Some days are diamonds some days are stone

There were stones, pavers, bricks and cement blocks lined up around the foundation of the house. Would make it difficult to mow so I started prying them up with a shovel and stacking them. 

Matthew and Meagan are buying a house in Pella and are thinking of putting in a brick and stone patio.

I stacked (Ok Sharon gathered up the bricks) everything on plastic on the driveway so they wouldn't be frozen down when Matt and Meagan take possession December 18. What started out as stone and a problem has become almost a diamond because it now has value to someone.

In the house, I tore up some of the carpet in a bedroom, and then tore up some of the linoleum under the carpet and was excited to see a fir floor underneath it all. 

Yea, that diamond find turned out to be stone. There was an old opening to the basement stairs and some plywood repairs.

Micah covered it up with new floor yesterday. Much better look.

The living room walls and carpet were a wonder to behold.

Carpet and pad tore out and the floor was intact beneath. Problem was it had never been finished in the center where a rug was used. Without sanding the whole thing down an 1/8 inch there is no way to make the color match across the entire floor. After some discussion we decided to refinish the floor without sanding, and even though it will be multicolored it will be a better floor than a new laminate. 

But the floor under the dining room carpet was a gem. Beautifully finished and preserved for years under the old carpet and pad.

In the kitchen my plan was to lay a new floor over the old. Micah looked at it and said I think we can tear off the top 2 layers. I said, "It's glued down, it will not come up clean." That's when he grabbed a flat bar and proved me wrong on the spot.

There was an old pine floor hidden under linoleum and 1/4 inch plywood.

The old countertop had been patched with duct-tape. Now I thought we could just put duct tape on the entire countertop for that red-neck look, but I was voted down. We slid in the new countertop yesterday.

That's when we found that those hand built cabinets were not the diamond I thought they were. They varied from 23 to 25 inches wide. The countertop would not slide up against the back wall. At places there is an inch of gap. Yes those cabinets are truly stone. We can't scribe and cut the back because it is the cabinet width and not a crooked back wall we are dealing with. We will put up a tile back splash and see how much gap we have to cover once we have the tile installed.

In life we can see the problems or we can see the blessings. It is up to us to choose. We had 4 floors we uncovered. 2 beautiful, 1 iffy, and 1 we covered back up. That's not bad. It's usually that way in life as well. The good outweighs the bad if we just take a good look. 

God gives us a lot of blessings but we need to look for the good and learn to overcome the bad.