John asked me if I knew what color I wanted the shutters and awning painted on his house.
He had asked me that last year as well, but he has some time on his hands right now. He lost his job and is looking for employment. I appreciate that he wants the house to look nice and well kept.
I brought him a gallon of Mars Clay paint and he got right at it. I have to say the house looks pretty sharp. Thanks John.
The big job this week was making the last house we purchased water tight. Previous owner had nailed tarps on the roof at some time. All but 1 were blown loose and flapping in the wind.
That was causing a real problem with the ceilings.
I laid shingles this week. Remember Monday and Tuesday when there were wind warnings? Yea it was windy on a roof. There was a time or two when I grabbed a new shingle as it was blowing past me and nailed it down. I was pretty happy Monday afternoon when I had the area covered that was leaking.
I have a rule. No-one puts satellite dishes on our new roofs. We remove all the ones that are on the roof when we put on new shingles. This house had 2. I have removed as many as 4 from a roof on houses we have fixed up.
Tuesday afternoon the north side was finished and I had found out why there were tarps nailed over the new roof on the south side. Whoever put the roof on did not know how to cap a roof. You have to buy the hip shingles that are made to cap a roof. It wasn't that way with the old 3 tab shingles but times have changed. The roof must have leaked because of poor workmanship on the hip of the roof, so he tarped the whole thing instead of fixing the problem.
At the end of the week it was a great feeling to look down that roof and see it finished. It was also fantastic to find out we had enough warm sun to stick the shingles. I was afraid we were too late in the year and we would be patching or redoing the roof in a few short years. We take possession of a house on Monday that needs a roof and I have seen the weather forecast. We will need to be ready to go as soon as we have a forecast of 50 degrees and sunny.
We have owned this house for a week. There is a new roof and a lot of junk piled outside the house. Micah spent most of Saturday afternoon carrying stuff I had torn out in the basement out to the junk pile. I was tracing electric wires and cutting out the unnecessary ones and those that would need to be replaced with new wire. I am sure the owner was doing his own electrical work. I am also sure he should not have been. Outlets in the basement ceiling. Nope, those are cut out and gone. Wires spliced in mid run to add another line. Nope, those are gone.
Can lights energized by extension cord wire. Nope, those are gone. I like simplicity in rental houses. If there are 10 electrical outlets in a garage and it needs electrical work, there will be 3 outlets when I am finished. In this house there were outlets in the basement every 3 feet. We have to remove the paneling on the walls of the basement and there will now be half as many outlets. Code is every 6 feet in new build and there is no way I am going to cut around outlets every 3 feet. Nope, not going to happen! Ever!
Fixed problems and threw out junk this week. John did some painting that was sorely needed to make the house look better. We stopped the damage being done by a leaking roof that needed attention. We carried a lot of doors and paneling and old shelves and electrical wire and florescent lights and studs out and threw it all in a pile for the land fill.
The shutters and the awning John painted did not become faded and peeling in a short time. The roof did not degrade and start to leak right away (OK the bad workmanship didn't help). The wiring was mistakes made over a period of time. Every "repair" and additional light or outlet was done over a course of years.
We can be like that. We live our lives and don't notice that we are not as faithful to God as we were at one time. We ignore the slow slide away from putting God first.
Jesus says to the church at Ephesus "You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary, yet I hold this against you, you have forsaken your first love."
I have to take a look at my life and ask myself am I still loving God first. It is too easy to let your love of God fade. It is too easy too let added things get in the way of serving God first. That is when it is time to ruthlessly remove all the stuff keeping us from focusing on God. If my life gets too cluttered by what I keep adding to it, I need to remove some things and throw them on the junk pile.
This house we worked on this week will be a better and safer home once we get it finished (we will move away from it and work on the one we close on tomorrow first). It needs to be brought back to the state it was when it was first built with some improvements that have become available since then. GFI outlets and laminate flooring for example.
Sanctification, not only holding on to your first passion for God, but becoming more holy as you grow in faith.
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