Searching

     I spent part of my week looking for stuff.

     Every couple of months I put root killer down some sewer pipes. I could not find the clean out cap in front of a house that has had roots plug the lines every year for as long as anyone can remember, before we bought the house. A couple of months after we bought it there was water backing up in the basement. That was when we were told about the roots in the sewer lines. I have not had to have it cleaned for 18 months since we started killing the roots. I was not a very happy camper when the tenant told me she had buried the clean out because she did not want to hit it with her mower. Yea, that's nice would it be better if your toilet flushed into your basement than if you have to mow around a 4 inch cap?? I probed the area in front of her house on 3 different days for about an hour each time searching for the clean out. On the third day I found the water shut off. I thought the sewer clean out will be at least a couple of feet from the water shut off. I don't know how many of you know about water witching. You take 2 pieces of wire and bend them in an L. Hold one loosely in each hand pointing forward and walk slowly perpendicular to where you think a water line is buried. The wires will move on their own and cross over the buried line or tile and then go back to pointing forward as you walk past the water line. The wires crossed right over where the water shut off was and then crossed again about 18 inches closer to the house. I started probing again thinking I had it narrowed down to a 3 foot by 6 inch area.

     As you can see the water shutoff and the sewer clean out are not both right above the respective  lines. 1 runs down at an angle. I never thought they would have the 2 caps less than 2 inches apart. But at least I found it and if there is a problem when the ground is frozen we can get down the line and clean it.

     I also took pictures of the measurements from the side and the end of the house so I know exactly where they are for future reference. If one person thinks it is a good idea to bury them, they are most likely not the only one to have that brilliant idea.

The last year we bought a house on October 31. It was a kind of faded pink color. 

    I started painting it "Autumn Mist" last week. Micah helped on Saturday and I finished up the trim on Wednesday. 

     It looks a lot better than it did. Micah asked me why we were painting it such a pale color. I told him it was the only color with enough paint left to paint the house and the garage that was priced at $9.95 a gallon. He thought the color looked a lot better after he heard that. See you just have to get things in perspective.

     When I was painting around the windows I noticed several of the weep holes in the storm windows had been painted shut at some time. You need to keep those open so the condensation can run out from between the windows and not rot the sills. I spent some time searching for the weep holes and drilling out the clogged ones.

     We bought a house this spring that has water coming in the basement every time it rains. Ok truthfully it comes in most of the time.

     Irv came and dug in a tile around the house to drain the water away and hopefully the basement will dry up. He dug quite a ways before he started hitting damp dirt and had to go around the house before the ground was wet and water started to seep out of the sides of the trench.

 

    For a while I thought we were not going to find the water source we were searching for and all I would have was a dug up yard and a large bill for no gain. I hope those pipes soon are draining a little water onto the street and the pressure is off the basement.

     We have a tenant who has sold all of his stuff that does not fit in this travel home. He is planning on heading down the road and living out of this vehicle for a while. He wants to just travel and see the country. I am not sure exactly what he is searching for. I hope he finds it.

     I know a lot of people who are searching. Some are searching for a relationship where they will feel loved. It always seems just out of reach. They can not find the perfect soul mate. Some are searching for happiness and peace. They are feeling the burdens of life and just want to leave their troubles behind. Often it leads to self medication and then addiction and, if it really goes bad, incarceration. 

    I know some who are searching for a way to pay the bills and feed, cloth and have housing for themselves and their children. Being free from worry always seems just out of reach.

    Jesus met a woman at a well. Her life was a mess. Jesus offered her living water. She thought that would be a great idea. She wouldn't have to come and draw water from a well any more. That was not what Jesus was offering. He was offering the living water of eternal life and the peace and joy that comes with salvation. 

     A lot of the people I know who are searching need the living water that Jesus offers. No it may not solve your relationship issues today, it may not solve your financial problems today. It may not solve addiction problems today, but Jesus can, in the long term, solve all those issues if you just stop searching for answers in this world and "find" Him.

Memories

     I drove away from our project house on Wednesday. 71 days after starting on it and 60 days of labor from start to finish.

     I would like to think that it looks a lot better than it did. On the day I started painting the house, when the tenant came home and saw brown paint (actually the color is Mars Clay), she thought someone had vandalized the house by spaying brown paint over part of it.

     Personally I think it was a good color choice. Although the tenants mother told me it looked like baby poop brown. Hey, thanks for the encouragement, I always love encouraging input.. It's a good thing I don't much care what other people think. I could just mutter under my breath "boy you have no taste."

     Came back on the third day of getting the house painted to find MCG personnel drilling a hole through my new siding to install internet. I would have given permission if they had asked (I have never had it installed in a house without permission before). 

     I did have a discussion that all wiring would be run in the basement and there would be only one hole in the siding. They agreed that would not be a problem. We have too many houses with data wire running around the outside the house and drilled into each room for internet. 

     I had removed the satellite dish from this house and cut off all the wires on the exterior of the house.

     I like things uncluttered and no holes to allow moisture behind the siding. 

     The tenants mother has asked me 3 times if I am going to put the railing back on the front porch.

     No I am not, No I am not, No I am not. She will learn some day that I do not change my mind on something that will need upkeep and is not necessary. No railing on a porch less than a foot off the ground. Ain't happening, ever, in this lifetime.

   

     I even have the lawn shed to the point it looks good and will pass the city inspection. 

     Now when I drive by the house it is hard to remember just how awful it was when we took possession.

     A friend of Sharon's walked through the house just after we bought it and then again just when we were about finished with the inside. The second time through she said I am not scared to be in here anymore. Yea, it was that bad. I changed out all the faucets and ran the water for a while before I would even take a drink there. It was indeed cringe worthy. 

    What was awful, is now pretty good. The tenant has posted on facebook how she loves her house. That is our goal. Turn something barely livable and make it great.

     But then we soon forget what the starting point was. Oh it couldn't have been that bad could it?? My life is a lot like that. Memory fades and the past starts to look better than it was. We are all on a journey through life. It seems at every stage of life we think we are pretty good. Pretty cleaned up, then we move on to the next stage as God changes us. There is coming a day when I will reach perfection. It won't be in this life. Fact is when I look back 10 years from now and remember, I will most likely be thinking ,wow how could I have been so blind.

    

     

from broken to fixed

     It has been a productive week here at the Spoelstra hacienda. The tenants are moved in and I was hurrying to get the outside finished. I looked up a few pictures of what our project house looked like when we started. 

     As of this afternoon the house has a new roof, the siding is all on and the concrete is all poured.

     The supports need to be taken out from under the porch roof once the concrete cures and the siding caulked and painted. 

    I may be prejudiced seeing as how I did most of the work, but I think the place is looking a whole lot better than it did when we purchased it. 

     I loaded up all of the tools today and put them back in storage. 

     Even the old lawn shed has been given a new lease on life.

     Jacked back up straight, with new siding and rebuilt doors, the old girl doesn't look too bad. We'll paint her when we paint the house.

     The broken sidewalk has been torn out and poured new and I didn't even wait to get notification from the city that it needed to be done. Kudos for me for being proactive. I like to think it shows that changes can be made. What is broken and ruined can be fixed and made almost like new.

     We had a tenant get arrested this week. I had to fix a door after it was busted in. From what I can gather, it might have been the police who busted in the door. I got in contact with her mother after I found the door open with a broken lock and no one home. I was worried that something had happened to her. It had. She was arrested. Police swarmed the place around midnight one fine night. 

    I now know 3 women who have been arrested for assault in the last 60 days. These are not large women. I think they would have to be carrying weights to tip the scale at 135. Sharon mentioned I should be careful around her with all these women going violent.

    I was told a couple of weeks ago that people buy cigars and then take out the tobacco and replace it with marijuana. I have seen a lot of women smoking cigars lately. Are they smoking cigars or something a little more entertaining?? That is a good question. It smells like a cigar to me, but I would have to admit I wouldn't know the smell of marijuana.

   The mother of the last woman to get arrested said her daughter was going through a tough time and needed prayers. I told the mother we would put her on our list of people we pray for. 

    God can take the broken and fix it. God can take the ruined and make it like new. I may be able to make a house almost like new, but God can take a broken life and make it new. He can take a ruined life and rebuild it. He is the only one that can do that. 

   I am amazed when God allows us, in a small way, to be involved in changing a life. If you know anyone in trouble, whose life is in shambles, come join me in praying for them and trying to help them. It is a lot more fun and fulfilling than just standing back and judging them for their obvious sinful life. Maybe God will use you to make a ruined broken life new.

What's wise?

    Even though our project house is still a work in progress, the tenant is moving in. The tenant is moving from another one of our houses. We need them to move so another tenant can move into the house they are living in. We need that tenant to move so that another tenant can move into that house. The third tenant needs to move before the 1st of June so we can rent her house to a new and yet unfound tenant. I do have 4 people waiting to see the house. It is Spring and everyone is wanting to move to a better house and better is in the eye of the beholder. I am beginning to think all of our tenants are going to play musical chairs and everyone is going to move to a "better" house. The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence. One wants a dining room, one wants a basement, one wants bedrooms on opposite sides of the house. Moving everything you own for small differences in a house is that wise?

     Daryl has the concrete torn out of the front porch on our project house. He broke it out with a sledge hammer and loaded it by hand one piece at a time on a dump trailer. There was a time I would have done that as well, now I am too old and weak. I am more than willing to pay Daryl to do the heavy lifting. Daryl is now waiting for the tenant to get moved in before he forms and pours the concrete. The furniture has to go into the house across this area. The back door has a 90 degree turn within 36 inches and no couch or large furniture is going in that way. So we have come to a dead stop on that project till the furniture is in (when I say we, I mean Daryl, because I am just an observer). I would like to think I have gotten wiser and am willing to pay someone to do the heavy hard work although  I am still cheap so it may not be wisdom but weakened old age.

     The tenants mother asked me this afternoon if I was going to leave the white stripes on the siding. I think I heard Sharon murmur something about it was that new zebra look behind me. I explained that the siding was just primed and the house still needed to be painted. That was just the first of many questions. Sharon soon disappeared. later she said she did not want to be there and hear what I said when I had finally had enough. Hey, I am a nice guy but Sharon may have made the wise decision and not stick around till I explained to the woman exactly what I thought of her foolish line of questions. And just so you know I never did.

    Although I might not have been quite so nice if I had caught the unknown person who tried to put a tire iron between the door jamb and the door to break into the house. I most likely would have quietly said, "please don't do that, you will break the door." What a moron breaking into a completely empty house. The criminal element really is incredibly stupid. This guy has no wisdom.

     Cal called me last Friday. He said he had saved the kitchen cabinets when they tore down their old house and he wondered if I could use them in a rental. I said maybe but used cabinets are not worth a whole lot to me.

     These are new cabinets that I bought for $368.00. They were bought to the exact width we needed. You don't get the exact width when the cabinets are used. Cal told me he was going to put them on the burn pile if I couldn't use them. "Ah, then you know how much value they have."

    I sorted through the cabinets and loaded the ones I thought we could use at some time in the future. I had driven out with a couple of shingles laying in the bed of the pickup. Cal said he had a shingle blow off his house and was wondering where he was going to get one shingle. It was a fair trade. 2 shingles for a pickup load of used cabinets. I do hope I got the better deal, but only time will tell if storing these was a wise idea.

     Stacked them in our storage area. We have no purchases on the horizon and we are coming into the summer time when we usually do not get any houses bought. I do hope I don't need to get much out of storage because the building is stacked full again. We had just gotten it down to a manageable level where we could find what we needed. It isn't looking so wise at the moment.

    Last week I talked to a man I consider a friend. He came to know Jesus as his savior last year. He was telling me again that life is so great now that he knows God. I said "to the world it may seem like foolishness but you know it is true in your heart." He said "that is so true, you can feel it inside, that God is real"

  That is wisdom. 

     For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. Therefore everyone who hears these words of Jesus and puts them into practice is like a wise man who built his house upon the rock.

Covering the past

I finished the inside of our project house this week.

     The house is cleaned out and looking better than I ever thought it would.

     I know the cupboards don't match because I was able to save some and others are new.

But the house is rented for the first of June with the promise they could begin moving in the 3rd week of May. 

     With the house cleaned up I did not want to store tools inside the house anymore. That means I had to fix the shed. The shed had settled and the doors did not close anymore.

     A hydraulic jack and some 2x4s and the shed is back where it belongs. Now I can put my tools in it and lock it up.

     Now that I am starting on the outside I can no longer ignore some of the issues. I called Daryl this week to look at the front porch to get an idea of what it would cost to fix it. I had thought of a lot of different solutions, none of which were good. The cement floor has cracked and sunk toward the house over the years. 

     That means every time it rains the water seeps between the house and the concrete. The wood has gone soft and some of it will need to be replaced. There really was no way to cover this problem up and fix it. The whole porch needs to come off and be relaid. Daryl quoted me a price 50% higher than I had hoped but sometimes you have to bite the bullet and fix it right.

     The siding is a different issue. The house was sided with some cheap fiber siding that has degraded. I can put new siding right over the old. Not only will I save the labor of removing the siding and no landfill fees, but we retain some insulation value by leaving the fiber board on the house. The trick will be getting the old siding at the bottom to lay flat so the new siding hangs correctly.

     I pulled this tree out of the roof on Friday. That was when I knew I had to get that side shingled pretty quick. The house was not leaking at this point but pulling out that tree and its roots probably created a hole for water infiltration.

       I am covering up the old shingles with the new. The insurance company is not fond of that because it is more expensive if the roof is damaged by hail and 2 layers need to be torn off. I have been warned by my agent I will soon be getting notification they will not give full coverage on roofs with more than 1 layer of shingles. I took that into consideration and thought we could pay the extra if the roof ever gets damage that is covered by insurance or we could do a complete tear off now. Push the hard stuff ahead right? I am betting we are not going to collect much on roofs from our insurance. Lets just say the insurance company plans on making money by not having to pay too many claims.
    Some things you can cover up and some things you can't. I couldn't cover up the porch concrete problem in a reasonable fashion. I can cover the siding and the shingles to my satisfaction.
I wonder sometimes if we can cover up our past. All of our sins are forgiven if we have Jesus as our savior and repent, but do we accept that?
     Saul was busy persecuting Christians when he was stopped on the way to Damascus by Jesus and found salvation. I wonder how the rest of his life was impacted by that. Did he feel guilt for killing Christians? Was he ever able to lay it down and find peace. He says I am the worst of sinners and in his youth he was a Pharisee who followed the law as best as anyone could. When he was on his way to Jerusalem for the last time God sent a couple of prophets to tell him he was going to be arrested if he went. People pleaded with Paul not to go but he was determined to go. It is almost as though he needed to be arrested for being a Christian. Do you suppose he was looking for some justice for what he had done? We could say he needed to be arrested to bring the gospel to Rome but the gospel had already been in Rome. Priscilla and Aquila were Christians who had been kicked out of Rome long before Paul got there. Yes I know during the storm an angel told Paul he had to stand trail before Caesar so all the lives on the ship would be saved. God is always in charge but why did God keep warning Paul not to go to Jerusalem?
   So I wonder does our past haunt us at times because there is justice or is it the devil trying to tell us there is never complete forgiveness and a new start. Is the devil always trying to convince us we are just covering up our past.
We are all sinners saved by grace not because of what we have done or will do, but because God is a forgiving God. How should that impact what we feel about our past sins?