A couple of years ago, Todd and I started tossing around the idea of moving. Our house is wonderful and we love it, but there are so many things wrong with it that need to be repaired. Things that cost tens of thousands of dollars, and we knew that we don't have that kind of money just laying around. (Our windows are all single pane windows and the wood around them is rotting, so they all need replacing. Parts of our siding is rotten and falling off. We also needed a new hot water heater, new garage doors, and the whole house needed new pipes, because every few months, we find a new pinhole leak.) We thought about just selling the house as is and cutting our loss and moving. But Todd wanted to move to the country, and the five of us disagreed. So we started talking about just making the repairs.
My sister Lisa is someone who specializes in loans, and this is where she enters the picture. She lives and works in Colorado, but is able to work anywhere in the U.S. We started talking to her about all of this, and she suggested we refinance the house and get a special type of loan to make the renovations. So that's what we went with. This has been an ongoing process for almost one full year now, but after many bumps and hiccups, we finally closed on it a couple of weeks ago. I'm so thankful for all of her help with this, because who knows where we would have ended up, had we decided to move. And I really do love our house, and love that our boys grew up here.
Once we had closed on the loan, Todd called everyone that afternoon and started making appointments for them to come out and get started. That is where we found ourselves this week. On Tuesday, all of this got started, and the day I had dreaded for so long was finally here. (Keep in mind that over the weekend and most of Monday, we spent cleaning and purging out from under all the sinks in the bathrooms, the drawers, and the closets.) I had anticipated it would be bad, but I forgot about all the stuff we would have to take out of closets and cabinets, and that it would be strewn all over the house. I also forgot that they would have to dig a trench in our front yard, to replace the pipes leading to the street. To say I quickly got overwhelmed is the under statement of the year, and I seriously had an anxiety attack. My mom came and rescued me, though, and whisked me away. I came back home late yesterday afternoon, after our water had been turned back on. (They left it off for 24 hours, and I need running water, and praise God for that luxury.)
This was what everything looked like when they started prepping the house. They were fast, and were here for two solid days. We've come across a few problems, but they're in the process of being worked out. They finished yesterday and when I came home, Todd had vacuumed up most of the debris that had been left behind. (He is the BEST.) I ended up staying home from church and we worked together on cleaning up some of the surfaces and putting some of the stuff back that wouldn't affect what the guys here today are doing.
And that brings me to today. We have two men here working on covering all the holes that were cut into the ceilings and walls. They hope to finish today! That thrills my heart. I know we still have to paint, but just to have things put back in place is exciting. I need order in my life, and don't handle things well when it's chaotic.
We have to do a lot of painting, but mainly it's the halls in the house. Eventually we'll have to paint in the laundry room and closets, and I'm hoping to paint the kitchen at some point, maybe even before Christmas. The hardest part of all this is the prep and deciding on the color. It needs to be neutral, but it also needs to match the colors that all our rooms are painted. I'm open to suggestion, if you have any.
My quiet times have been off all week, so when I went to Mom's Tuesday, I took my bible with me and got back on track.
This was my view from her kitchen table. I always need to make this time with the Lord a priority each day. I can miss a day, but I really don't like to do that, if I can help it at all. And if I do miss, I can't miss more than a day. This was actually Tuesday night, when I took this picture, because that morning we all hit the floor running and didn't stop all day. I look forward to sharing about our newly updated house when this is all over with! It'll be like a brand new home.
The company doing the windows ordered them two weeks ago, so hopefully they'll be here soon. That has to happen before we get new siding. And that is our final thing on our renovation list and the most extensive. We have a two story house with siding over every square inch of it, save for the brick skirt that flanks the crawl space (it sits on a raised foundation). They're pulling off all the old siding and replacing it with vinyl siding that will last a lifetime. We're changing colors and everything, so it really will be like a new house. We have to figure out about the shutters, still, but they'll be painted black most likely, with medium gray siding. Right now we have hunter green awnings over the front and back doors, and when all of this work is over with, we are having my stepdad build us an actual structure with roofing material on it, and we're adding columns. Bill is also repairing and expanding the deck that goes off the back door to our back yard. Over the summer we replaced our garage doors, with new metal ones that have fancy black handles. I love them, and they changed the look of the house. We will also completely redo our flower beds in the front, because in order to have new pipes put in, the old shrubs had to be torn out. Todd did that a few weeks ago, though, so they wouldn't have to.
Needless to say, it's a lot. You see why we weighed our options before making this decision to stay and fix it up how we wanted. We both love our house, and we love the location of where we are. We're right off a main road in our little town, and it's easy access to everything. We also live about two blocks from our church, and I wouldn't change that for all the money in the world. And I have said this already, but I love that our sons have grown up here. When we were talking about moving, we later found out how sad they all were about leaving this house, and then one or two of them even mentioned about wanting to have dinners there with their kids, someday. I would love for that, too, and though I thought we may tire someday of having a bedroom upstairs, maybe instead, it will keep us young.
So that's where we're at and what all is going on. I thought I'd update the blog to have this to look back on. Love to all, to whoever may be reading.
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