I had removed the toilet from the basement of a house we had purchased. That is our modis operandi. Don't really want to have to cut holes through the sills to install vent fans. No one who ever put a toilet in the basement thought to themselves "oh, I better vent that area", No they were just putting in an extra toilet. I can't understand a toilet setting out in the open, to start with, but it seems to have been a popular idea in the mid last century. The house I had to cut the hole in, at least had a laundry room with a door. Wow, talk about your amenities. A wall and a door around a bathroom.
John is a nice guy and after living in the house for a couple of months he asked if they could have the toilet back in the basement because their granddaughter was staying there at times. There is a bedroom in the basement with an egress window and I had a weak moment and bought a brand new toilet and installed it.
Now I could have carefully measured where I needed to cut the hole for the vent, but I decided to take a drill bit and drill through the joist and siding for a pilot hole. (I did check to make sure the side of the house had nothing on it or up against it such as electrical boxes or air conditioner lines before I ran that drill through the joist). I ran the drill through and went around to the outside and fired up my hole saw and set to cutting.
Do you see that there is a hole through the siding about 2 foot west of the new vent? That would be because I was not the first person to run a drill through the joist. The last time someone did it it evidently had something to do with the heating system. I saw the pilot hole and got right to it. When I had finished cutting the plug wouldn't come out of the hole because there was a nail just off center of where I had cut. That should have been my first clue something was wrong. I finally got the plug split and pulled out only to see I was looking at metal. Yep, dead center on a heating duct. That of course was when I noticed my pilot hole over about 2 feet. Yea! Royce you may have issues with spacial concepts. I would feel really stupid but last summer Matthew drilled a pilot hole through a roof for a vent fan and drilled straight up through a bundle of shingles lying on the roof. Shingles with a hole drilled through them are really not of much use, in case you are wondering.
I went to our storage shed and looked for the yellow piece of vinyl siding I knew we had somewhere. Oh yea, you see it up there stuck in the rafters? I took a snips with me and crawled up over everything to cut off a foot of siding to cover a hole. I am glad it is on the back of the house because the sun has bleached out the rest of the siding about 3 shades of yellow. The new patch doesn't match very well.
I looked at a house that was for sale. I think the owners did their own kitchen remodel. They put in some nice cupboards but cut the counter a little short. I was looking at that and thinking how exactly would I fill that hole. Wide caulking has just never appealed to me. A trim board there? Really that just seems wrong.
Then I was looking where the fridge should go when I saw the above brilliant plan. Run an extension cord up behind the counter from an outlet behind the cupboards where the counter top doesn't lie flat against the wall. Now first of all, you should not hook up a fridge with an extension cord. Not a good plan. If they didn't want to run a wire in the basement and put in a floor outlet, they could have put the outlet in the side of the counter. Leaving a hole to run an extension cord just doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
At this point I had had enough of holes. I wish I could tell you I had bought some doughnut holes just to say I ran into a few good holes this week but I didn't, I bought a cream filled bismark. I guess it did have a hole that was filled with cream and that was the best hole I had dealt with all week.
A Couple mugs of coffee and some pastries can brighten my day. Even make me wax philosophical. I wonder how many people I meet every week have holes in their lives. How many are missing someone or something. It is easy for me to judge someone without knowing why they say and do the things they do. Maybe they have a hole in their life and they are mourning someone who is gone. Maybe they have a hole in their life because of loss and they are in poverty. Financial poverty or emotional poverty or spiritual poverty.
It is easy to condemn, it is harder to fill holes. Next week I will look for the holes in the people I meet and see if I can help fill them up just a little. I can do that because right now God has filled all my holes and put me in a good place filled with His goodness.
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