Chapter 145: Housework

Thursday, May 31, 1984

When we got up at eight, we could already smell bacon.

Even with that tempting us, though, we decided it was best to take a shower, lest we smell somewhat less than appealing.

Half an hour later, dressed (but not all that well dressed), we headed out to find Cammie industriously working in the kitchen.

“Unlike some people,” she said, “I went to sleep, so I was up early.”

“Sorry we kept you up,” Jasmine said, sounding not sorry.

Cammie blinked. “Oh! I wasn’t referring to you!”

Jas blushed, but not badly. “Well ... that’s good, then.”

Angie came around the corner and said, “Referring to who about what?”

Cammie smirked a bit, then said, “This house, you know? I’m not used to it. There were some strange noises last night.”

Angie giggled. “There was an empty room between us!”

“You might want to consider that in relation to volume control, next time,” Cammie said, winking.

“What?” Paige said, coming in. “We were too quiet?”

“She apparently had to strain to hear us,” Angie said.

It was Cammie’s turn to blush, though I didn’t think she was all that serious about it.

“I made breakfast!” she said, brightly.

We all thanked her and dug in.

By ten we were all dressed — properly this time! — and waiting. The doorbell rang promptly at ten, and Jas opened the door to find Paul Finley standing there.

“Hello, Ms. Nguyen,” he said, smiling. He’d pronounced ‘Nguyen’ reasonably correctly, which was a great first step.

“Jasmine,” she said, grinning. “Come in! You know all of us except Cammie Clarke.”

Cammie waved.

“Hello, Ms. Clarke,” he said.

“Cammie,” she said. “I’m going to be the one living here, house sitting and all of that, while the rest of these guys cavort around the country.”

“You’ll be visiting Houston,” Jas said, smirking.

“And San Antonio,” I said.

“Fine! Except for that, I’ll be here!” Cammie said, grinning.

There was a knock at the still-open door.

“Glenn Kelton,” the man at the door introduced himself. “Kelton Remodeling. Hi, Paul!”

“Hey, Glenn!” Paul said.

The rest of us quickly shook hands with Glenn and introduced ourselves. I’d already covered that we were young, and I think Paul had let Glenn know to not underestimate us because of it.

“So,” Paul said, “I’m pretty clear on the basement in terms of structural work. It’s everything else we need to go over, I think.”

“No time like the present!” I said, directing everyone to the kitchen.

From there, it was a slow, detailed tour of the house. Glenn had a lot of good questions, many of which we would need to think about before answering. Jas and Paige were both keeping to-do lists, both in case someone missed something and because they might have different takes on something or other. There were questions like: Do you like where the outlets are? How about the sink? What if we have to move something? What if we have to move a number of things? Should we be looking at redoing the fuse box and making sure there’s sufficient amperage? How about load-bearing elements — are we covered there?

It was thorough and detailed. Since the basement would be created from whole cloth, there were both fewer and more questions. We’d done some sketches — with an attempt to keep them at scale, but none of us were skilled at drafting — and Paul felt like those would get the architect on the right track. The coal chute, in particular, would be a joint project.

The second floor had a lot more questions. It seemed likely that the existing plumbing would be fine, but there were some options. Walls would have to move, and no one was sure if they could be moved entirely or if we’d wind up with a pillar in a strange place. That was another question for the architect. If we did, we did — we could probably make the pillar into something either functional, decorative, or both.

The attic was the simplest overall: replace the pull-down stairs with fixed ones, build a central room, then surround it with lower height storage areas. Cut dormer windows so that the attic wouldn’t be closed-in. Maybe make a seating area for one or more of them — which might sacrifice storage space.

The whole walk-through took us close to three hours. Paul and Glenn both wanted to see the master bedroom, because it was possible that something would have to change even though we didn’t intend to change it. Partway through, I remembered that adding a safe might be a good idea. They liked the idea, and promised to consider it, possibly with some adjustments to conceal it and build it securely into the frame.

As we toured the living room and kitchen, they promised that Cammie would have a functional living area at all times, but not necessarily a functional kitchen. A microwave might be a good investment. The refrigerator could be moved wherever it was needed, though.

We sat down in the living room once we were done and talked it out. Sometimes the difference between doing exactly what we wanted and almost what we wanted might be thousands of dollars. In general, we’d go with ‘almost.’ We were going to live here for four years, and we wanted to love it, but we were all pretty tolerant of ‘good enough.’

The perfect is, in so many ways, the enemy of the good, after all. If we chased perfection, we might pay for it both now and later.

Glenn promised preliminary floor plans, some sketches, and a proposed budget tomorrow afternoon at three if we let his architect have the run of the place this afternoon. We agreed, and he said that Kathleen Carson would be dropping by at three. We could go out to dinner, as it would take her and her assistant a while.

All of the girls lit up at hearing that our architect was a woman. That might have been intentional, or it might have just been luck, but it seemed like a good sign.

The whole thing sounded great. Of course, the proposed budget could be outrageous, Ms. Carson might be incompetent, or there might be any number of other problems. But we had a start, and it looked like a good one.

We let them go about two so that Glenn could get on the phone with Kathleen, give her what we’d given him, and get her over here in an hour.

Kathleen Carson turned out to be somewhere in her late 20s. She was slim, with dark hair, dark eyes, and glasses, and was wearing a navy skirt-suit and low heels. The whole thing, honestly, felt like she was trying too hard, but I completely recognized that she might feel that she needed to, being a young woman in a male-dominated career.

We were probably one of the better clients for her, at least if things worked out between us.

Jas welcomed her in and invited her over to the sitting area, such as it was. After she’d introduced herself (it turned out she was an A&M graduate herself), and we’d introduced ourselves, she sat down.

“Mr. Kelton sent over a list of the changes. Let me summarize what I think I know, and you can tell me where I’m wrong.”

“That sounds good,” Jas said.

She ran through our list of changes, going from top to bottom. Pretty much everything we wanted was on her list, though the basement layout had gotten slightly garbled (though not in a critical way — she just hadn’t understood that having the potential of a fundamentally separate basement apartment was a goal).

We nodded along, correcting things or stating agreement, as she went.

When she finished, Jas said, “That pretty much captures what we want.”

She let out a sigh. “Good!”

She blushed just a tiny bit, then added, “I mean, my job is to do what the client wants, but when I saw this proposal, I had trouble imagining someone would actually do this.”

“How so?” Jas said.

She smiled. “I used to live a block down the street from here. This was a problem house the entire time. The master bedroom makes a nice apartment, one that justifies a decent rent, except for the iffy kitchen and basement smells. The rest ... they just don’t. They’re cramped and weird and rent at a discount. The upshot is that sometimes you get a quiet grad student and their frugal friends, but most of the time you get a goofball with a budget and his cheap friends. It goes downhill from there — the walls are too thin, people get on each other’s nerves, and soon enough everyone around here is listening to one tenant screaming at another to shut up.”

“Sounds awful,” Jas said. “We don’t want that!”

She nodded. “I get that. The thing is, you’re sinking a lot of money into the place to fix it. The owners didn’t want to do that, obviously. Meanwhile, no one wanted to buy it because they’d either get lousy tenants or have to sink money into it.”

“We’ll be living here,” Jas said. “If we’re not happy as residents, that’s a problem. If we are, we can rent it once we’re gone, or sell it at a premium.”

“And that’s exactly what it would’ve taken to fix this place,” she said. “The biggest mistake was going to three second-floor apartments. It’s just big enough for that, but they would’ve needed to move the walls in a serious way. Two is much better. But three apartments isn’t great for turning a profit. Adding two more fixes that, especially the way you’re working with the basement. You could potentially rent the whole thing — including the living area — as a three-bedroom apartment with a private entrance. That would rent for a pretty penny, given the location.”

“They’d need a real kitchen,” I said.

“I could design in a mother-in-law-plan kitchen with downsized appliances,” she said. “That would work well enough.”

We all looked at each other.

“Makes more sense than the mini-fridge and microwave setup we tentatively had,” Jas said.

She nodded. “That works for the upstairs, because the second floor can’t function independently, not without building external stairs and adding a door. But if you do that, you need real compact kitchens up there. That’s doable with two units, but it’s a lot to bite off.”

“Does that make sense long-term?” Jas said.

She bit her lower lip a second. “You’d probably want a realtor or someone like that to comment. You might get a premium on them, but it adds a lot to go wrong. I can certainly design in the space, with some functional cabinets, a kitchen sink, and enough space for a future small range and oven and maybe a mid-sized fridge where you’re putting the mini-fridge and microwave, but not actually populate that area now.”

“Let’s think about that,” Jas said. “Can you make a proposal for that?”

“Sure!” she said, then hesitated a second. “Tenant-wise, I’m getting the feel that you’re the ideal. Close friends who want to share the space, cook together, things like that. If you can rent to fit that, you’re always ahead — in my opinion — because you have people who care about the house and not just their part of it. But that’s tricky, so...”

“Makes sense,” I said.

Angie said, “Especially if people stop getting along.”

“That’s never good,” Kathleen said, nodding.

“What else are we missing?” Jas said.

“Well ... you’ve asked for another full bathroom on the second floor to serve the attic. I’d like to do a proposal with an attic bathroom. The space would be a bit odd, but it would make it a better apartment.”

We all nodded.

“I think we’d definitely want to look at that,” Jas said.

“It may be tricky. That’ll add significant plumbing, and I need to make sure there’s a good way to do that without a lot of reconstruction. It’ll also add weight to the attic, which we’d be doing a lot of anyway. This is a very well-built building, and I’m not worried about the loading differences, but ... it needs to be checked.”