Old to New

 I put 3 coats of paint on a lawn shed today. I really hate that vertical plywood siding. It does not cover well with paint. A couple of months back the rental inspector informed me I had to paint a lawn shed.

    It was this shed. I just looked at him. He repeated " You have to paint that shed". I said I believe the code says 50% of the paint has to be missing before a house or building has to be painted. His response, "it's close." I just looked at him. He said, "ok it passes" I was ready to grab a tape measure and hold it against the shed and count how many inches landed on unpainted wood. What my friend the inspector also probably does not know is I have a seat on the Code Board of Appeals and if he had not backed down that is exactly where we would have been.

     This shed is by a house we bought last week Tuesday. I know it needs a coat of paint.

     Today was a decent day to fix the rotten boards and to get some paint on the building. I sprayed on one coat and it helped a little. The  I sprayed it again and it was some better. That wood just kept sucking the paint in like it was water.

     After 3 coats it is kind of presentable. Not a paint job I can be proud of but at least it looks better. The old is maybe not made new but it has been upgraded. 

     The bathroom looks a whole lot more like the old has been made new. 

     New floor, new toilet, new vanity, new sink, new faucet. The old is gone and has been replaced by the new.

     The old broken tub surround has been torn out and replaced with tile. The old shower has been discarded and a new one installed.

     What was once old ugly and broken has been made new. The stains and cracks are gone. It is fresh and clean.

     The living room has the new floor in. and just needs to have the tools removed and the dust swept up.

     What was once filthy and discolored has been replaced with a solid floor which will not soil as easily. A floor that will clean much better than a carpet.

     The bedroom floors are also in and the rooms look much better. The old is gone.

     The kitchen is also just down to clean out. The entire house has moved from old to new. The broken has been fixed. The house has a signed lease on it and it is time to declare victory and move back to our project house.

     Today is Good Friday. A lot of Christians seem to forget it is "Good" Friday. They have a need to turn today into a day of mourning and sadness because Jesus had to suffer and die. I don't see it that way. I am rejoicing today because God loved me so much Jesus came and took my place. Sunday everyone will rejoice with me but I think they are a couple of days late.

     Let me give you an example of why I rejoice today. If one of my sons was dying of kidney failure and I was a perfect match, I would donate a kidney. I know it would hurt. I know I wouldn't want to go through the surgery and recovery, but I would do it. If every year after the surgery my son would have a day of mourning because his illness had caused me pain I would tell that young man to knock it off and rejoice with me that he is alive. 

   To me today the angels are singing because the saints are entering salvation. To me, today God says rejoice because the old has been made new. The broken has been fixed. The ugly has been wiped away. Today your sins are paid for. And come Sunday we will be reminded that not only are our sins forgiven but Jesus rose from the dead as the first and we too will rise. Ah what a season of rejoicing.

Doing the Work

     When fixing up a house there are some things that need to be done. This week I was making progress on the house we purchased last week.

     The floor in the bathroom has to have the water damage beside the tub fixed and it has to be level and smooth before vinyl flooring can be laid. I replaced some wood and put in filler today. First to get the floor solid and then even so the vinyl planks will not crack.

     I took out the old light fixture which was missing the globe and had seen better days. I found this chrome 3 light fixture for less than $10.00 at Walmart. That was a cheap upgrade and it gives 3 times as much light as the old fixture and with the LED bulbs uses a lot less energy. It is an all around win.

    The old sink with the broken faucet was replaced with a cabinet and a solid surface top. Whole ensemble was $124.00. It came in under estimate so I was pleased and now you can actually turn on the hot water side.

     Old cracked tub surround is gone and the tile are up around the tub. Hopefully they will get grouted tomorrow. It will be a big improvement and water will no longer be escaping beside the tub and damaging the floor.

     The old water heater was taken out and put by the curb, someone picked it up to recycle it and I was rid of it. New one is installed and there is hot water. It is really nice to not be washing everything in cold water.

     I finished the work in the bathroom ahead of schedule this afternoon so I had time to lay the floor in one of the bedrooms. This is the first time I have used this brand of flooring. I have never seen a floor snap together so easily. I hope it doesn't come apart just as easy as it went together. That would be a problem.

    So I spent this week getting the work done that needed to be done on this house. I already have people looking at the house and wanting to rent it. There is a shortage of housing in Oskaloosa right now so I want to get this house done before May 1 so someone can move in. That should be easy to do if I keep doing the work that needs to be done.

     Some times I spend too much time doing things that are not a priority. Yes we all need to take time to relax and enjoy life. I know Jesus took His disciples away from the crowds at times so they could have a break. I also know God has called us all to build His kingdom. That calling is different for each one of us but we each have work that needs to be done. Sometimes it is your job that you do every day. Sometimes it is the neighbor that has a need. Sometimes it is telling someone that God loves and forgives, that God is giving eternal life to those who ask to be forgiven.

     I think there are times when we get confused about what is important. Yesterday the denomination I am a member of had a meeting of church officials from all the local churches. They had two items they were going to discuss and decide. The one item needed to be talked about, the other item I wonder about. There was going to be a discussion and decision about who could read the form for communion in church services. I look at all the work that needs to be done to build God's kingdom. Jesus said to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the sick and those in prison. We are told to go out into the world and make disciples of all nations. There is work to be done and a local denomination calls all the churches together to talk about who can read a form. I wonder what God thought of the that use of the talents he has given.

The Deal finally closes

     Last Fall I went to a sheriff's auction to see a house sell that a bank was foreclosing on. The owner had died and the mortgage was not paid off. I wanted to see what the bank was going to have to bid. That would tell me what the outstanding balance of the mortgage was. I did not want to buy it at the sheriff's sale. I figured let the bank clean up the title and then we will see. 

     There was a pretty good crowd at the sale and I thought, well this could be interesting. There are several people who want to own this house. State Farm Bank out of New Jersey was servicing the mortgage. Their opening bid on the house was $21,531. That was also the last bid. It was the only bid. As I will explain that was a smart move on all those in attendance.

     State Farm Bank deeded the house to FNMA, they were the ones with the cash in the mortgage. FNMA listed the house for sale at $37,500. Yes a slight markup there and people say the government never makes money. We made an offer on the house and quickly found out there were several investors making offers. That is when it becomes a blind auction. You have no idea what anyone else is offering so you take a stab in the dark.

    Our offer was considered by FNMA, that is when we discovered we were dealing with a government agency. There were a lot of rules. You could not resell the house for over 16% more than purchase price for 2 years. You could not sell the house on contract. You will not be provided with an abstract but may purchase one through FNMA for $800. All forms used will be the forms that are FNMA approved. (interestingly they do not use the forms mandated by the government for all real estate purchases, they use an older form so all paper work had to be done twice. Once with the forms mandated by the government and then transcribed and filled out again on an older form no longer allowed except for Houses purchased from FNMA.  They were in a hurry to get the deal closed before the end of the year and wanted a closing date in 2017. 

    No abstract makes my attorney very nervous. I went up to Mahaska Title and asked if they happened to have an abstract for the property. I have found that there is a good chance some bank has ordered an abstract on foreclosure properties but fails to pick it up. Yes there was an abstract in the files at Mahaska Title. Now is where it gets interesting. There was a previous mortgage on the property with State Farm Bank. They had foreclosed on a second mortgage instead of the first mortgage. FNMA did not have clear title to the property. 

     State Farm bank didn't care because they had the property off their books so why would they release the mortgage. January turned into February which turned into March. Every 2 weeks we were signing extensions while the brokers were trying to get State Farm Bank to respond. You see if we failed to close the deal by January 13 we would be charged a fee every day we were late. FNMA could just say, here sign an extension we do not have clear title.

     2 weeks ago we received notice they were going to terminate our offer. Um, I don't think so. You may be a government agency that thinks you can make up the rules as you go, but you really don't want to do that. I sent them a bill for $700 for abstract costs and attorney fees. They must have passed that bill on to State Farm bank because lo and behold the original mortgage was released the next day and they set a closing date instead of terminating our offer. 

    So I quit on our project house to work on this one. 

     When a house has been shut down and winterized, it just means that all the pipes will not burst by freezing. It does not mean there will not be damage. First thing you do is tear out all toilets and throw them out the door. Yep did that today. Then most faucets will have to go, (this sink will go as well.)

     Then you look for where the house has leaked. Ouch but I knew that was there going in so no surprise.

In my opinion they should make wall paper illegal. Horrid stuff. never comes off clean and easy, probably should have just tore the dry wall out of the one room that was wall papered and started over but I am too far into it to admit defeat now.

     Not just one carpet in each room to tear out, Oh no there was another carpet under the carpet. What fun. Tear one out only to have to do it again.

     Started painting and actually made progress. A new coat of paint always makes a house look so much better

     At least I only had to paint one ceiling. I hate painting ceilings. You can see the paint is still wet in places when I took this picture several hours after I painted. The house was not drying well. I had to turn the heat up to make the furnace run more.

     When the basement started to dry from the heat turned up, I found it did not dry up underneath the water heater. Well I guess that will have to go. I wonder if there was still water in it when they winterized the house. I think the house will be worth the pain of dealing with FNMA and all the repairs it will need.

     There were several times in the last 90 days when I thought this deal would not happen. I was OK with that. We always say we do not want any house God does not want us to have. That includes telling God that. Praying to God and saying. Your will be done, only let this deal go through if it is what You want. 

     That makes my life a whole lot easier if I let God be in charge. I don't have to worry if it is a good deal, God takes care of it. A while back, Lisa, our real estate broker said to me, "you don't get bothered if you don't get a house." That's right if God is in charge why would I want what He doesn't want me to have. 

     But that doesn't mean it is always a smooth road. I have no idea why we had to wait 90 days for this house to close. Maybe this will line up with exactly the tenant God wants in this house. Maybe I will get the chance to share the grace of God with someone who I would not have met if the house had been available to rent 60 days ago. Maybe one of God's children is going to need a house in May and God is providing for them now already. 

     Some days I am just along for the ride, but what a ride it is if God is at the wheel.

     

saving water

     I want to start off by saying that there are times when it is OK to save up some things. I think Sharon was a bit surprised to open a closet downstairs and find out what I had in the closet. The reason I think that is because she shared a picture with me.

     Yes I have a few gallons of paint in storage. We use a lot of paint and when the local lumber yard was changing suppliers this winter they marked the price down to $9.99 a gallon. I calculated all the houses we had to paint this year and acted accordingly. So yes I have over $400.00 in paint stored in a closet. But that is over $400 less than the paint would have cost this coming summer. That is a fiscally sound investment. Not everyone who stores up stuff is making a fiscally sound investment. 

     Sharon and I removed about 130- 2 liter bottles of water from the crawl space of a house we have just purchased. Do you suppose they filed all those bottles and put them in the crawl space because they were afraid they were going to run out of water? Did this happen way back in the year 1999 just before the new year when everything was going to crash because the computers would not recognize the year 2000? Were they afraid of a drought last year and filled all the bottles just last year? There were also 10 boxes of water. They appeared to have been under the floor for some time. I would guess they held 2.5 gallons per box. 

     We emptied all the bottles and took them to recycling. If anyone looked into the recycling dumpster they might have thought why weren't all these bottles turned back in for the nickle deposit. Because $6.50 is not worth the time to turn them in when I can just dump them where they will either be recycled or some homeless person will dig them out and redeem them.

    Water is necessary for life. I know we can not live long without water but I am not sure  storing it up in bottles under your house is the way to guarantee you will have water in the future. I believe Cape Town South Africa is about to run out of water. Last I read the water lines will run dry before mid April. It is hard to believe that a large city can run out of water in the modern world but it appears that is about to happen. We take water for granted. Open the faucet and water runs out. Clean fresh water. That is not true everywhere in the world.

    Jesus was sitting by Jacob's well when a Samaritan woman came to draw water. She came during the time of day when no one else came to get water. She was an outcast. Jesus asked her if she wanted living water so she would never thirst again. 

    We had the privilege to praise God with the students at Joshua Christian Academy today. These kids know how to sing and praise God. They look to me like they have had a drink of the living water. Many of them come from economically disadvantaged families, but a man's life does not consist of his possessions. It matters most if you have drunk of the living water. That is not the water that comes out of the faucet or rains down on the land. That is the truth that Jesus has paid for your sins if you will only accept his sacrifice for you.

     I want to have that water and not a bunch of bottles saved up for a dry day, because if Jesus is my savior he will always provide the water I need.

19 “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. 20 But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. 21 For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Power

     I am definitely not as much into hard labor as I used to be. I am pretty sure I lack the strength and muscle power I had when I was 10 years younger. We had a ceiling that the plaster was cracked in our project house. I did not want to try to man handle those sheets of dry wall up and get them screwed into place without a little mechanical help. 

     I checked with Eric and he had a dry wall jack for rent. We have used one before but either I am getting old or this one was a lot heavier to load and unload than the one we have used previously. 

     Once the sheets were on the jack it was pretty easy to lift them up to the ceiling. I am not going to say it was easy putting in the screws because I hate working over my head. But I was able to get the ceiling done today. I was putting up the last piece when I realized that the reason the ceiling was cracked was someone had sprayed the ceiling with texture and had not gotten a good adhesion. The ceiling itself was fine and I could have removed the cracked layer easily with a mud knife. Now I have to tape and mud the ceiling. Yea!!

     When I removed the ceiling fan to put up the sheet rock I found a real rat's nest of wiring in the box. 6 wires coming in and no wire nuts just black tape. There were also bare wires. This was a fire waiting to happen. I have Rich and his guys working on the electrical service to the house so I am going to turn them loose on this project as well. Dan told me he has seen this sort of wiring before they ran all the power to the room through the ceiling light box. I am glad he has an idea what is going on in this box, because I just looked at it and thought, that's a mess.

 

     Speaking of a mess I wonder exactly why someone thought they needed 2 fused outlets and 1 normal outlet by the washer dry hookups in this basement. How much power did they need? What were they plugging in that they needed a fuse right by the outlet?

There were 4 fuse boxes in our project house. I guess they just kept adding electrical outlets and electrical appliances that needed power so they would just add another fuse box. 

     Gotta love this old set up. Wires out in the open on a fused porcelain holder. I don't think I want to hear what a building inspector would say and I am sure my insurance company would cancel my policy if we turned the power on with this baby still in use. 

      New service is going in and the wires are going into conduit. It is a work in progress and while the work is in progress there is no electrical current.

The only power at the house was from this generator. 2000 watts but is has a 13 amp kick out. That means we can not run an air compressor or a compound miter saw or a table saw, but we can run lights in the basement and a reciprocating saw. Not very much power if you are trying to remodel a house.

     But as I said progress is being made. The breaker box is on the wall. As of noon today the mast is on the outside of the house. The wires run into the breaker box but nothing coming out yet. The ground wires are in place. Soon there will be power. There will be lights, and a furnace. We will be able to get the water meter installed and the water turned on. We will be able to bring our power tools over and get started in earnest. Windows and doors can be replaced. Dry wall taped and mudded and texture sprayed. Then painting and flooring and cabinets and bathroom vanity. Then tile can be put in the bathroom and the shower can be installed. 

     Everything is waiting for the power to be turned on. Right now everything that can be done has to be done either with battery tools or by hand. It is a slow way to get things done. We need electrical power. A lot of Christians go through life seeming to never tap into the power that is available to them. They keep trying live their lives the best they can thinking they are doing what God wants if they are good managers and rely on the talents God has given them. I think they are missing out on the power they could have.

     God gives us His Spirit to live in us and if we turn everything over to Him it is a tremendous jolt of power in our walk with God. I find it a great comfort to say to God, "Hey God you take care of this." We ask God to give us the tenants He wants not the ones we want. Sometimes we rent to people we would not if we didn't think God was taking care of it. I hear stories of owners who are owed a lot of back rent. Our tenants are all paid up. That doesn't mean there are never any problems but sometimes those problems allow us to tell the story of salvation to someone who doesn't know God. 

     I have come to the realization God has a lot of power and I have none. We like to think we do but we don't. Without the power of God we are like a house without electrical current. There is a feeling of deadness when there is no electrical power. A house seems to come alive when the current is turned on. That is how my life is also, unless the power of God is running through me nothing will run easily or well. Without tapping into the power of God we will always be partially dead.