Found

     Our project house is way ahead of schedule. We are about to back out of the interior.

     The bathroom is finished and is looking great. I am amazed at how much better it looks than when we purchased the house.

     The floors are all laid and the trim is all up as of this evening. 

     Micah will be around tomorrow and we plan on getting some of the heavy stuff done. Those 2 cabinets need to go up on the wall by the sink and the range needs to be moved in.

    The fridge will need to be moved from our garage to the house. That is definitely a 2 man job.

     Last week Saturday Micah and I put in that door. We needed a couple of shims and we could not find them.

     I knew they were in the house somewhere and Micah and I hunted for them for quite awhile. Then I told Micah to just go buy some new ones we were wasting too much time looking for a cheap item.

 

     Later I found them. Notice where they are? They are sitting beside some flooring boxes in a doorway. We were walking past and over them while we searched. I am sure a couple of times I had to step over them to get from one room to the next. But, hey we have a brand new box of shims now.

     The hookup for the kitchen stove in this house was gas. We have an electric stove in storage so I was not excited about buying a gas stove. I was checking the breaker box for a blown breaker one day and I saw a 220 breaker that was labeled "Range". Range? There was no wire coming through the floor of the kitchen. What did that breaker connect to. Rich had put a new breaker box in this house. Why was there a breaker for a Range when there was no wire to the kitchen? I took the front off the breaker panel and traced the 220 wire through the basement and the wire was right under the center of the kitchen. I have no idea why it was there but I took it down, drilled a hole through the floor and pushed the wire up. Today I put the receptacle on it and tomorrow we will hook up our electric range. That was a great find.

     I went down to Menards this week to buy some cabinets and the last interior door. I also needed a 32 inch left hand swing exterior door. They have an area where they mark doors cheap if the packaging is missing or they are marred. They had the exterior door I was looking for half price. That was a great find and Micah can help me get it in tomorrow. 

                                     

     Not everything I found this week was a good find. The one basement window was broken and had packing tape holding the glass together. The other one was covered with something and there was no light fixture near it so I have been ignoring it. Rich had told me it had cardboard in the window and when he put in the electrical panel he could run an extension cord right through the opening. I finally was ready to fix the basement windows this week. Yes, there was cardboard stapled to the frame to keep out the animals and the weather. But this was not just a staple up cardboard fix. Oh, no they had nailed what ever that green thing is in front of the window as well. If you are going to do a job do it well I always say. Don't take half measures.  

    I found a lot of things when I got some light on that basement room. see those foam seat cushions. They were using them for insulation along the sills. Waste not want not I suppose. Still I think the landfill will be their final destination.  

     Once there was light in that basement room it was time to tear out the carpet I had been ignoring. Now that I could see in the room, I noticed the carpet was littered with something. OH NO, they had left their dogs in this room for long periods of time. I very carefully rolled up that carpet and folded it over. I hope to get it to the landfill without the dog waste falling out. That was not a good find. How can anyone live like that? The Lady who had owned the house was older and had over her life helped a lot of people in need. I am sure when she rented to the last tenants they were needy. I am all in favor of helping those in need but sometimes you also have to set parameters for them. You take your pets outside. You do not leave doors and windows open without screens.

     While cleaning out the furnace ducts I saw way down in the vent what looked to me like a rolled up sock. The shop vac was not picking it up so I grimaced and put my hand down there to grab it. Oh, yea, it was a desiccated dead bird. That was not a good find either. 

     Last Spring while I was putting siding on a house one of the kids from the neighboring house, which we also own, came over and pointed at their cat with a dead bird. "Our cat caught that bird in our house". That kid picked the wrong landlord to complain to. My answer was simple and forceful. "I have watched your cat going in and out the screen it has ripped all day. I think your cat caught that bird and carried into your house through your unprotected window. That is not ALLOWED." That tenant and I soon reached a mutual agreement that they needed to move.

     Some days good things are found, some days bad things are found. The song Amazing Grace has a line, I once was lost but now am found. We were all lost once, many are still lost. I would like to say I was a good find when God "found" me. I say God found me because there is no way I would have found God on my own. I know the truth is when I was found I was a lot more like the dung covered carpet or the dead bird in the duct than a brand new door marked down because the packaging was missing.

     Jesus says, Here I am, 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. 

     What a promise, Jesus doesn't say we have to be anything when He knocks on our door. We just have to open the door and be "found " by Him.

     

     

Rooms

     This week I could finally start seeing progress on our project house. There were times when I wondered if it would ever clean up well and look decent.

     The bathroom was such a disaster when we took possession. Had to get rid of the door, the window, the toilet, the vanity, the medicine cabinet. the shower, floor and the sheet rock. Yes that is mold between the toilet and the vanity. You can kill mold but I just tore out the sheet rock and the insulation behind it and started with new material.

     While I was tearing everything out I thought I could just as well move the drain lines and the water supply lines as well. That way I could spin the vanity and put in a longer one. Had to redo the furnace vent to make the longer vanity fit. I still need to caulk around the tub hang a mirror and put in a few pieces of trim. I am about to call the bathroom finished.

The kitchen still has a long ways to go but I did work on that set of open shelving.

     I was pleased with the way it turned out. It looks like it was always there and I was able to match the stain on the woodwork with the rest of the kitchen.

     The north bedroom was a bit of a fiasco, but it is also just about finished.

 New window is in, the wall and ceiling are painted. The new floor is in and most of the woodwork is installed. I just have to put in the door when the living room floor is laid. It is always good to back out of a room and say, that one is done.

     These lovely windows went to the landfill and the new ones are in.

     They are all trimmed out. I have a policy of never throwing away the old interior door jambs. The wall here was 8.5 inches wide. I had to fill in 5.75 inches of wood to get even with the sheet rock. Those old door jambs are usually cut from a good piece of wood. I was able to re-cut them to size and stain the wood and trim out the windows with out buying a single piece of wood.  

     I bought most of the doors this morning and was able to get a couple of them in today.

     There has been a change of plans and I am not going to use the aged pine wood look. There was too much wood I thought I could leave in the kitchen and the closet doors if we went with a dark stain. It really pained me to stain a brand new oak door "cognac" but it is a color that really seems to work in this house.

     So it has been slowing down the progress a little because I have to stain all of the wood and then put polyurethane on it. But the dark color goes well with the gray paint. At least that is what I think and I am the only one that matters here, so we are good! 

     Yesterday I laid the floors in the bedrooms so I started trimming out the south bedrooms today.

     

     Room by room it is starting to come together. 

     There is still a lot of work to be done in the interior and once we are finished inside, the house needs a new roof and siding outside.

     Getting to a place I could start thinking rooms were about finished reminded me today of something Jesus said. In my Father's house are many rooms. If it were not so I would have told you. I am going there to prepare a place for you. 

     I am getting rooms ready for someone to live in. There is a need for housing in Oskaloosa right now. I had 3 people contact me this week to ask if we had any houses open. My answer had to be, not now but I am working on one.

     We need a room to live in for eternity also. Jesus has gone on to prepare that room for us. It will be a room in God's house. A perfect room where we will be filled with joy and live in relationship with God. Now that is a room worth waiting for and it will be perfect!

Cheap fixes

     I finished painting the inside of our project house today. That puts me ahead of schedule and I am overjoyed. I am sick and tired of painting. I don't mind painting the outside of houses because I get to fire up my sprayer and just wave my hand back and forth. 

     Inside is a lot less fun. Roller and a cut brush and a lot of climbing up and down. This is the sixth house interior we have painted since the third week of November. 

     I sure hope gray paint stays popular for quite a while because almost every room in the six houses is some shade of gray.

      Some lighter some darker, but all a gray color. Almost every prospective tenant I showed the houses to commented on the lovely shades of paint.

     

     Well, here's the thing, we bought a house in early 2017 and it had a 5 gallon bucket of blue paint in the basement. I could not throw a way a full 5 gallon bucket of paint. First of all where would you dispose of it? You can't take it to the landfill unless it has been opened and dried. That would take a long time with a full 5 gallon bucket. So if you add some tan paint you get gray. Then you add white to get it as light as you want. Remember it will dry darker than the color in the bucket. I used the last of that 5 gallon bucket of blue this week. all gone.

     For those of you who read this blog every week, you might remember this stack of 40 gallon of paint. There are 20 of them gone. I had to go buy more this week because I did not have enough left of the color I want to paint the exterior of a house, hopefully within the next 30 days. This is where I confess to a few "shortcuts" I have taken recently. Yes I used a lot of cheap paint by mixing my own. All those houses were painted with paint that cost less than $9.00 a gallon.

     See those lighter strips on this wall? That is caulk drying under the new paint. The former owner had put paneling in this hallway instead of drywall. I caulked the joints and painted it. Unless you are looking for it you won't know it is a cheap fix. 

     I used the tile we purchased cheap at the thrift store and wanted a a light gray grout. I had some left over dark gray and most of a bag of white from former projects. Mix them thoroughly together and there you have a light gray. It is a win, win deal. "free" grout and 2 bags off my shelf. 

     I took all the nails out of the trim boards in our project house and piled them up. Then I realized the pets of the last people who lived in the house had left their scent on the baseboards. I could not put those ammonia laden boards back in the house so I went and bought a pile of pine lumber. I laid it out on the lawn today. If I have enough time to leave them in the sun and rain they will turn a lovely golden color. 

     We put a lot of pine 1x4 lumber up as trim. These had not had time to turn as golden as I like but time is money in the rental business. Oh, that wall is also paneling that has had the joints caulked.

     My last painting project today was the stair way down into the basement. The ceiling was about 16 feet above the bottom stair. When we purchased one of our first houses, there was a painting scaffold left in the garage.

     Someone in the past had attached a 2x4 to the joists at the bottom of the stairs. I could lay the scaffold from the top step to that 2x4 and just reach within 2 inches of the ceiling. Now kids don't try this at home. I then set a 5 gallon bucket upside down on the scaffold, climbed onto it and finished the top 2 inches and the ceiling. It was a bit wobbly at times. Not recommended for the faint of heart.

     2 years ago, one evening Jim stopped me and said there is a vanity by the curb a couple of blocks from here you have to go get it. I had just gotten home from a long day and wanted to get a shower and chill out. Jim was adamant, "you need to go get that vanity before someone else picks it up. I was kinda like, I'll go look later. Jim was kinda like, get in your pickup now. He finally said "I will go with you and we will get it, now". It set in the front of my garage for the last 2 years and now it is in our project house. A free vanity and sink top. Thanks for being persistent Jim. I am not the only one who takes shortcuts. this vanity was made for a single sink, not a double. To make the double sink fit they had to cut the back corners out of the top 2 drawers. Still I guess 2 sinks are better than one right?

     I put in the last 2 new windows this week. After I had taken out the old ones and installed the new ones, there was a gap between the windows and the siding. We will be putting new siding on the house as soon as we get the inside finished. I did not want water running down behind the siding and getting the insulation wet and damaging the dry wall before we get the house buttoned up. Before in a situation like this we have cut boards and nailed them in to seal the wall. Then you have to tear the boards back out and throw them away when you side the house. I went with the red neck solution this time. We will see if the duck tape stays until we get the siding on.

   When fixing up a house, I will take short cuts and cheap fixes. I can do that because our plan is to own these houses for long term investment. We are not taking any shortcuts and then selling the house to someone else. If anything doesn't hold up, we will come in and fix it.

     You don't take short cuts or look for cheap fixes for the things that really matter in life.Don't take a short cut or a cheap fix in your relationship with God. Spend the time to have a real relationship. Take the time to talk to God, not some quick formula prayer, but an honest conversation. Explain to God what is happening in your life. Tell God where you need some help and intervention. I know God already knows but I firmly believe He wants you to tell him and ask Him for help.

     Jesus said " Ask and it will be given to you, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you." But if you only talk to God when you are in need or desperate for help, you are taking a short cut and looking for a quick fix. God gives to His children. Does He also give to those who just show up when they need something, but have no time for God when life is easy?

Cleaning up

     The Shower in our project house was what could best be described as awful. The previous owner might have gotten a used tub surround somewhere and retrofitted it. Just fill the old holes for the shower with caulk and you are good. Of course it could be it was a new surround and they cut the holes in on the wrong end. That is the most likely scenario, but I would like to think no one is that, oh how can I put this, inept, if you notice the holes are the mirror image of the faucets and spout. Ouch that had to hurt.

There was no way we could even think about leaving this and we pull out a lot of old tub surrounds and tile the walls.

I was down at Menards buying windows for the house and picked up the bone colored tile we put in our houses.

Unloaded the tile (they are incredibly heavy for such little boxes) and stacked them in the bathroom, ready to go when I got to that point.

     But then I went along to Des Moines when Sharon had her blood tests run. She thought we should stop by the DAV thrift store. Sure thats a good idea I said. I have no clue why Sharon would ever want me to go into a store with her. When we had just started dating many long years ago, she thought we should go to a mall in Des Moines and spend the evening shopping. As we walked back out of that mall a short time later Sharon said, "I have never been in and out of a mall so fast in my life." I don't shop, not on my list of things I do. 

     As we were about to leave the thrift store one of the men working there asked if I need any tile. No, I said they are blue. He looked at the price and said " they are priced too high at $24.95. How about $20. My reply was "they are still blue." He said "You know I think $12.00 would be about the right price.". My reply was, "I don't know, Sharon, do you think we could use blue tile?" His quick answer was I think $10.00 today would be about right." I am thinking at this point, that they were a lovely shade of blue. He sold them to us for $9.95.

So yesterday afternoon and this morning I installed blue tile. They still need to be washed off and grouted, but at least I have a good start on getting the shower cleaned up.

     I only used 112 tile and have 139 left. That means we are going to have to buy 2 houses that need the shower tiled. One to use the rest of the blue tile and one to use the bone colored tile I bought for this house.

     On Thursday I saw the weather forecast and thought this is my best day to get those living room windows out and replaced. They would not close and were far too close to the floor. You could tell the windows were crooked because they sealed on the west side but not on the east side. I assumed the house had settled but could not find where the basement wall had given way. It looks solid as a rock. They were also a "fall hazard" for small children. You do not want a fall hazard when an inspector comes around.  

     I always assume when they frame in a window or a door the studs will be plumb. I assume someone had a level. That appears to be a stupid assumption on my part. The house had not settled. Whoever framed in the windows had the studs off level by about 2 inches. I am guessing it might have been the same person who put in the tub surround. A little problem with spacial concepts. 

With those 2 windows in, I have 6 of the 8 replacement windows installed, and they are all in square and level. That's another mess cleaned up.

On Friday morning I backed the pickup up to the house and started loading out the deconstruction debris. 

     It was getting to be such a mess I couldn't even walk through the house and the outside was getting too many piles of junk. I was starting to worry I was going to get notice from the city to get it cleaned up. I saw the fire department was driving through the neighborhood on Thursday and stopping to take notes and pictures of houses with a lot of junk around them. Didn't really want to be explaining that it was a work in progress and getting checked that all permits are in place. And yes, we have applied for permits when required on this house. I am not fond of inspectors randomly wandering around looking for issues. It is best to just be ahead of the game and keep it cleaned up.

     I meet a lot of people who make me think they need to clean up their life. It looks messy from the outside and I am sure it is messy looking at it from the inside as well. Their relationships are in disarray. Their employment is sketchy at best. They are sometimes self medicating and yes that includes too much alcohol. The truth seems to be concept that is foreign to them. 

     I could judge their life with out getting involved and think they are a mess, but me, I am pretty cleaned up. Problem with that is I don't know what they are dealing with by just making judgments from a distance. I also don't see how messy my life is the same way God sees it. The other day I was thinking on the people I know where I see God working in their lives. God reaching out to them in amazing ways. That doesn't mean they are listening at this point, but I really see God reaching out to them. These are some people with really messy lives. 

     I was wondering, why is God touching them and not the people I know, who even though they are not professing Jesus as their savior are living moral lives. I know it is only a small snapshot I am seeing, and I may not be seeing God working in the lives of the moral unbelievers even though He is. I still have to say God loves sinners. I see God calling the worst of sinners. Christ Jesus came into the world to save the worst of sinners. Put me on that list. I would rather be a saved sinner than a self satisfied good person who doesn't need to be cleaned up.