An American Treat

Abby is so lucky. She's sooooo lucky that she's got a Dad willing to do this for her!



A couple weeks ago, Lee started looking for a toddler's bike for Abby at GoodWill. At first, I was resistant to the idea. It's not like we couldn't afford a new bike. Plus, Abby hadn't learned to ride her tricycle yet. But then I started looking at toddlers bikes and was pretty disgusted with the selection. Let's see there was Barbie with hearts, Barbie with stars, or Dora with hearts. Gag. But what really changed my mind was when I saw this:



Abby couldn't even turn the handlebars because her knees were in the way. Okay, I'm sold on getting a toddler's bike.

So Lee dragged me off to GoodWill. Again, there was mostly Barbie bikes and Dora bikes. But Lee's plan was to repaint and replace any parts that needed it - so long as the basic bones were good. Plus, these bikes were $5 to $6; that's waaaaaaaaaaaaay better than the 40 to 60 bucks to buy a new one! Heck, for the price of a brand new toddle bike wheel, we could buy two entire bikes at GoodWill. And that's what we did. Lee argued that they were so cheap we could use the second one for parts. Okay, I'm sold.

Lee wasted no time when we got the first one home. He stripped it down, cleaned it up, and assessed what new or newish parts he'd need. Then we got the second bike. Before long that one was stripped down to its parts and cleaned. Lee was a man on a mission. At one point, I came home from an outing and found Lee in the living room with bike parts and grease in use. True, it was a hundred plus degrees outside, but was it too much to ask that he at least put a drop cloth down?!? "I got carried away," he claimed.

An example of our workspace, which included the dining room table, the patio table and seats, and the living room:







Then Lee asked me about fabrics. "We need to cover the seat and handle bar pads." They were pink and that just didn't fit the new color scheme. So, I bought red sparkle vinyl and contact cement. Total = $5. Lee also bought spray paint and some more grease we didn't have. Total = $10. Then he painted and painted and painted.





Next, Lee rummaged through my art supplies and added his own personal touches to Abby's bike. Nice work!



I rummaged through my scrap booking ribbon supply and left over party supplies to make the handle bar streamers. We'll see how long those last...

And here's the finished product. (I gotta show those details! I'm proud of my hubby's work!)















And this pretty much sums up Abby's opinion on the whole thing!