Women’s group takes on home repairs with “fellowship and communion.”
They all giggle when one member of the group suggests they could use a good stud finder.
It’s hard to figure out if the ladies are talking about the tool that helps find a proper wall anchor when hanging a heavy object, or did they mean something else?
After all, when the Tool Time Girls get together, there is plenty of equipment in the mix. There also is a notable absence of men.
They are quick to say that is completely by design. The No. 1 rule in their club of six single, female, Jacksonville homeowners is that no boys are allowed.
The “TTGs,” as they call themselves, formed around 2002 after Betsy Clark found she couldn’t afford to hire a contractor for everything that needed fixing in her Lake Shore-area home. As a member of Avondale United Methodist Church, she tried to worm her way into a home-improvement club of husbands and wives that other congregants created. But the club wouldn’t have her.
She realized she wasn’t alone. There were five other women just like her - from their 30s to their 60s - sitting in the same church pews every Sunday.
So, like a legion of do-it-yourself home-improvement superheroes, they started meeting the first Saturday of each month to mete out justice in repairing their dilapidated residences. From there, the six became fast friends, swapping gossip as they painted walls, sharing secrets as they put up ceiling fans.
“Truly, the best part of this group is the fellowship and communion that we have. We never start a project without prayer. And if you need something … you know who to call,” Clark says.
She holds bragging rights as the group’s founder Clark works as a pastoral care director at their church and serves as a caregiver for her elderly mother.
The rest of the TTGs’ lineup is as follows:
Cindy Faustino is the all-around home-improvement guru. The Lake Shore homeowner even does plumbing. The mother, college campus adviser and marathon runner once ripped her small bathroom down to the studs - there’s that word again - and created a powder room worthy of a space-challenged, four-star, New York City hotel room.
Jennifer Criswell is a real estate agent who specializes in electrical repairs. She lives in a former Springfield boarding house, where the TTGs have done projects, including a top-to-bottom scouring and a flooring installation. She also makes up the younger half of the TTGs’ mother-daughter team.
Her mother, Joanne Criswell, works as a social worker and also owns a home in Springfield. The ladies moved her into the house before doing projects such as window cleaning and sunroom renovations.
Kathy Houser is a publishing company employee who volunteers for a women’s prison ministry. Counted among the TTGs’ 50-plus projects are installing a new sink and vanity in her home, as well weather stripping and ceiling fans.
But listing the upgrades at her Venetia area home only tells part of the story. Because Houser herself wasn’t around for some of the projects. While she was in the hospital for a hysterectomy, the ladies descended on her place to make sure she wouldn’t remember a life-changing surgery only as a time of loss.
Helping each other through tough times comes with a bonus: The ladies learned to make each other laugh, the kind of belly laugh that makes your sides ache and your eyes water.
Nurturing that along is Karen Myers, a nurse, mother, grandmother and the group’s unofficial comedienne. The color she chose to have the TTGs paint her living room walls - canyon rock red - says a lot about her personality.
As a group, the ladies know how to live life large and loud, whether they’re firing up power tools or reveling in their annual trip.
Each year, the TTGs leave their tool belts behind for a weekend retreat to the seaside. Their beach adventures would make a superb Saturday matinee, a sort of Steel Magnolias meets Weekend at Bernie’s without the beauty shop and the dead guy.
One time they ventured into an oxygen bar. This year they went boogie-boarding in St. Augustine. Another time they piled into a van and went to a Jacksonville Beach tattoo shop. The six of them waltzed in together to the surprise of the punk-rock ink-gun masters inside.
“The guys were like, ‘What? Is this a raid?’ ” Myers says of the scene that ranks as a classic, female-bonding episode.
In the end, the TTGs all got inked that weekend. Just that once, they let the men use the tools.
