Improving home improvement

Long before the Do It Yourself movement fueled by Trading Spaces, and before HGTV was turning millions of Americans into do-it-yourselfers, Carolyn Brou, Helen Kelly-Coco, Carla Leyda and Monique Marino were wielding power tools and paintbrushes as members of Home Club.

The four friends started their exclusive home improvement club because things weren’t getting done around their houses, so they took matters into their own hands.

“Carolyn is single and the rest of us have husbands who have no skills,” Marino says. “I’m not going to hurt anyone’s feelings by saying that. It’s the truth. They know it. That’s why this works for us because none of us have a spouse who can do it for us.”

The four met several years ago while working as volunteers at the Baton Rouge Crisis Intervention Center. Marino and Kelly-Coco worked together at Volunteers of America Greater Baton Rouge and were discussing starting the club one day at lunch.

“I had read an article about these women who once a year got together for a week,” Kelly-Coco says. “They would take turns doing projects and talked about how they got more done in that one week than they did in three years. I thought, ‘We could do that.’”

Rather than meeting once a year they decided they could accomplish more by meeting one Saturday a month and rotating projects at each other’s homes. Although several other women were invited to join, it came down to the four of them, and thus Home Club was officially formed in 2000.

The first rule of Home Club is, well, there aren’t really any rules, actually. There’s more like an unspoken understanding among members. You show up, you work hard, and if you miss a Saturday you’re expected to make it up. “Oh, and we do recommend having good medical insurance,” says Marino, who was recently overcome by a severe case of poison ivy from a Home Club yard project, resulting in three doctor visits.

The first project they tackled as a group was transforming an office in Kelly-Coco’s home into a bedroom for her daughter, Tess, who was born in February 2000.

Since that time the four have taken on a variety of projects at each other’s homes, including reupholstering a rocking chair, laying tile, stripping wallpaper, painting, painting and more painting.

“It’s worthy to note that in eight years many a friend have tried to get a place in Home Club,” Marino says. “But, we have said it’s exclusive, we can’t handle any more people. Plus, if all of our friends got involved we would have to spread the wealth and wouldn’t visit our own homes as much. Four is a really good number for getting a lot of work done.”

Home Club did go on the road once. Leyda gave up a workday at her house and asked the other members if they would be willing to go to her mother-in-law’s home instead to paint a room as a gift.

“They were really excited about doing it,” Leyda says. “When we got there she had the table all set with silver and china and had a lovely breakfast waiting for us.”

Kelly-Coco recalls it fondly, “We were all sitting around in our raggedy painting clothes eating off of silver and China. It was really funny.”

Breakfast seems to be a big part of Home Club.

When I first meet the members they are sitting around Brou’s dining room table, sharing a breakfast of homemade muffins and fresh fruit. According to Marino you can always count on a homemade baked good when you come to Brou’s house. They also inform me that it is the job of the hostess to provide breakfast, to come up with a list of projects, and provide all of the supplies. Today’s project, I learn, is to paint Brou’s kitchen cabinets.

“My kitchen has literally been a Home Club project from floor to ceiling,” Brou explains. “We laid the tile, painted the walls, installed a new faucet and painted. I hardly do any work on my house when it’s not Home Club. We meet at each other’s homes about three times a year, so it takes a while for a project like that to be completed.”

Home Club Saturdays start at 8:30 a.m. with a fresh breakfast, and by 9 a.m. they delve into the hard work—at least, at Marino’s house. “The rule at my house is when 9 o’clock rolls around you get to work,” she says. “When we’re at other people’s houses they let us sit around and talk a bit longer.”

Kelly-Coco explains that she, Brou and Leyda consider themselves recovering perfectionists, but jokes that Marino is too far gone.

“We once cleaned behind her refrigerator,” Kelly-Coco says. “I swear it’s the only dirt we’ve come across in her house in eight years.”

She also jokes that Marino usually doesn’t let them paint at her house, but a recent project gave them their first opportunity since 2000. The group converted Marino’s garage into a children’s playroom with games and puzzles painted on the floor.

“They’re right,” Marino says. “I never let them paint, but I had an idea of what I wanted and no idea how to do it. Between these three masterminds they figured out how wide things had to be, how to tape it, how to measure it and lay it out. It cost a fortune in paint, primer, chalkboard paint and primer, but it was worth it and I couldn’t have done it without them.”

The group doesn’t have any photos from that recent project, but they share photos of past projects with me, including their very first. They laugh and joke as they recall everything from staining chairs to the time Leyda chased a roofer off of her property. They even show me their secret uniform, a T-shirt and pair of shorts with the Home Club logo on it, and the group’s motto, “It’s Good Enough,” which Marino makes sure to tell me she doesn’t endorse, insisting she has a reputation to uphold in this community. We laugh and joke some more and before you know it 9 a.m. has come and gone. It’s time to get started for the day.

The group leaves behind their breakfast dishes and goes straight to work. Leyda and Marino begin removing Brou’s cabinet doors and hardware, handing them off to Kelly-Coco, who takes them outside to sand them down (she’s good with power tools). Brou is already busy sanding down the cabinets. As I watch I learn that over these past eight years these four friends have helped each other through a lot more than home improvement: pregnancies, adoptions, deaths.

“If you weren’t here we’d be talking about all the things going on in our lives,” Marino says. “It gets pretty personal. I think that’s the reason we’ve all stuck with it and remained friends. It’s our therapy. Everyone should have a Home Club.”