We’ve done a lot of work around the house: new floors, new doors, new trim, new paint… lots of new, and lots of work. The kids have been champs through it all, and today we took a day to work on a project of their choosing. The origin of this project was a doll house they saw at a Big Box Store. It was, if I may say so, a plastic monstrosity: big, cheap, and beautiful. Oh, so beautiful. Pink and blue and shiny.
“No, we’re not buying it today.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a flimsy, plastic piece of C-R-A-P from China.”
“But it’s pretty!”
At this point, we had a long conversation about why they liked it, and it suddenly dawned on me that the quality of the manufacturing didn’t enter into the decision. A light bulb turned on…
“You know, we could make one better than this one.”
And so we did.
It took about two hours, and we used scraps for all of it: a two-by-eight for the walls, leftover linoleum and hardwood for the floors, and a few pieces of trim and plywood for the rest. The paint was leftover no-voc Benamin Moore Natura that we used to paint the kids’ room. After an hour of drying, they went straight to furnishing and playing:
I think the moral of that story is, if the customer doesn’t care too much about high quality workmanship, I can probably bang it out just as easy as the factory in wherever-it-is. Plus, the kids will know that it’s not hard.
On top of it all, they got to pick the colors and the location of the walls, and which rooms were “his” and “hers.” Not bad for a Sunday afternoon.
Wow! I’m really impressed in so many different ways! It reminds me that we DO still have some toys in our attic for your kids to play with when you come to visit. Can’t wait!