Lessons on Home Remodeling - Tip #4

Trimming doors when new flooring is installed.

It's time for the weekly installment of Home Remodeling tips from Jack and Francie!!! (I started writing this and then Francie beat me to the post so I had to slightly modify mine. NO big deal.)However, regardless of that this week you get a two for one deal!!! Call it our summer special! ;-)

Tip #4: Trimming doors when new flooring is installed.
Last week the vinyl was laid in the kitchen/utility room. Because of the people who laid the vinyl having to also lay down underlayment, the doors in the utility room leading to the garage and outside needed to be trimmed. BUT the people who laid the flooring didn't trim doors. SO in mentioning this to others they said that the carpet people should trim the doors. Thinking that the doors to the bedrooms might also need trimming, we hoped to just have him also trim the doors that the vinyl layers did not. In the famous words of Ray Stevens......WRONG! The carpet is being laid today and when asking them about the doors, they also said that they were not suppose to trim the doors either! SO now we have to try to trim the doors ourselves or find someone who will. So tip #3 in the house remodeling of the Jack and Francie's house is...."Ask before you buy the carpet/vinyl/tile/etc if the layers will trim the doors. If they don't develop a plan assuming that the doors will need to be trimmed."

Lessons on Home Remodeling- Tip #3

Never celebrate too early.

We have learned over the course of this house remodeling venture that nothing is as simple as it seems. Most things take longer than they should and don't work the first time you put them up, hook them up, hang them up, or turn them on. Yesterday we decided to go ahead and move the washer and dryer to the utility room closet. There is no hook-up at our current residence so the washer and dryer have been in storage. I am very excited about the idea of being able to do laundry in my own home again once we get moved in! So we discovered first that the dryer will not plug into the current electrical outlet because the outlet and the plug on our dryer don't match. Ok...we have to switch another outlet. So we brought the washer in to hook it up. Everything was connected beautifully. Time to try it out. Hot water...works. Cold water...works. Warm water...works. Hallelujah! Something works the first time!! I did a dance in the utility room. "Celebrate with me! Something works the first time!" But, alas, remember Tip #3. We began to drain the water we had just put into the washer and behold....water all over the floor. There was a bad hose that needs to be replaced. We spent the next 30 minutes or so sopping up water with some kitchen towels we found from the previous owner and a few paper towels. When Jack disconnected the hose...whoosh! another big rush of water. We got it all cleaned up and dry but needless to say we have a washer and dryer IN the house but neither are in working condition at this time.

Oh yeah, and this weekend was the 4th of July. Happy Independence Day, everyone. We did take Saturday off-- away from work AND the house-- to enjoy a break and the festivities. It was a nice day for both of us. Praise God for the courageous men and women who serve our country and protect our freedoms. May God bless us even in our weaknesses.

Lessons on Home Remodeling- Tip # 2

When the previous home owners leave you a cabinet full of cleaning products, take the opportunity to use them and assess their value.

Today, I will evaluate three-- that's right THREE-- home cleaning products for you. Kaboom! (in honor of the late Billy Mays), George Foreman Knockout Multi-Purpose Cleaner (our former homeowner must have liked infomercials), and Windex with vinegar (yuck). I cleaned the guest bathroom last night because it is finished. Yay! Both bathrooms are actually done, but I was only able to get to the guest bath last night and I really need to give it another good cleaning, but last night gave me the opportunity to test out these three amazing products. Here is my assessment:

While I mean no disrespect to Billy, the Kaboom! disappointed me. It left a weird white residue on the counter top and just didn't seem to clean well. So it was out. Same goes for the Windex with vinegar. I searched through the 15 bottles of cleaning products I inherited with the house looking for another glass cleaner, but to no avail. This Windex left several streaks that I could not remove so I'm going to have to clean the mirror again. So, out of our triple product test, the winner is....George Foreman's Knockout Multi-Purpose Cleaner! Actually, this was pretty good. It seemed to clean well on multiple surfaces and didn't leave any kind of residue or film. Is there anything George Foreman can't do?

Lessons on Home Remodeling- Tip # 1

When an electrician comes to your home to create a place for new ceiling fans and install them, DO NOT take the time to put the ceiling fans together to save time for the electrician. Your efforts will be futile.

Wednesday night, before the electrician was to come on Thursday, Jack and I decided that we needed to put our two living room ceiling fans together to save the electrician time and save us some money. Mind you, our home has no lights right now because we took them all down (again to save us some money) so the electrician can check the wires and secure the boxes where fans used to be. So Jack and I sat in the living room with head lights (flash lights on an elastic band that you attach to your head) and put together ceiling fans after church Wednesday night. Thursday when we came to make sure the electrician had no questions for us, the ceiling fans were all but completely disassembled in the living room floor. "We can't hang them assembled," the electrician informs us to our dismay.

Things are moving along and hopefully the house will be move-in ready soon. It will probably be ready for us before we are ready for it, considering that I haven't packed one box. Not one. I think I am avoiding the whole situation. I would rather take one or two mad packing days than begin to pack slowly and take one box over at a time for several days. As soon as things are complete I promise I will post the before and after pictures so you can see what I've been talking about for the past two months or so.

Here a year...

It hit us this past weekend that we have been in the town that we now live in for a whole year (Saturday, June 20th was actually exactly one year). It's amazing how things change and yet how things stay the same. When we left the town we were living in we were very excited about moving, while at the same time very sad about leaving some of our dear friends behind. But here we are a year later and it's funny how things have changed. We are glad to be moving where we were, but as the saying goes "You can never move back 'home'." How true this has been. We are excited about being close to family, however this presents unique challenges (in SO many ways). We are excited about our jobs, however this past year has been very, very, very stressful on both of us (and unfortunately this doesn't look to be getting any better). We are excited about working with a ministry that has a leader and a church that strongly supports it, however the "perfect" situation really isn't all that "perfect". We are excited about buying a house, but the jobs that we (and everyone else) think that we should do before we move-in never seem to cease. We miss our lives in the town we left. We really miss some of the people we left. We miss the smiling faces of the students we left.

Will the other saying of "time heals all wounds" fix these problems that we seem to have? Who knows. Stay tuned! ;)

Space

Last week I decided to make a call to the contractor just to see if we were still on schedule to have the wall taken down between our formal living room and den. According to what he had told us when we had the estimate done, this job would probably be done about the middle of June, so maybe next week-- if we were lucky. Thursday morning he called me back and when I asked him when he might get to us he said, "How about I come today?" TODAY?!? My heart started to flutter. This was the big job I was waiting for-- and earlier than I expected. But on the phone I kept my cool. "Sure, today would be fine," I said in my most professional sounding voice.

By the end of the next day, we had a big, beautiful, open space where a wall once was. Jack and I sat in our lawn chairs in what used to be a small formal living room and looked into the open space that is now our whole living room. It's terrific. We are so pleased. The job is not completely finished, but close. Painting is well on its way. The bathroom showers are getting their marble treatments today and hopefully Jack and I will make flooring decisions soon. Things with the house are really falling into place. Soon, I hope to post some before and after pictures of the inside of some of the rooms so you can see the transformation. I want to wait for completion so you can really see the difference (paint and all).

On another note, I started a summer Bible study with a few friends today. We are going to meet weekly and I am excited about it too. I think it is going to be a real blessing to me to spend time with some other women each week discussing God's word and learning how we can pray for one another. My summer class will meet for the last time this weekend and then I will just finish up grading and be able to check that off the list of things to do this summer. I hope I can continue to be motivated to do the rest of the work I need to do but with God's help, I know I will be able to do what needs to be done and let go of the rest. Thanks for your prayers. I have been able to feel his peace the past few days.

Grow in Happiness

Friends and loved ones...pray for us. I was sitting in the doctor's office this morning, reading the text book for my summer class (because of course I can't let any time go to waste) and I ran across these sentences: "Indeed, part of human happiness depends on not feeling overburdened-- at least not for too long. Few things are as debilitating as feeling frazzled by having too much to do and too little in the way of resources to do it." This is at least my third time to read this book and when I read those sentences I stopped and re-read them at least 3 more times. What a true statement to characterize how Jack and I have been feeling for the past year. I don't know why this particular life adjustment (new jobs, move, new house, etc) has been so much more difficult for us than previous similar experiences but it has continued to drain our resources and doesn't seem to be letting up. I realize that in some ways we probably bring these feelings onto ourselves, but they don't make the stress any less real for us. So, I ask for your prayers that we can learn to manage our lives and balance our responsibilities so that we can prioritize properly and feel a sense of peace and rest. Within that, with God's help, we can grow that "human happiness" the author speaks of in my class's text book.