One man's trash

This past week has been a busy week.

Finished up the house we were working on and listed it for rent. I always have people call 2 minutes after it is listed and ask "is the house still available?" I think to myself, it has only been up for 2 minutes of course it is not rented yet, but they do have a point. It has been at least 7 months that we have had a house not rent in less than 24 hours after listing.

I had to clean out the garage on Tuesday because I promised they could have the house on Wednesday. It took 2 pickup loads to the landfill and a load to our storage building to get it empty. 

When I was hauling the junk out of the garage I found shutters for the front of the house. I had thought the house looked plain and dull but the shutters helped quite a bit. The Rental Inspector for the city walked through the house on Thursday. I think he was assuming a bit too much, that I know what I am doing. It was a cursory inspection at best. I had left some exposed wires for him to find and he did not find them. Jason was the one who came instead of Harry. Jason said "I am going to have to confess to Harry I didn't see that, because you are going to tell him aren't you?" You bet I am. 

I was filling the pickup with gas at Casey's when a man came out carrying a pizza. As he walked past me this terrible smell about knocked me over. I thought, "What kind of pizza would smell so horrible, and who would eat that." Yea, that was when I noticed the dead truck that had pulled up behind me.

Tenant moving out.  This might have been the last house we put carpet in when we bought it. That is never done anymore. All solid surface floors now. When they moved in I knew the carpeting was about finished. The last year certainly did not make it any better. Carpet is not like a fine wine. It does not improve with age.

I knew there were hard wood floors under the carpet. I also knew those floors had an issue and that is why we put down carpet.

Yes, someone had used a sprayer to paint the ceiling and the walls.

There appears to have been a bit of over spray and some drift. Sharon was of the opinion we can remove the paint and salvage the oak floors. I am well aware when she says "we" she means "you". I was thinking "lets see, a day's labor to put down new laminate or hours and hours and days and maybe years to clean those floors, laminate seems like a good idea."

Yesterday, the tenant had left some cleaning supplies she was coming back for. I picked up one of her "as seen on TV" labeled spray bottles and sprayed a couple of square foot of floor. Low and behold the paint came right off a couple of minutes later. I thought that smells like Simple Green Cleaner. Went home and got Sharon's bottle of it.

It loosens the paint and I have 1/2 of the living room floor cleaned off.

Sharon stopped at a garage sale or 2 on Friday morning. when she came home I asked her if she had offered them $45,000 for their house. She had not. In the afternoon we walked over to our neighbors who are moving and were having a sale with proceeds going to a charity. I told Sharon as we walked up to offer them $45,000 for the house. Once again she failed to do so. She is not really invested in finding houses for sale is she. Sure the last house is listed for sale at over $400,000 but you never know unless you shoot the offer out there.

 

Well Friday evening I got a call from another landlord. He wanted to sell a house next to one we already own. Knowing the market is hot right now in Oskaloosa I was almost afraid to ask him how much he wanted. When I finally asked, "what are you thinking here?" he said $45,000. We are going to need to paint all that lovely paneling, put tile in the bathroom, replace a couple of windows and install central Air. But I just want to say that even with all my encouragement of Sharon to get a house bought on Friday for $45,000 she failed and I succeeded. Of course I do have a little problem of no cash and am going to have to start begging bankers on Monday to see the wisdom of my purchase.

So lets see, I had several times this week where what I thought was junk turned out to be good. while hauling junk to the landfill I found shutters to make a house look better. While pulling junk carpeting out, I found with some cleaner and I could salvage what were the junk wood floors under the carpet. What I thought had to be the worst pizza I had ever smelled most likely was not junk, it was the dead animals in the truck behind me that were decomposing in the heat that stunk. While I was coaching Sharon to make junk offers on houses, I actually bought a house for that price.

I have met several people recently that are making really bad decisions in their lives. They are choosing the "pleasures" of this life over something of real value; knowing and serving a loving God. They see my words of believing in a loving God as junk, because they do not want to give up their "pleasurable" sins. They have it wrong, they have the junk and I have the real treasure. Jesus paid for my sins and I find serving God to be a real lasting pleasure.