure over the weekend, so that the master carpenter can return – first thing on Monday, of course – to attach the heavy mesh hardware cloth which will enclose the Catio of Splendor, wall to wall, and hang the screen door. Everyone agreed – this would be better, painting the wooden frame-work, before attaching the hardware cloth. So – that was my project today, at which I could only last until about 3:00 or so. Drenched with sweat, splotched with paint, exhausted and dehydrated. I got it about three-quarters done. The rest tomorrow.

I understand there was some kind of big social bash on, early Saturday morning: an unemployed American actress (on a show I never watched) married an English veteran of the war in Afghanistan, from a family dependent on government payouts. Did I miss anything else, while painting the Catio of Splendor?

Meet Matilda – who is modeling a red-checked dress with a lace-trimmed pinafore – the first of the 18-inch doll outfits for the fall market season

I am not entirely taken up with home and garden renovations, these days – oh, dear, no. Between reading tomes about our very dear American Revolution, I am trying to clear out my stock of sewing scraps. The Daughter Unit has been asking me (with heavier and heavier emphasis) to do sewing projects for those events where we have a booth at an arts-n-crafts do. Yea these many decades ago, I had a small craft sideline in doing Cabbage Patch doll clothes for base craft fairs. Sold them from the trunk of my car, they were that popular, in the months after a Christmas market event. But that was … err … quite a good few years ago. I still have a small stock of them, as a matter of fact, and have attempted without any particular success, to sell that remainder at various recent markets. I fear that Cabbage Patch dolls, after having been the doll-fave in the last century, are now a back-number, of interest only to obscure collectors.

But the Daughter Unit, having noticed a vendor booth at a couple of market events last year, stocked full of American Girl doll-clothes, and observing that the American Girl line (plus any number of other 18-inch doll knockoffs) are now extremely popular, ventured in her artless manner – ‘Hey, Mom – you should start doing doll-clothes again! Bet there’s a market!’ Likely there is –  much more than there would be these days for Cabbage Patch dolls.

Having done enough for the time being in the way of vintage-style costumes, middle-aged-authors for the use of, I have turned to reviewing my bag o’ scraps and cutting American Girl-sized outfits from the most suitable of them. The Amazon Vine program inadvertently aided this by offering me, gratis-but-for-the-chore-of-writing-a-review, an 18-inch doll, an American Girl knock-off, the advertising for which included the intelligence that American Girl clothing and shoes will fit this doll. I sent for the doll to use as mannequin and downloaded a bunch of the original American Girl classic pattern assortments …there are collectors and enthusiasts who have scanned the half-dozen original pattern sets and made them available on-line. (Their main benefit is that, as nearly as I can tell, they don’t use much yardage – so excellent for piecing out from scraps. Scraps of which I have, in plenty. Odd bits of lace, trim and ribbons as well. And they call for Velcro for closures, which is kind of tacky, but way less complicated production-wise than using snaps, or buttons.) My early concern was that – would they actually fit the doll? After cutting about twenty or thirty outfits from the patterns, I thought that, yeah – better make absolutely certain of that.

And they do. I seamed one of the outfits together and fitted it onto the sample doll … whose’ name will be Matilda, by the way (although her trade name from the original manufacturer is Serena) – and they fit, quite nicely. There are a heap of art markets coming up this fall – and some which involve this kind of craft as well. I really want to reduce the scrap-bag, I am not averse to spending hours over a sewing machine … and besides, Matilda and her 18-inch child doll friends need pretty outfits. Pretty, modest, and traditional outfits, I should also add. The little sideline in doll clothes will be titled and advertised as “Matilda’s Portmanteau” during the coming market season, whenever we do a strictly arts and crafts market.

Well, a project progress report, seeing that one of the semi-big projects on my list of home-improvement items has been accomplished – and bountifully, at that. Well, it did run to about $300 more in labor and $200 more in stuff – specifically a wall-mounted mirror, a faucet set, and a glass shelf – than I had initially anticipated. But the small bathroom renovation is complete and gorgeous! Well, once the glass shelf arrives, courtesy of Amazon and UPS, it will be complete. I began working on the bathroom after I got back from Houston, at the middle of April – scraping disgusting wads of soluble plaster and popcorn texture off the ceiling, and alternately, those last bits of paint from off the concrete floor, while awaiting the convenience of Neighborhood Handy Guy. Neighborhood Handy Guy boogies to the beat of a different drummer, when it comes to a schedule, I’m afraid. When he says, “I’ll be over first thing!” it could mean anywhere between 8:30 and noon. When he says, “I’ll be over today!” it could be any time from mid-morning to late afternoon. This charming eccentricity is forgiven by neighborhood clients because he does amazingly good work (carpentry, tile-work, fixture-installation, painting, etc.) being a perfectionist at heart, and that his charges for labor are … well, let’s just say they are reasonable. Especially if you do some of the work, assist him, and purchase the necessary. So reasonable that he is in constant demand – another reason for being patient. So – two weeks of work from Neighborhood Handy Guy, including trips to the local Lowe’s outlet, first to pick up the pedestal sink and the new toilet, the paint, tile for floor and sink surround, good sturdy planks for a shelving unit, baseboards and trim, subsequently to collect other items as required … and now the bathroom is finished. Yay! (Pictures below. The room is so small that it’s impossible to back up far enough to take pictures encompassing the whole … and the paint color is more of a white with a pink tinge than the sort of Pepto Bismol shade that it looks under flash.)

It’s amazing how much roomier it seems, now with a nice pedestal sink, and with a custom, if simple and unadorned shelving unit installed. The original vanity was contractor-grade, and so shoddy that I bashed it apart myself with an ordinary hammer and consigned it to the gargantuan wheelie-trash-bin without any untoward exertion. And my place was built by a reputable company: homes built by the really fly-by-night builders must be equipped with cabinets built with heavy cardboard, and fixtures constructed from soda straws and heavy tinfoil.

It’s only the very first item on my Five-Year To-Do, though. I am awaiting the call from the roofing and remodeling company, in service to the second item – initial construction of the Catio and in association with that project, a new roof. Sometime in late May, early June, I think. Then the garage door – and that is dependent on sorting out all the crap in the garage, much of which is the Daughter Unit’s. She came home from her last station at Cherry Point and when her hold baggage arrived, it was all unloaded into the garage. The master bath reno must wait until after Christmas. Sigh. Another week of scraping popcorn gunk off the ceiling awaits me at that point. And likely at least three weeks of waiting every day for Neighborhood Handy Guy to appear and work his home-renovation magic. Until then, I solace myself by going down the hall, opening the door, and basking in the retro-charm of the finished small bathroom.

While waiting to be put into the roofing/construction company’s schedule for the ‘catio’ and the new roof – which likely won’t happen until mid or late May at earliest, I have gone ahead and started work on the small bathroom renovation. The Daughter Unit was expecting this to be done while she was in California. I was also expecting to have Roman the Handy Guy start on the ‘catio’ before she even left, but he was in two minds about the project; an entirely roofed and screened-in porch was a bit more of a project that he wanted to tackle single-handed. So – I handed off the catio-porch element onto the professionals and asked him to tackle the small bathroom renovation. This is something more in his wheelhouse anyway.

The small bathroom project is a relatively simple one; rip out the vanity/sink and the toilet, scrape that nasty popcorn texture off the ceiling, tile the floor and the wall behind where the new sink will go, repaint the whole room, and install a set of built-in shelves and a new wall light fixture. The whole room is about 5 by 9, a third of that taken up by the bathtub across one end anyway. No big structural changes, no changes to the water or sewer lines, nothing to the electrical beyond replacing switch plates to match the new color scheme. Which will be white and a sort of grey-lavender-pinkish, to match a little vintage porcelain dresser set that the Daughter Unit picked up somewhere or other and wanted to use as the keynote design element. We plan to reuse the faucet set – since it was the one that I bought to replace the original construction-grade faucet about a decade ago, when I did my first redecorating pass through my little patch of suburban paradise.

So, yesterday we were at the local big-box home renovation store, picking up the replacement toilet and pedestal sink that I had ordered last week – both items packed in big boxes, which is why I had arranged with Roman and his pickup truck, rather than try and stuff them in the back of the Montero myself. While there, I bought the other material for the project; paint, floor and backsplash tile, the grout mix, lengths of baseboard stock, and lumber for a set of floor-to-ceiling shelves which will replace the storage space lost when the bathroom vanity is taken out. The bathroom is so small, the vanity takes up entirely too much of what little space there is – hence, replaced with a pedestal sink. Roman has a busy schedule for the rest of this week, so his part of the renew-work falls into next week. My part falls into the interim: scrape up the last of the paint on the concrete floor and clean thoroughly, so that the tiles adhere properly, take down all the stuff attached to the walls, patch the holes, sand, and otherwise prep the room for heavy redecoration. And that was my week – other than the trip to Houston, which I will write up anon.