Just do it

We have a house scheduled for a rental inspection. One bedroom had 2 small windows in it when we purchased it. Jason the inspector let it pass 7 years ago because he said, although it was not an egress window, he could get out through it if he had to. Then 3 years later Harrison was the inspector. He was not pleased with the size of the window but he passed it because it had passed once. 

Now the couple using the bedroom has a baby. the baby sleeps in the room with them. We put in a much larger window. Even if we might have been able to call the "but it has passed twice" argument, there is no way I could live with myself if the couple had a fire and didn't get out with the baby because we didn't want to change the window out. We didn't have to reframe it because at some point in distant history an owner of the house thought this room should have small windows and just filled in most of the space of the old larger windows.

We hired a roofing company to put shingles on this house. There is an almost flat roof over the kitchen and the attached garage. We are going to put steel on that portion so just asked for a quote on the shingled part. When they were working on the roof Matthew asked why they weren't putting shingles on the porch. Oh, our bid was just for the steep roof, doesn't include the low pitch porch. Yea, I did that the next day. That little job made me think I am not getting any younger. Boy was I tired and sore and it was only a square and a third. Not that many years back I shingled several roofs like the steep part in a year.

We also found out we have a house with a shared private sewer line. Our house is the lowest on the hill. Our poor tenants had other's sewage in their basement one morning when the line plugged just past their house. 

Irv dug it up and pumped out the, oh, lets call it waste water. Cody cleaned out the plug and the line is open. We provided a free service to the other houses on the line because well, their drains were flowing real good down into our house's basement.

Matthew called me and asked me to go look at a bathtub that was leaking. Fiberglass tub looked good when we bought the house but had a crack in it now. We had to cut the tub and surround into 2 foot pieces to get it out.

We put in a new steel tub on Friday afternoon and tiled the surround today. I cut tile while Matthew stuck them to the wall. I could hardly keep ahead of him. we were finished in an hour and 15 minutes. Grout it on Monday and a much better tub and surround.

We had the tree this limb came out of trimmed a few years back. The tree service said the tree was in good shape and we didn't need to be concerned about it. That might have been a bit optimistic. We cut up the limb and hauled it away. the garage will need to be taken down as well. It not only crushed the roof, it also moved the garage over about 6 inches. The rest of the tree is scheduled to be removed

The tree company we use now removed another one for us this week. Took right at an hour to cut it down, slice it up, load it on trucks and haul it off.

This tree died 2 years ago. It is right on the property line of my yard. About 2 inches of the trunk is on my yard the rest on the neighbor. Our neighbor is concerned it is going to hit our house if it falls. I think it will be close but not quite a solid hit. We are going to split the cost and take it down. He wants to pay the entire bill but I keep arguing that it is my gain not his, if the tree is gone.

We could have argued that the window was large enough. We could have argued that the roofing bid was on the shingled part not the "steep" part. We could tell the neighbors whose sewage we cleaned up, Hey this is your bill. We could have told the tenants, look I don't know how the tub cracked but we are just going to patch it and do it cheap. I could go after the tree company that told me the tree was solid, but I think they did their best. I could let my neighbor cover all the cost of taking down the tree that is 80% on his property. 

We could do all those things, but would it be the right think to do. Not asking if it is the legal thing to do. Is it the moral thing to do?

This is a picture of some of our grandkids. That is Caleb hanging onto his dad's hand and reaching back pulling Ella along. I want to be like that. holding my father in Heaven's hand and pulling others along with my father and me as I walk through life. Some days that might be a bit expensive in dollars but I trust my Father to take care of that, and He does.

 

No such thing as a free lunch

I found 3 mice caught in sticky traps in our commercial building on Thursday morning. Thay came for the free food but it wasn't free. There was a high cost for trying to get that fish oil infused grain.

That seems to be a fact of life, there is no free lunch, everything has a cost.

I got the second and final dose of the shingles vaccine this week. I know people who had shingles, including my mom and Sharon, and have no desire for that pain. But once again everything comes with a cost. First dose was pretty easy with just a sore arm for a day. Not so for the second dose. Lets see, headaches, upset stomach, fatigue, low grade temperature and the really fun one was hallucinations. Took me  a bit to figure that last one out. Only lasted for about 2 hours, 18 hours after I had the shot. I kept trying to think through what just happened and then realized after 2 hours of that, that none of it had happened, my mind was creating fake memories. Was it worth it to get the vaccine? Yea, in my opinion that sort of lousy day was a lot better than what I have seen others go through when they have shingles.

There is no free lunch. Life is a series of trade offs and choices. 

I installed laminate flooring in closets today. I used flooring that we had bought cheap because it was what was left at a local store.

It was difficult to get it to lock and I had to fight every plank to get them locked. 

This is the laminate we use in most houses now. It is a cheap laminate that has lasted in one house for the 10 years since we bought the house. It really goes together easy (must be why it is called EZ plank). It is a cheap product but not as cheap as the remnants. But I paid for those remnants in time, work, and disgust today. No free luch and a cheap lunch usually isn't cheap if you look at the whole picture.

Sometimes cheap fixes do work. I needed to get into a couple of our lock boxes at the bank. Neither one would relock when I was finished. The bank staff called a lock smith, but he didn't answer his phone. The bank staff didn't want me to leave until the boxes were relocked (just a stack of abstracts in each box, sure about $18,000 value in each box but no value to anyone but the person selling the properties, which no one can do with out a deed signed by the owner). One of the staff found a can of WD40 and sprayed the locks. Worked like a charm and the boxes locked. Not quite a free lunch because there was the small cost of the oil, but pretty close.

I fixed this ceiling last week. Part of it had collapsed because of a leaking toilet upstairs prior to our buying the house. It was an easy fix because of the way the ceiling was finished. I could just cut out and replace 2 sections between the boards. No mudding and sanding, no uneven edges needed to be dealt  where the new met the old. Just the cost of a 4 foot by 4 foot peice of dry wall. 

I mixed a bunch of  paint remnants together. I have been aiming for a blueish grey the last couple of years (never add any red, the bucket is going to always be purple no matter how much you dilute it.)

I'd like to say this was a free lunch since all the paint I mixed was free from others trying to get rid of paint, but it takes a lot of work to get the paint all in one bucket and then get it mixed. There are times when you still find a dark blue splotch will show up on the wall as you paint and then you have to go back and repaint. Cheap (good for the environment as it didn't go to a hazardous waste landfill) but not free.

My point is that nothingin life is free, except that's not true. I know people who say they are going to heaven because they are good people. Yea, that's not true either. You don't have to live a good life to go to heaven because you can't live a good life. No one can. Heaven is paid for by Jesus paying your way in. It's free.

Matthew 20: 27-28 Whoever wants to be first among you must be your slave-- just as the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransome for many.

So yes, salvation and eternal life are given to you for free, but if you accept that gift the price is high because you have to become a servant to God and all those around you. Jesus said to love your enemies.

That is tough and it is no free lunch, but worth the cost.

 

Things where they shouldn't be.

 Sometimes things are just not where they are supposed to be. I walked around a house to shovel the sidewalk on Wednesday and saw a hole had been dug down through the snow, through some dirt and into the crawl space under the house.

The next morning I was stunned at what I had caught coming back out from under the house. I have nothing against rabbits in their place, but digging under one of our houses is not their place. I took the rabbit out to a wooded area and set him free. Now it is where it belongs.

On Friday I went to one of our storage buildings to get some air diffusers for furnace ducts. I keep the key to the door on my pickup key fob. Pulled the door shut behind me as I left and then put my hand in my pocket to get my pickup keys. Empty pocket. I remembered I had dropped my keys in the snow and hadn't put them in my pocket I had laid them in the building. Maybe I hadn't locked the door, right? Oh, I had locked it. I called Matthew and asked him to bring his key. Then I thought, wait there are only a few locks I can't get open. I try not to share that with very many people ( so don't tell anyone, Ok?), but if you know how, locks just slow you down not keep you out. First tool I tried failed, second tool I tried failed, third time was the charm and the door swung open. No damage to lock or door. I called Matthew, he answered the phone with the words "got it open didn't you?"

Oh, yea, and there were my keys lying where they shouldn't be.

We purchased an antique table to extend the one we have for family meals. When we looked at it we failed to notice it had some orange marks on the right corner. Those orange marks looked like some one had made a mistake with a permant marker. I have some pretty good cleaners but nothing was touching the orange so I have sanded the top down to bare wood and put on the first coat of polyurethane. 

The orange marks were definately not where they were supposed to be.

I have been trying to avoid taking statins for high cholesterol, but this week I had a long vist with my cardiologist. He wrote in his notes "I spent a long time discussing treatment goals and options with the patient for his LDL cholesterol". Yes, he did, but in my defense I think he had a few cancelations because of the snow and he had time on his hands. I thought I had done well getting my LDL cholestrerol down by 25%. After the calcium score test he wanted it down another 50%. He told me " you can lose weight until you look like a third world starvation case and you will not make that goal. Diet is not causing the high LDL it is hereditary" Major arteries sending blood out were open but I have a small amount of blockage in the "widow maker" artery and he is concerned. I told him a heart attack doesn't concern me a stroke is what I don't want. 

Statins it is. I know 3,000,000 people start taking statins in the USA every year, but I was proud of the fact I had made it to 66 and was taking no medication. Well those days are gone.

The plaque in my artery is definately something that is where it shouldn't be.

When I was in High School, the literature teacher handed me this book (this is my personal copy) out of the school library and asked me to read it and write a book report on it for his class. Looking back I wonder if he hand picked the book for the report for every student or if I was a special case. I remember him inviting me into his office to talk about the book after I had read it. What I didn't know at the time was, it was a banned book in Strongsville Ohio. It was unbanned in Strongsville about 6 months after I read it.

It is a novel that saterizes the absurdity of war and the dehumanizing effects of bureaucracy. Today it is being banned in schools across our nation. Should the book be in a grade school? Most likely not, but it should be in our high school libraries. We need to have our young people read Catcher in the Rye, The Great Gatsby, I Know Why the caged Bird Sings, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

I don't trust politicians who try to tell us what to read, Don't care if they are "progressive" or "conservative". Everyone should read, not only what they agree with but also what they disagree with (I don't agree with the Koran or the book of Morman but I have read them and know why I disagree with them). It helps to form an educated opinion that will never be balanced if you stay in an echo chamber.

So are some books where they shouldn't be? Could be, if they are not age appropriate, but we should trust the local school boards and libraries with that and keep the politicians out of it. 

Politicians could focus on important matters. Ban wallpaper. Come on people, I have tried to get this going before, write your politicians. No more wallpaper, no more wallpaper. I can't hear you chanting with me. Outlaw wallpaper, outlaw wallpaper. Wall paper is definately something that is not where it should be. It shouldn't be put on walls. It should be sent to the landfill or burned.

Moderation

Our home heating system is hot water. Water is supposed to be more efficient than forced air, I remain unconvinced. Last year our old furnace developed a leak and we had a new one installed. Our old furnce was just a large gas burner and a heat exchanger full of water that was pumped through copper pipes. The new furnace is a "smart " furnace. It moniters the temperature outside. Controls how hot the water is when it is pumped out and the temperature when the water returns to the furnace. It has a 150 page manuel with all the various settings that the installer can manipulate. All wonderful until the new furnace would not keep the temperature steady in the house let alone increase it once the outside temperature fell below 5 degrees. It could hold it at 65 degrees which is kinda chilly when one has a very expensive new furnace.

It would heat the water to 180 then shut the burner down to maintain the water temperature at 157. 157 is not hot enough to heat the house when it's below 5 degrees outside. Too much heat loss through the windows and not well insulated walls.

Our HVAC man is a great guy and he was trying everything he could think of to make the furnace heat our house on cold days. I was thinking this thing has a defect and needs to be replaced under the warranty. The day before it fell to -11 during the night Tom said he had one more thing he wanted to try. That evening and the next morning were wonderful. The temperature held and I could even get it to rise. I called Tom the next morning and I know he didn't really want to answer. I said, "I don't know what you did but the furnace works." He said, " I didn't think that would work". Turns out the "smart" furnace thought we were losing too much heat out the exhaust if the burner was burning too hot so it would shut down the flame to be efficient.

I don't need a furnace that wants to save me fuel when it is -11 degrees outside. I want a furnace that keeps my house warm.

In November, while running tests to figure out why my blood pressure had risen so fast and why my heart was not pumping blood about every 4 beats, they found my cholesterol was "kinda" high. I was told that it would take a change in lifestyle, (that means no food that tastes good) and at least 2 cholesteral lowering drugs. I decided to try getting the junk food out of my diet route.

60 days later the numbers are consideralbly better. Not where the doctors want it to be but about what the cardiologist thought was best case with change in diet and 2 drugs. My doctor wrote in the notes after she saw the last test, progress is being made but the cholesterol still needs to be lower. Keep taking the pill and we will check in March. 

Yea, I never took the pill, just got the highly processed foods out of my routine. I have a ct scan in early Feb to see if there is artery damage. If there is minimal damage, I will stick to diet change and still avoid the drugs. 

My blood pressure is now actually low for a man my age. I am now drinking coffee again. I am drinking a lot less than I was before when the old blood pressure spiked. What I find odd is I was so cold when I was caffiene free. Now after a couple of mugs of coffee in the morning I can walk out side and be comfortable without a coat at 10 degrees. When I was not drinking coffee anything below 32 degrees and I was shivering and my fingers hurt from the cold even with gloves on. No idea if that is really a thing or if it is a strange mental effect my mind is playing with my body temperature.

I cleaned all the stickers a tenant had adhered to this door this week. Not sure why the need to affix so many, or for that matter any at all. I don't have any stickers on our front door.

We are in the process of closing on a house this week. We own the house across the street and last year a truck pulling a trailer went down the street and clipped off the electrical wires. Our house's wires repair was paid for by the insurance of the driver. We failed to look up for the wires on this house when we made the offer. Wouldn't have known the wires were gone now but the mast fell off the house last week. It is owned by a firm in New York, so we have padlocked the doors and I check it every morning to make sure there are no squatters. Low and behold what do I see Friday morning but the mast blown off the house. When the truck clipped the wires he must have pulled the screws holding the mast on and down it came 6 months later. 

Moderation, now there is a wonderful thing to practice in life. Moderation in how efficient we want our appliances to be. Moderation in what we eat and moderation in what we drink. Maybe moderation in how many stickers we put on doors and moderation on how high a load we take down a street. 

Moderation in our relationships with others. I know I need to be open and accepting to listening to others opinions instead of thinking I'm right and they're wrong. I know some will tell you compromise is a terrible thing, but it isn't. We should be a community, working together for the good of all.

Moderation instead of fanticism, knowing that no one has all the answers. Sadly not even me.

 

Who fixes it?

I know none of us sees ourselves as others see us. Most of us think we are doing OK and have everything under control.

One of our rental house looks clean and neat from the street.  I walked around behind the garage and was appalled. They were storing their garbage in a huge pile. It had overflowed on neighboring property. This is when I do what I call shake the tree. 

I went up to the house and pounded on the door. The door swung open on its own.The lock was broken out. I asked the young man who came to the door what happened to the lock. I might have used what I will call my firm voice. He asked "are you the landlord?" "Yes, what happened to the lock?". "Someone kicked the door in." 

"You were going to tell us when? How are you keeping the door closed to keep out the cold?"

"We put a bag of dog food against it?"

See, here I thought there was a problem but they had solved it. Just lean a bag of dog food against the door. Now how that worked when they left the house is a bit of a puzzler isn't it?

I told him we would have someone there in the morning to fix the door and asked about all the garbage in the back yard.

" Oh as soon as my sister has a day off work we are going to haul it away."

My response was a little more direct. "It will be gone this week!"

It was one of those weeks where we find a lot of "mistakes" made by others. One of the lights and an outlet in a house we just purchased didn't work. Whoever did this wiring should never, never ever wire anything never, ever again. Was I redundant enough to make my point? He, she, or it has no clue how to run a switch leg to a light. No idea of electrical code, and I am not sure why this didn't spark and burn.

And then we had the tenants who moved out still oweing January rent. Glad they are gone, but they really shouldn't have turned the furnace off when they left. We didn't find out they moved out until we received notice from MidAmerican Energy that the service was going into our name. Funny, but did you know when it is 5 degrees outside and you turn off the furnace the pipes freeze? Another case of we found someone had kicked in the door when we went to check out why the current was going into our name, (remember how I shake "shake the tree") we didn't need a key to get into the house. 

Still trying to figure out how this spiraled down the drain. They had stapled blankets and even T shirts over all the windows.

Must have made the house pretty dark. We are still pondering why they had taped cardboard over the furnace registers. Makes it kind of hard to get heat if you close off the heat source and the cold air returns. If they thought they were solving a problem, they were going about it all wrong. 

It looks like they were trying to help keep the house warm by putting plastic and cloth over all the windows and then stopping the flow of heat from the furnace. Now that is what I call self defeating. 

That is a lot like trying to earn our way into heaven. On our own we just do everything wrong. No one is ever going to be good enough to earn Heaven and all our efforts work against each other.

I am sure the tenants with the mountain of trash never intended to fill the back yard with garbage. It just started with a bag or 2 and kept adding up.

It's a lot like our lives. We think we know what is right and if it is a little wrong we will clean it up later. God has a different approach. He wants it cleaned up now. He has sent Jesus to pay for our sins but we have to admit we have sinned and we need a savior.

If you think being a good person will get you into heaven you are like the person who wired the light switch. No clue. Only admitting your are helpless and asking Jesus to save you gets you into heaven.

We are in the process of buying a house. We do not have possession yet but the owner has told us we can fix the door. The door on the house is broken and will not lock. It is an odd sized door with a metal frame set in concrete. That means the door either had to be custom ordered or we had to build it. The new door is built and ready to be installed. Once in it will keep the elements out and be a nice point of access.

Jessu says "I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me."

Jesus is knocking, He wants everyone to spend eternity with him. That is more important than any other trials or problems you might have right now. Open the door and let Jesus make you right with God.

 

Dr says "maybe well done"

5 weeks ago my blood pressure was hovering around 148/92 on the good days. The Doctor was a bit sceptical that I would be able to make some life changes and bring it down without medication.

This was the reading this morning and yes it was calibrated so it is accurrate.

This is the average of the last 2 weeks. The doctor now tells me I do not need blood pressure medicine. Was it easy to make life style changes? Not always but I had a goal. I also lost 12 pounds in the last month. No caffine, less meat and smaller meals do make a difference. Now I still have the extremely high cholesterol levels to deal with. That test was also a month ago and the doctors have been telling me it is hereditary. There is no way diet changes are going to bring the LDL levels down by 70%, which is what they want to see. They are also telling me medication will not bring it down 70%. I am told if the numbers improve it will be a combination of a couple of drugs and staying on my current diet, unless I am one of the 10% who are not impacted by high cholesterol. I am having a calcium score test run in January to see if I am one of those lucky 10%. Also rerunning the blood test in January to see if diet has lowered the LDL cholesterol. 

We are getting closer to finishing Wild Flower cottage. This was a bedroom when we purchased the house.

At noon today this was the same bedroom, cleaned out and fixed.

This was the 2nd bedroom upstairs when we purchased.

Same room this morning.

I would have to say we have made quite a difference.

The hallway upstairs look a thousand times better as well.

This was the tub and shower when we took possession.

We have put in a tile surround (by we, I do mean Matthew although I did grout the tile). We should be wrapping this project up in the next week.

Then it is on to the next house. This is a picture that was on the wall in that house. All the stuff inside the glass of Dad'a best friend are dead roaches. Who was dad's best friend the dog or the roaches?

In life there is almost always room for improvement. I thought it would be really hard to stop drinking coffee. It was a major part of my life. When Tony was living with us he once asked me, "do you drink any water or just coffee?" He had a point but, hey coffee is just water with caffine added right?

We were traveling down to Murray Iowa to see our grandkids in the Christmas program on Sunday morning. I thought I would stop and get a cup of decaffinated coffee on the way down. Wow, that was awful! After 5 weeks without coffee, I don't want it anymore. Same with most of what I was eating. 

It is possible to change and change can be good. look at how the house we are working on changed. A real mess with terrible wallls and filled with junk, to a house I am proud to be one of the owners.

Sometimes we need to have a life changing experience. The man who lived in the house we are going to start on next was trying to get rid of the roaches. I know that because there are a lot of insecticides in the house. But insecticides still in the containers don't kill roaches. Good intentions don't change lives. It takes work and commitment. 

 

Give away

We buy houses from estates. Sometimes the heirs don't want to remove the contents of the house, that's where our offer of "as is" buys the house. We take responsibility of getting rid of the contents.

I found one of these plugged into an outlet in every room of the house we took possession of this week. I read online that they will keep pests away including roaches. I think they might have some false advertising going there.  When the roaches are dunging on the Pest Reject, I think the roaches are making a statement of what they think of this little item. Good news for us is the weather had gotten cold and the furnace was shut off in the house so almost all the roaches are DEAD. That's right the miriad bug sprays and devices the poor man had purchased didn't kill the roaches but cold temperatures nailed em.

A rule of thumb of mine is the dirtier the house the more cleaners we will find in the house. We are to the place we can hardly store all the cleaners we have gathered up. That goes for houses tenants move out of as well. If they leave the house filthy, you will find the cuboards full of cleaners. Good intentions I suppose, just no actual work involved.

We find a lot of "valuable" stuff in these houses. Not quite sure what we are going to do with the drum set yet.

Sometimes the house are so full of stuff, it's hard to even navigate from one room to the next.

On a previous purchase, I was told there are valuable antiques in the house. My reply "good get them out and sell them because if you don't we will set them on the curb or send to the landfill. This piece was picked up by someone and delivered to a charity in Pella. I hope they get a high price for it and use the money to help someone in need.

I don't know antique values and have no desire to learn.

We did think that buggy had value. matthew was going to sell it for $50 when Bob offered him a "crisp twenty dollar bill". Matthew said SOLD.

Once in a while we do save a piece for ourselves. This dresser is now refinished and in our house.

Usually we just start setting stuff by the curb and let anyone who wants it have it.

It would take too much time and effort for the dollars return to sort and try to sell what I see as junk

Sometimes tenants move out and are not quite honest when they say, "House is empty." Then we start stacking the useful stuff by the curb.

and more to the curb

and more to the curb. Hmm, wonder why they were unable to pay the rent and the electric bill. Maybe too much stuff was purchased that wasn't needed??

So I have started moving some of the smaller stuff to the curb out of our last purchase. Sharon has been loading out to give to a thrift store.

It's part of the buisness we are in to have to dispose of other's stuff. Some tell us we should try to sell it. I'd rather just let someone have it for free if they could use it. I don't want to price it. I don't want to have to meet someone to make the deal and then have 70% fo the buyers not show up. It makes my life easier to just give it away and if it helps someone else, that's a bonus, although I sometimes wonder if we are just adding junk to hoarder houses.

We looked at a couple of houses this week and took a pass. The next day we found out the owner was angry at the neighbor for having a trailer parked partially on the lawn while he resided his house. So he left a note they owed him $300 per day as long as the trailer was partially on the lawn of a house that has been vacant for 14 years and then called the cops on the contractor for having it parked there.

I would have gone over and asked them not to pull the trailer out if it rained so they wouldn't leave ruts and been happy we could help at no cost to us.

I think if we all treated each other as we want to be treated it would make life a lot more pleasent. Especially for the person who able to be the one helping others out in small ways.

Give and it will be gievn to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured in your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured to you