Saturday, May 30, 2015

Drenched in Grace

People, we are so close to moving in I can almost taste it.


Would you believe that all we have left to do this week is VARNISH OUR FLOORS!?

Well...

...and then we have to pack up the apartment, move into the house, unpack, and finish the millions of little projects we've approached and backed off, saying, "We can do that after we move in!"

It's been TWO WEEKS since my last post, and let me tell you, this renovation process has been hard. In every possible way. Each one of the projects we've taken on has been monumental in and of itself. But put them all together and you have a recipe for personal, relational, physical, and mental disaster. I can hardly believe we've survived tearing out a wall and the old kitchen, designing, purchasing, assembling, and installing an IKEA kitchen, stripping 100 years of wallpaper (Jim says it's a valuable relic... anyone want some (s)crap wallpaper shards to sell on Etsy!?), moving a ventilation pipe, rewiring a ton of outlets and installing new ones, mudding and resurfacing the walls, repairing a subfloor and installing new underlayer in the kitchen, painting the entire house, tiling the kitchen floor, stripping and sanding the old finish on the hardwood floors, and now... staining and varnishing those beautiful floors.

I'm breathless just thinking about each project! But we've made it this far and there's not much further to go.

Yesterday I stained the floors in the house! This morning, while the new stain dries (it needs 24 hours before we can varnish it), Jordan and I are finally taking an enforced and much-needed respite. And I am sitting here, exhausted beyond belief, and the only thing that I can figure is that our new house and this whole process has been simply drenched in grace.

Will you indulge me, just this one post, as I set aside the reno talk?

Whenever I've felt like I've hit bottom (and it's happened multiple times), we've either reached out to our friends for help, or they've simply shown up, bringing food, caffeine, tools, willing helping hands, smiles, and encouragement.

On Wednesday, our friend Jim had spent the morning and early afternoon helping us sand the floor. He went home in the afternoon. A couple hours later, right when we were just about overwhelmed by the task of sanding, yet again, EVERY single room, Jim phoned around 5:30pm. He said, "Marie and I are coming over. We're bringing you dinner and we're going to help with your floors."


Then they spent the next four hours belt sanding the edges and filling nail holes. Down on their hands and knees in all of our mess and dust.


And do you know what? They came BACK the very next day and worked alongside us until 5pm. They even brought a salmon salad lunch, already plated, along with drinks, bread, and cinnamon buns for dessert.

I asked J., "What did we do to deserve this? These friends!?"

And he answered, "Nothing. Absolutely nothing."

We are learning that this kind of grace arrives when we are most in need of it, and when we are most incapable of doing anything to deserve or return it. 

It's a pretty solid foundation for a home to be built on.

It would take me another dozen blog posts to tell you about our friend Nada, who brought us coffees and dinners during HER OWN exam period (can you believe she wrote 11 exams!?). Or, to tell you about our buddy Pete who just stops by on the way home from the disc golf course to see how things are going, and then jumps in to cut and mortar the tile. Or I could tell you about Megan, who taped and primed each ceiling and room with me, or about Charlotte, who then helped me paint those rooms, or Tricia, who calmly and quietly pulled up the carpet in our living room in one quick evening. And of course I'd have to tell you about Dan, who has quietly, quickly, and cheerfully done all the gross, tedious, back-breaking tasks we asked of him.

Undeserved, unreturnable grace.

My hope is that these acts of overflowing love and generosity will shape us as we move into this beautiful home. And, that this grace that we are receiving we'll be able to give to everyone who comes into our home. I want this grace to soak deeply into our newly painted walls, our refinished floors, our shiny new kitchen, the tile that we laid down ourselves. I want it to motivate all our plans for future updates to the house, so that we do everything with the goal of making the home more welcoming, more hospitable, more safe for people who need a place to be loved.

Maybe my tiredness is making me emotional and slightly sappy. But maybe, just maybe, the patient persistence required to renovate this house, and the humility to accept what I cannot possibly return is shaping and changing me as well.

Saturday, May 16, 2015

A lot can happen in 9 days


Friends. Things are HAPPENING here at No. 77.

Just this last week, I realized we were halfway through our six weeks of allotted pre-move reno time, and we were nowhere NEAR our target schedule. Emotionally, physically, mentally, I was reaching a breaking point. I think maybe it had something to do with the 18th or 19th time I had to sand the. same. darn. wall. before I could even caulk or tape or prime.

I turned to Jordan and said, "Honey. I need help."

And he delivered! We phoned up two of our friends are in transition right now and asked them to come work for us for a couple days.

And MAN that's when things started to happen! It's amazing how quickly things get done when they are getting done without you.

Charlotte and I got the bedroom and office taped, primed, and painted.


Dan pulled up the carpet in both the bedroom and the office.


Between us, Jordan and I finally got to put down the underlayer of our kitchen floor! Let me tell you, there is something deliciously SATISFYING about laying down a 4 x 4 inch grid of wood screws with a power drill.



I also primed and painted the kitchen window trim (see how pretty and shiny it is?!)

We got so much done this week look what started happening last night:


And this is now the state of our kitchen-in-progress:


Mister J. is just now out on a run to the hardware store to get a new blade for the sawz-all so we can cut holes in the under-sink cabinet and hang it on the wall.

And this morning, I got the living room painted! (This photo is terrible but I'll try to post a new one tomorrow with the morning light so you can see the colour better.)



Top photo is in-progress painting and bottom is finished painting!

This weekend, we're focusing on getting the kitchen installed because the people are coming on Wednesday to measure for our countertops.

And, once all the carpet is up, we'll be able to refinish our floors. I'm thinking of a super-glossy, golden, caramelly-honey colour to reflect the light. What do you think?

But I did make Jordan promise me at least one afternoon of work in our backyard this week so we can get our veggies into the ground. I'm hoping we're close enough to May 24 to avoid any more frosts!

I can't believe we're finally at this point. I can *almost* imagine Moving Day. While we still have a lot to do, it finally, finally seems manageable and acheiveable, especially with our amazing helpers. Here's what's left before we can move in!

* Finish kitchen install
* Get countertops measured and installed
* Install tile on kitchen floor
* Pull up carpets in living and dining room
* Prime and paint dining room
* Refinish wood floors (patch, putty, sand, stain, lacquer, sand, polish!)

Those are the most essential things. Of course there are a million little things that would be nice to get done before we move in, most of them can wait until we are in the house.

UP NEXT: Learning to refinish floors!

It's amazing to me how much you learn, how much you HAVE to learn when you're doing renos on your own house. It's pretty amazing, the set of skills we are amassing during this time. Jordan and I have new nicknames, because of how much we felt we'd mastered these new skills. I have been dubbed the "Putty Princess" and J. is the "Caulk King."

I know. We'll do anything to add to the joy of this process.

And I'm especially glad and grateful to have you all following our progress and cheering us along. So many of you have mentioned that you're thinking of us, and let me tell you, every thought helps.

So THANK YOU.

Thursday, May 7, 2015

A Quick Update: Learning new skills!


I have a few minutes for a quick update, and a few of you have asked me when my next blog post will come! The thing is, while there's been lots of progress here at No. 77, the pictures simply won't do justice to the amount of work we've accomplished! 

Jordan and Jim have done SO much electrical work! They've run new wires for outlets for our kitchen peninsula, they've fixed a broken breaker and added a new one. They've boxed in the new pipe that they moved from the middle of our kitchen into the wall. 

Jordan's also made some progress on our kitchen floor. We were going to install a new 'underlayer' on top of our existing subfloor when we noticed a few cracked and creaking boards. We didn't want to install tile and then heavy cabinets and appliances on top of that, so we had to replace those boards. Well, three trips to the lumber yard and six hours later, we'd only managed between the two of us to get TWO boards replaced and none of the underlayer installed. 

However, in doing this work on the floor we had to pull back the carpet from the dining room, and the hardwood underneath seems to be in really good shape! I'm looking forward to refinishing those  floors. Mostly because it will mean the END is in sight! Or rather, that our most pressing goal of moving in by the end of the month will be in sight! 

I've gotten a few smaller things done around here. My friend Charlotte and I planted the pots on our front deck! 



We planted a lot of orange-y pink begonias, some lime green coleus and potato vines, as well as some bight pink and purple coleus. Our friend Marie also gave me a couple pots of begonias for my birthday! They match perfectly. This morning I picked up some veggies for the backyard as well as some New Guinea impatiens for the long raised beds at the front of the porch. 

This week I've also continued my work on the walls. Forever these walls! Our contractors paper taped and mudded over the seams between cement board panels, which was a huge task. They also installed drywall onto all our main floor ceilings so we don't have to strip wallpaper and sand THOSE boards. I can't even imagine. 

We were hoping to start painting earlier this week, but in true home renovation style, even that had to be postponed a little while. We went to the store, picked out our colours, bought samples, and I hurriedly painted on patches in each of the rooms to see if we liked the colours! Well, we confirmed that the texture of the cement board still showed through the paint, so..... I taught myself how to skim a wall this week. 

Basically, you have a huge bucket of drywall mud - heavy, gloopy, thick stuff. You scoop some onto a "hawk" which is a piece of stainless steel with a handle on the bottom. Then you have to put the mud on the wall with some technique. Then, with finesse, you scrape off all but the thinnest little coat of mud, leaving a (*hopefully!*) smooth surface. 

I did a first layer on each of the walls, patching up the worst gouges and pock-marks in the cement board. Then, comes the SANDING. 


Guys. I HATE SANDING. Thankfully we aren't working with the orbital sander anymore, because that kicks up the WORST dust.  And, thankfully, drywall dust is nowhere near as smelly, and probably nowhere near as toxic, as the wallpaper dust. But it dries out your hands and it gets everywhere, even though it's pretty good at falling right to the ground. After this first sanding I'm going over with another very thin layer of mud, and hopefully that will be ready to paint by this weekend. 

If you have a spare moment to send us encouraging thoughts, please do! There seems like a lot of work still ahead, and I know we're going to run into inevitable glitches along the way. It would be nice, however, to have at least one of our projects go according to schedule.

Here's a rundown of what we still have ahead of us: 
* install underlayer of kitchen floor
* build and install kitchen cabinets
* get kitchen countertops installed
* prime drywall on all ceilings and prime dining room walls
* paint all rooms and ceilings
* tear out carpet and refinish hardwood floors
* pack up the old place and move into the new place!

In the meantime, we just do what's next on the list! Or, we do something that brings us joy, even if it's not essential to getting moved in. 

UP NEXT: Painting party on the weekend and hopefully installing the kitchen early next week!