Whaaat

Sometimes all I can verbalize is, whaaat!

The house we are working on now, at some time in the past, has had the floors in half the house raised by 4 inches. One has to ask, just why? Why would you raise the floors 4 inches. The hallway to the bedrooms now has a ramp to go down 4 inches to the original level. Ok, just whaaat?

Took a storm door off today because we remove storm doors. They are a high maintenance item, so put on an insulated door that seals well and remove all storm doors. I went to remove this one and the screws were flat heads. Drivers do not work well with flat head screws. I am thinking the door must have been installed in the mists of time when flat heads were the screw of choice, still it made me go, whaaat?

Pulled up the old laminate flooring to replace it with new oak. Found the tack strips for carpet under the laminate. How did that ever work. The laminate had to rise 3/8ths of an inch all the way around the outside of the room. Couldn't tell they were there until I pulled up the floor. Whaaat?

When Matthew was lokking for a loose electrical connection, he tried to go into the attic through the attic access. Can't see it very well in this picture but the attic access is about 6 inches from ceiling to roof. Whaaat?

Then there was this little item. That is a 38 handgun I found in a house we purchased. They left a revolver. Whaaaat? I don't think anyone should own a revolver. No, I don't care if you think you need one, that is your problem. I sent this one to the landfill hidden in some nasty garbage to make sure it got buried.

I am sure there are a lot of times people look at what I do or what I believe and say Whaaat! I do hope that if they hang around me long enough they figure out I am not trying to fit in, I am trying to serve God. That may make me a little different and I am good with that. If it makes some say whaaat! I'm good with that as well. I want people to know I am not going to fit in with our self centered culture because I serve a living savior. If that makes them say whaaat! I have succeeded.

 

Moving forward

We finished up a house this week, Ok I am a bit premature here we have a couple outside things to finish yet, but we are way ahead of schedule.

The house had a remodel started by the previous owner before he was foreclosed on. Most of the work he had done had to be taken apart and redone correctly or at least improved to where we were OK with it.

I love it when we can salvage original wood floors. If they have lasted about 100 years we can surely get a few more years out of them.

One thing the previous owner had done is put some interesting storage in the laundry room.

We did put new floors in the upstairs bedrooms, more about that later.

I walked into a lumber store one day and saw they had a few of these doors in their clearance rack. I asked what the price was. I was told, "well those are expenseive doors let me look up what we paid for them." I said "at this point what you paid for them is not important, what I will pay for them is." He said "OK you're right, How about $50." "Done" I said, "write up a ticket".

We used 2 of them in this house.

Matthew did the showers.

Yes that is 2 different bathrooms. I read the other day that tiled showers are out of style everyone now wants tub surrounds. Yea, I think that was put out by the tub surround manufacturers. I still want something beside the look of plastic and so do the people we rent to. (confession here, I still have one shower with a surround in my own house)

Owner had paimted this vanity brown. Dark brown vanity, No I couldn't leave that.

Matthew built this one.

So a few days and we will be ready to start on the next house on our list. 

We have been purchasing oak flooring (Ok this is actually Hickory).

This is oak. The laminet flooring we have been using has had an extremely short life span.

This is oak stained very dark. We think maybe we can save money in the long term by putting down the most expensive durable floors, and maybe they will last 100 years like the old oak floors.

Had a tenat move out this week, They assured us the house was clean.

So the cupboards full is annoying but not something to say "no deposit return for you"

But the dog hair everywhere and the urine on the walls and the droppings smeared into the floor were a step too far. That is not clean, you shouldn't even live that way.

Now for a sad story. We purchased a house on May 13. When we purchased the house there was a lawn mower and some accessories still on the property, some in the kitchen. The owner was going to come and get the items that day. We went back a couple days later and there was a box in the kitchen. Not unusual in houses we buy that we are left junk to get rid of. Today when we delivered Oak flooring to the house I wondered, what do you suppose is in that box. I slit the tape on the cardboard box and there was a cooler inside with a warning about dry ice. Oh Boy, someone had left us $218 of strip loin steaks. Now they are definately past their use by date. It would have paid to be curious this time.

We finished a house so we are marching forward. Sometimes we try to make wise descions for going forward and sometime we miss something and it hurts a bit.