BLAME IT ON BOB VILA

by Deborah Elliott-Upton

Fairy tales can come true …

I feel like I’m living a fairy tale life, but it’s not what you think. I’ve been working harder than ever and now I don’t even get to go to the ball, although unlike Cinderella, I had an invitation. Most of the Criminal Brief crew is in Baltimore at Bouchercon, one of the biggest and best mystery writers and fans conferences. I really wanted to be in Baltimore, sitting on that panel and meeting a lot of my heroes disguised as writers.

I am home this week, slaving away on a novel, submitting stories and articles to various publications and taking a class. It’s not like I’m cleaning ashes from the chimney or scrubbing floors on my hands and knees, but I’m not going to the party and there’s the rub.

Instead of a party dress, glass slippers and a plane fare, I purchased plumbing supplies, paint and grout. Needless to say, my husband and I have been remodeling. The process started with the hall bath. We were merely going to rip off the wallpaper that has been there a good, long time. So long we felt we’d gotten our money’s worth out of the original investment. The plan was to paint, so we searched for paint chips and brought them home to “test” against the room’s southern exposure to see how the light changed the actual shade. It should have been an easy weekend task.

Then, my husband stumbled on a vanity to die for and at a steal price. Purchasing the exquisite and quite traditional vanity changed everything. Now the plain, white ceramic tiles looked even more dated than the wallpaper had. We decided to re-tile. This meant more shopping for just the right flooring. Fortunately – or is it unfortunately – my man and I are died-in-the-wool do-it-yourselfers. “If we don’t know how to do it,” I overheard him say to his friend, “it doesn’t get done until we learn how.”

It sounds more painful than it is. Actually, we love to attack such projects. We have painted walls, textured walls, put up new and torn out old walls. We have taken up and put in new floors and put popcorn ceilings in (and now we’re scraping them off and re-texturing.)

Why are we doing this? I blame it on Bob Vila.

Actually, it was probably Norm who did all the work, so maybe it was him making it look easy that tricked us into trying so many diy projects.

I do remember it was Bob though that said something like, “This is a Might-As-Well budget point. When you’ve got the wall opened up, you might as well rewire the electrical if it needs it. Also, if it looks like more insulation would be a good idea, this would be the time. When you start adding these type of extra jobs into the mix, the budget is no longer what you planned and neither is your time commitment.”

That’s what happened to the current house project. In the spring, we painted the outside of the house. We’d worked on the garden in the back (bumper crop of tomatoes this year!) and planted cannas and a couple of red Rose of Sharon in the front. Who knew a little idea to replace the wallpaper in the bathroom with paint would start such a mess?

Everything came out of the bathroom and we lost the use of the room for two months. However, we textured the walls, painted the walls, put glaze on the walls and finally coated the walls with polyurethane. Then, we tiled the floor, replaced all the baseboards, doors, toilet, tub and put in the new vanity. The lighting came next, which took longer to pick out than it did to install. We’re down to finding a shower curtain and new towels to be completely done.

It was a lot of hard work and elbow grease, but it belongs entirely to us and it looks great. It better, I doubt we’ll be tackling it again for a very l-o-n-g time.

While I was glazing, my mind kept coming back to a sheriff from a short story I wrote a while back. This guy had other stories to whisper in my ear. He’d stopped more than one criminal and solved more than one murder and wanted to know if I was interested. I remember stopping mid-swipe with the glaze cloth and biting my bottom lip. Why, yes, I would.

Instead of taking breaks for coffee or a meal, I found myself more and more in front of the computer, jotting down ideas for stories about the illustrious sheriff’s adventures. Heck, he might even share a complete novel someday.

I’m not sure if it had been the Tony Hillerman novel I was reading or my new friend who writes for Bull Pen magazine (concerning bulls, broncs and rodeos) that moved my thinking toward cowboys,but I was appreciative for the nudge.

So, when the sheriff whispered ideas for stories into my ear, I answered, “Might as well.”

Finishing the bathroom took longer than expected. I blame it on Bob Vila.

Don’t blame Deborah for the lack of illustrations in her column this week. Except for our resident HTML genius, Leigh, I’m the one who generally supplies and formats the illustrations—although I am ably assisted by each of the contributors, who either make suggestions or provide photos to be used. Anyway, the computer I brought with me to Baltimore does not have all the graphics programs I usually use to insert illustrations, so I have reluctantly decided to eschew including them until I’m back in L.A.. —JLW