What it Became ~ Part Three

While our renovations were going on, we lived life.

Birthdays and days out and Christmas and everyday things kept on happening.
Isn't that just how life is?  Joys and sorrows as well as the crazy and quieter times
all rolled into one?  We had no idea how precious those days were.

All of life is precious.
I never want to forget the truth of that.  Ever.

While we were in the midst of the busyness of it all,
we found ourselves looking forward to the day when it would be behind us.
To the day when at least one room in our home would be complete.
 That day did eventually arrive.  And, we breathed a sigh of relief.

But, joy may be found in the journey.
We were slowly learning to see.  Step by step.

The Lord is so very patient with us, isn't He?
All along life's path, He seeks to teach us.
By His great grace, we learn.  And we move forward with Him.

The photo above was taken from inside the current schoolroom...
looking out toward the basement hallway.
See the closet door and the angled wall beyond it in the hall?
 That was the wall which separated us from our tenants.

It was shown being demolished
in the last post of this series.

This is the view from the basement hallway looking into the school room.
At the time, it was Howie's office.  Click here to see what it looks like now.

This is from the same vantage point, but, with most of its contents removed.
The black stuff on the floor was all that remained of underlay that had
been glued (!) down.  Not what you want to find when the time comes to remove it.

Glued down underlay turned out to be just one of the nasty surprises
we were to find as we progressed through our renovation.

Later, we uncovered more of that dreadful underlay in our upstairs living room
as well as in Emma's bedroom.  It took the two of us all night to scrape it from
the plywood in preparation for new carpeting that was to be installed the next day.

Just some of the rubble.  This was outside our back door.

We didn't have a shed and still don't have a garage.
When the house was in an uproar, some things had to be moved to
the make-shift lean-to Howie had put up just outside our back door.
Many of these things were meant to be indoors.  They didn't mix well with rain.

And, rain it did.

I remember dashing out there one evening to rearrange things as the rain poured down.
At times like those, we either could laugh or cry.  I seem to remember we laughed.
On many other occasions, I cried.  Lest you think we might be super-human.  ;-)

Our aluminum single pane windows were swapped out for vinyl double pane.
Prior to having them installed, we decided to paint the exterior of our home.
Since the windows didn't need to be protected, it was the perfect time to do it.
The two boys across the street were paid to help Howie get 'er done.

While all this was going on, I had the opportunity to take the children
away for a few nights to stay in Howie's sister's home while they were on vacation.
As I drove away, all I could think of was that we'd made a big mistake
on the colour combination we had chosen.

I had spotted this combination on a newly constructed home a few miles away.
It just so *happened* that I stopped by as the painter was working.
He kindly gave me the exact codes needed to copy the colours.
One example of the Lord's many kindesses to us on this journey.

Nothing.  Absolutely nothing.  Happens by chance.
After it all came together, we were pleased with the results.

When I drove up the driveway a few days later,
all the windows were in and the exterior painting had been completed.
Unfortunately, the window casings were smaller on the outside
than they were on the inside.  The new windows had space around them
that needed to be filled.

No one had predicted that we would encounter that problem.  It had to be fixed.
We opted to have drywall casings built, which created a lot of dust
and the need to paint every room that was affected.

And that was something we could do.  So, it was what we did.
The renovation continued to morph into a bigger job than we had anticipated.
And, the children continued to grow.

Still more to come....
Many Blessings, Camille

**Previous posts in this series may be found by
clicking here (introduction),
here for part one, here for part two, here for part four,
here for part five, and here (conclusion).