Now to get back to normal...

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi.

How many years ago was it that we realized we had a serious water problem in the sun room?  And began the long..and sometimes misguided...road to fix and restore?  Seven?

We're down to the last bit of electrical work and then it's done.

DONE!

I'm so excited.

And, we didn't plan or budget to revamp the den at this point, either, but, well, we knocked a wall down and should have realized that that would mean we would have to redo the den...or live with weird half done for another couple of years.

That bullet is hard to bite, but we bit it.

So...I promised pictures...

Both start upper left, with what the room looked like when we bought the house, and then ends bottom right, with what it looks like now....

First the sunroom...

Then the den...

But we've got to reshuffle furniture around the whole house now, and, well, that's going to be a bit of a challenge.

But we have a deadline.

I want things straightened out for Christmas decorating.

Which may be a bit late this year...lol.

All we have to do is decide what's going to go where.

Good intentions and all...

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Y'all.  This home renovation stuff is not fun.

We're not even doing any work yet...just writing checks to the contractor.  Our turn will come when the rooms are ready to paint and finish out the electrical.

Which is probably still a week off.

Meantime, we have two rooms of stuff crammed, stacked, stuffed and piled around the rest of the house.  It's almost claustrophobic.

I missed the SSMT verse for Oct 15, and I missed last week's New Beginnings post. While I have been thinking a good deal about that next post, I don't think I'm going to get to it tomorrow.  My computer desk is piled as high as anything else and, well, it's not at all conducive to creative thinking.

So I've pretty much decided I'm going to take a little blogging break until we get things straightened out somewhat.

I will have pictures. :-)

Ten Years Down the Road...

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

Changing up the family room/sun porch was one of our prime projects when we bought the house.

Unfortunately, before we could do that we had to 1) re-roof the house and replace the skylights. 2)Repair water damage to the porch...which ended up being a complete rebuild.  3) save up enough to tackle the wall/door.

But, with My Sweet Babboo's severance package from the layoff at the start of the year, we were able to pay off the debt from the rebuild and proceed with Phase 2 of the sun room renovation.

So, 3 1/2 years after our contractor packed up and moved on with the porch stable and dry, we are seeing the work pick up again.

 This is what that wall looked like Saturday.

From the family room side...












...from the sunroom side.

 Yesterday...the wall came down, the support beam was installed and the new door was framed in.

 After we saw how amazing the space felt opened up, it was a real temptation to just get two more doors to flank the center one, but we decided to be practical and stick with the original plan. The new wall was framed out today.

And...for my sewing buddy friends who came over from Sew Random, here's a unique use for a Really Big Zipper...lol.  The door from the dinette into the construction zone.

That barrier is kitty proof; she tried to come through it last night but couldn't.  Which is a good thing; we don't need her crawling around on the fiberglass insulation..

It's so incredible to see this happening after we've dreamed about it for so long.  It's going to be almost like having a brand new house...

'With Brave Wings, She Flies'

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

The first night of the women's conference, I was given a little appreciation gift. It was a bracelet, with a charm that reads, 'With Brave Wings, She Flies'.

That was a God-kiss on several levels...but here's one that made a difference to me today:

Last summer, when I was going to the sanctuary every day and writing in my journal, just trying to keep myself together for the girls and wondering what on earth I would do when that assignment was over, I heard something in my spirit and wrote it down:

You will be out of your comfort zone, but you will be flying in Mine.

When I left the DIVE school last fall, I knew there was a songwriter's conference coming this fall.  I made myself a deal:  If I could write one song a month in 2015, I would go to the conference.

Not finished out songs, mind you.  Just completed thoughts.  Seeds of songs, more like.

I wasn't sure I could do it.

But I have a notebook with a song for each month of the year in it.  One or two actually have some potential, I think.

But...it's a chunk of money.   The Rocket City has the dubious distinction of being the MOST EXPENSIVE airport to fly in and out of in the country.  And we're about to embark on Part Two of the porch upgrade...the one that we started when we found rotting structures in it back in 2011, and has been sitting half finished waiting on funding since it was stabilized in 2012.

I waffled when I was on the websites to register and then to book my flights.  I didn't have frequent flyer miles available this time.

I got cold feet.

But I had met my requirement.  My hubby gave his blessing.  Why was I hesitant?

It's outside of my comfort zone.

I don't think it's a coincidence that I just got the message, 'With brave wings, she flies.'

I gulped and booked the conference and the flights.

Here we go.

Verse 4 - Micah 2:13

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Lahai Roi

It's been just exactly a year since the contractor cleaned up his work, packed his tools and went on to other jobs.

Not because our job was finished, but because we'd gone as far as we could go with the resources we had.

All the resources we could muster together, actually.  So the project wrapped up at the end of phase 1.

Phase 2 is a new door.  On Leap Day last year, I posted a photo of the spot where the door is destined to go, and a list of the scriptures that I had written on the wall that will come down.

Today, as I pondered what my fourth verse for the Siesta Scripture Memory Team should be, I walked through the den and opened the blinds on the windows that will be replaced by a large, light filled sliding door, and realized I had gone slack on declaring the verses over the situation.

And it's no wonder...in the past year, the rest of the insulation for the project (along with a few boxes of other stuff...) has moved from the garage to the porch.  It makes sense for it to be there, but... I can't see the verses to declare them

I suppose we must be closer to being in a position to finish than we were a year ago; we've had a year to fill in the financial holes we dug to just get the room enclosed and stable.  But we're still a long way from having the resources we need to knock out the wall and windows and put in the door.

So I decided I need a warfare verse; a verse that I can declare every time I open the blinds.  So verse number four is Micah 2:13, which is visible in the middle of the wall:

One who breaks open the way will go up before them; they will break through the gate and go out.  Their king will pass through before them, the LORD at their head.

A few declarations...

We have finished the critical part of the porch rebuild.  All the windows and doors are up; it's closed back up and there's a floor of sorts now.

But we've got a ways to go before it's done, and we're going to have to stop here until we've got some more resources.

However, one of the things we wanted to do from the time we bought the house was put a sliding door between the family room and the sunroom and take out the goofy windows that are there now.  So, despite the fact that we weren't really in a position to do that just yet, since everything is dismantled, now is the time to do it.

That's the next step.

So, I did a little look through the NIV concordance and put some verses up on the part of the wall that needs to turn into a door... declarations such as:

A new and living way opened for us - Heb. 10:20

One who breaks open the way will go up before them; they will break through the gate and go out.  Their king will pass through before them, the LORD at their head -- Mic. 2:13

See, I am doing a new thing! ...I am making a way. Is. 43:19

I pray that now at last the way be opened - Rom. 1:10

Pass through, pass through the gates!  Prepare the way for the people  - Is. 62:10

Knock and the door will be opened - Matt. 7:7

To him who knocks, the door will be opened - Matt 7:8

A great door for effective work has opened - 1 Cor 16:9

The Lord had opened a door for me - 2 Cor 2:12

See, I have placed before you an open door that no man can shut - Rev. 3:8

I don't know how long those verses will stay up, but they will...eventually...give way to the door.

The Cost of Restoration

I have mentioned from time to time about the, um, issues we've had with the sun porch that was added to the house some time before we purchased it.  First, it was a leaky roof, which we repaired as best we could, then a hail storm wrecked the repair and our insurance company paid for a new roof.  But the actual cause of the leaks wasn't the roof...it was the flashing around the skylights, which had been bent out of shape the last time the house had been re-roofed and would no longer seal.

So we spent a little extra money on new skylights.

But the water damage to the inside wall was still present, and we knew we'd have to deal with that eventually.

Early last summer, the in-wall  heat/ac unit (just like what you see in hotel rooms) died.  More research discovered that it was just about $150 more to purchase a complete new unit than it was to replace the motor in the old one.

So we ordered a new unit.

When we pulled the old unit out, we made a horrifying discovery:  it had been installed such that it tilted inside the house instead of toward the outside.  All the condensation from the unit had been running down the wall behind the wallpaper and pudding under the rug.  For years.

As we pulled paper down and carpeting back, and eventually sheet rock down, we discovered that the whole wall had rotted around the unit; the sillplate for the wall was rotted, and there was about a 6" hole rotted through the floor.

Scary.

We got a bit more money from the insurance company to cover the water damage from the leaky roof, but in post-April27-2011 Alabama, that number was figured very lean.  And we were on our own to cover the rot, and to replace the windows and sliding doors, which had all lost their seals and had moisture collecting between the panes.

So, we got estimates and borrowed against the 401k and proceeded to do what we had to do to fix things.  Not to make it fancy, but to just make it sound.


I'm not going in to detail, but we found as we continued that the same mentality that had set the AC unit in tilted backwards had pretty well built the room.  The farther the contractor went in pulling out bad stuff, the more bad stuff and incredible workarounds he found. The latest was dirt packed between the rim board and the patio slab...which had held moisture and fostered a huge worm colony and rotted out a goodly portion of the rim board.

The upshot is that we have pretty well just jacked up the roof and demolished everything under it, one wall at a time.

We've run through all the funds we had amassed for the project; now, we're down to the annual bonus check My Sweet Baboo should get this week and hoping the tax refunds are not delayed.  After that...well, we may just have to tell our contractor friend that we're going to have to put the brakes on for a while until we can get some more cash saved up.

Now, none of this was in our plans when we bought the house.  Overall, the appearance of the house was good.  The home inspector found only minor things that needed work and gave us a good report. We did what we knew to do to protect ourselves against just this sort of scenario.

But the folks who owned the house before us were very big on appearances and very blase' about sound structure.  Nobody foresaw this. But now we've got this situation and it must be fixed.

I have seen many applications from this experience; the one that struck me today as we were discussing the estimated cost to just finish what HAS to be done is this:

The cost of fixing a poorly done job is always greater than the cost of doing it right the first time.

We humans messed up our 'first time'...and couldn't pay for the restoration.  But God loves us so much that He paid that cost Himself...at a much dearer price than we will end up paying for the repair of the sunroom.

If I can trust Him for fixing my fallen humanity, I've got to trust Him for fixing the falling down porch.