RENO REVELATIONS
Have you ever bitten off more than you can chew? Have you ever stepped into uncharted territory without a map or a compass? This is how I would describe my latest foray into the land of home renovations.
Since buying our home in the summer of 2000 I have, by necessity, embarked upon a new journey of do-it-yourselfness. Before 2,000 I had never owned a home or been in a position to use the small smattering of tools I had accumulated, but rarely used.
As a side note, I accumulated these tools not so much out of need or purpose. They were just good deals bought at my local Canadian Tire Store.
You may not know this, but all Canadian men are genetically predisposed to buy tools on sale at CanTire. I think you can find documentation somewhere on the Net that suggests our genetic code was altered in the 1950's as a military experiment that coincided with the fluoridation of our water supply.
As a note of personal trivia, the first credit card to come into my sweaty little hand was a Canadian Tire card when I was somewhere around the age of 18. 18 and credit cards are not a winning combination. Anyway, back to the renos...
For the last couple of years it has been clear that we need to do some major work on the back entrance of our home. This is a wood structure that appears to have been built sometime after the house. It not only contains stairs to the basement and the rear entrance of our house, but also a door to the back yard. The roof is flat and it has a railing and a door into what is presently our son, David's room.
It was clear to me that water was getting into the basement from under the door/sill area of this structure since it was all rotten and basically at ground level. It was equally clear that our railing and roof had serious issues of rot and leaking and basic nastiness-to use a reno term.
This fall, with the help of an amazing reno guide and friend, Stephen Wood (Stephen you are a hero in my book), I embarked on what I knew would take some work, money and time. I just didn't know how much work, money and time it would take! I used to think the movie "The Money Pit" about the misadventures of a couple who bought a fixer upper was a funny movie. Now I realize that it is a serious docudrama.
What we estimated would be about three full days of work, took us six or seven fit into our schedules as best we could on days off, etc. Once we removed the old door and opened up the wall, we noticed that the wall had no connection with the ground whatsoever. It was swinging in the breeze. Even I, with my limited knowledge, could see that wasn't a good situation, especially since we were going to build a deck on top of this wall! (But, as a bonus, it did contain the largest wasp nest known to man!) Seven wheelbarrels of concrete later the wall had its feet on the ground again but then we had the major problem of trying to insert a new door into an old, warped, wonky, wacky, wall. I won't bore you with the details or my thoughts of which I have long since repented.
Then we got to the roof. What a mess! We found tar paper on top of 2 layers of quarter-inch plywood, on top of shingles on top of oriented strand board that had the consistency of porridge-with milk added! Under that were more shingles and more wood. Suffice it to say that we literally removed part of the roof in handfuls of what looked more like soil than wood. We stripped the worst part of the roof and braced it. Then we used some 10 x 12 x 1 rough pine boards and some 5/8 plywood to repair the damaged part of the roof. After that we put three layers of tar paper and then, eventually, a steel roof. Then, on top of that is an entirely new deck and railing. Spiffy doodle!
There are still a few finishing touches to make on it, but it is basically seaworthy now and I have to say, she is a work of beauty! I am confident that it won't leak until I am dead and buried. If it does, hopefully the shock will kill me!
So as not to bore or scare you too much I have only given you a taste of some of the things Stephen and I encountered through this reno revelation but here are a few tips to put in your spiritual tool belt that we learned along the way:
- First, the problem is always bigger than you think. You can be the
handiest man in the world with an encyclical knowledge of all things
reno, it doesn't matter. Oh you may be able to make a better guess than
we did, but it's still going to cost more and take more time than you
think. If I had a dollar for every additional trip back to the Home
Depot. Every thing we attempted was more difficult and more serious
than we at first thought-it's just the nature of the reno beast. Until
you start opening things up and seeing the guts of the problem, you are
just playing guessing games.
It's the same thing with us and sin. We think we know what our problem is; we think we have a handle on what needs improvement and how we might even go about improving things; we often minimize the problem and the cost, but the reality is-we just aren't capable of making good guesses! Worst still, we often try to fix the problems like the people who worked on our roof over the years. We try to deal with the surface of things. We make surface repairs to problems that are much deeper below. Trust me, surface patches only allow the rot to continue.
Looking at behavior without also looking at the motivation of that behavior is a waste of time because it won't solve the problem. As Christians we need to go past looking at our actions and dig deeper into the motivations of our hearts. It isn't easy, but it is necessary. We need the power of the Holy Spirit and the testimony of the Word of God and the fellowship of our brothers and sisters to help us dig out the hidden stuff below the surface.
- Secondly, renos are much harder than building something new. We could
have torn down the old back building and put up a new one faster than it
took to fix the one wall. Renovations take time because you are trying
to put the new on the old and that's hard. The best you can do in a reno
is just make it look close to being true and straight, but you will
never make it true or straight.
Now I know why God isn't in the reno business. He isn't interested in the old-the old ways, the old attitudes, the old perceptions of trying to earn salvation and please God with our own wonky, wacky, way out efforts. Instead he came up with a new plan to make all things new. When we give ourselves to him he starts from scratch. "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" (1 Corinthians 5:17)
If you have any thoughts or comments or questions, e-mail me by clicking on my name at the bottom of this page and I promise to get back to you-if my renos don't get in the way.
