Working away from home.

We went to visit Cindy's mom and did some more work on her house. One of the projects was this spiral deck staircase. It gives her a shortcut from the car to the house without having to use the long ramp.

It was an interesting project to figure out: lots of weird angles. My laser guided skill saw actually came in handy to set the saw blade at the right angles.

We were pleased with the final result.

Construction in Community - take two

Alleluia! Thanks to several friends who came to help on April 18th, the siding on the east side of our home is basically finished! We still have to finish the siding on the little storage room, but the daunting, huge wall is done. Well ... the vent at the top is rotten, so we will have to fix it (we'll probably have to use a 40' ladder for it; does anybody have access to one we can use?), but ... the siding on the daunting, huge wall is done!

Here is a montage of people worshiping God by serving others. Enjoy!

Construction in community

On March the 28th, several of our brothers and sisters in Christ gathered at our home to help us work on it. People started to come by at 8:00 AM and the last ones left sometime after 7:00 or 8:00 PM. Throughout the day, the main focus was putting on siding (you can see before, during, and after pictures below), but Cindy had some people help her accomplish other tasks. We are very thankful for all who came, and for the ladies who provided lunch and supper for all of us. This was a great encouragement to us.

Have you encouraged your brothers and sisters in Christ lately?

While we were working, our neighbors' real estate agent came by. He talked to Paul, Cindy, and Alan. While talking to Alan, he asked if all the people working were part of one church. When Alan answered yes, the man made the comment that you don't see people getting together to help each other much anymore. So, while people served God by serving us, they glorified Him and proclaimed His transforming work in their lives to our community at large. 

Have your actions proclaimed God's transforming power in your life lately?

What's left?

With the strong possibility of our moving to Texas in the summer to pursue another PhD, this time in Theology and at Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, some have wondered how much we still lack to do on our house. The answer is quite a lot!

The house we bought was a foreclosed home which had been empty for over a year before we bought it. The siding and several windows were rotting. The front porch had some rotting issues also. The roof, sump pump, and the air conditioner needed replacing. The fascia boards were rotten. Inside, the carpet was filthy and damaged. The kitchen floor turned out to be rotten down to the sub floor. The bathrooms were nasty. Most light fixtures had been taken /stolen by the previous owners. Most appliances had been removed. All in all ... it was a big mess.

Since then, the roof, the sump pump, and the AC unit have all been replaced (these are the only things we actually contracted out). About 60% of the siding has been replaced. Most (but not quite all) of the rotting issues with windows and fascia boards have been dealt with. As for the inside, one of the two full bathrooms and the half bath have been re-floored and are done, with the exception of some trim work. The master bath is still completely gutted - you can still see some studs. The kitchen floor has been tiled, the living room floor has been replaced with hardwood floors. Most of the upstairs hall and part of one of the three bedrooms have also been floored with hardwood floors. Most of the walls have been repaired and painted. The kitchen cabinets are in the process of being refinished. All the molding was very abused, so Cindy is repairing all of it and painting it white since we removed it to install the floors. The fireplace has been re-done.

What is still missing? The master bathroom needs to be put back together: floor, bathtub, sink, toilet, etc. The bedrooms need to be floored and their molding needs to be repaired, painted, and installed. The dining room (my tool shop) needs to be floored and have some sheet rock work done. We have a french door to install in the kitchen and the cabinets need to be finished. The counter top also needs to be finished. We have to floor the steps and finish its surrounding molding. 40% of the siding needs to be installed and the whole outside needs to be painted. We still have to build the porch for the kitchen french doors to open out to, and the deck needs to be repaired. The front porch still needs attention, as the posts are bad. We added the structure for a pergola on the deck outside the dining room french doors to provide structural support for an overhang over that door; now we have to finish it. Plus, many other little details need to be figured out and taken care of.

There. Now you know how you can pray for us or help us, if you are handy and want to do some construction.

Update on the hall floor

It seems that life is still very busy, and I have not had time to write much, but I did want to take a minute to post a couple of pictures of our upstairs hall floor (still in progress). When we bought the wood flooring for the house, they had some abused boxes of thinner, lighter Brazilian cherry wood for really cheap; we thought we could use it for some decorative borders with our normal Brazilian cherry floors. Here is our first attempt, and probably the more complex attempt for this house.

As usual, I started by laying out a plan. It first started with some hand sketches:

Then I did a more detailed layout on AutoCAD (often this step is just a detailed hand drawing):

And finally, you get to do it all. You judge the results. BTW, the wider pieces will darken with time, increasing the contrast with the lighter border.

Our Fireplace.

Well, we finally finished redoing the fireplace. As you can see below, the house came with a brick fireplace and an uninteresting surround. The mantel was nice so we decided to keep it.

BEFORE

AFTER

The new surround is all homemade, including the fluting and slate inserts. It was an interesting project that required me to learn some new wood working techniques. I am indebted to Bink for his tips on Making Grooves in Wood where I leanerd how to cut nice fluting and to This Old House for thier Easy Mantel Makeover where I got very useful tips on how to tile a fireplace surround with slate. More than these, I need to thank my neighbor, Don, because without his planer, I could not have achieved this look, and Jackie at Sherwin Williams, for his superb stain matching skills which allowed us to match the new woodwork with the original mantel stain color. 

Update ...

A new year has started, and it brings to the light the fact that another year has passed ... and that I have not blogged in a while: not that I have not wanted to, I just have not had time. 

So what is going on in our lives? Well, I have a new job. Since August 2008, I have been Assistant Professor of Engineering and Mathematics at St. Augustine's College in Raleigh, NC. After three years of teaching high school, I have gone back full time to my true profession: college teaching. So in the fall I taught: Intro to Engineering and Problem Solving, Intro to Electrical and Computer Engineering Laboratory, Foundations of Physical Science, and 3 sections of Foundations of Physical Science Lab. In the spring I should be teaching: Engineering Graphics, Statics, 2 sections of College Algebra, and 2 sections of Foundations of Physical Science Lab. With this new position, which has taken a lot more of my time than I was expecting, I have dropped my adjunctive teaching load at The College at Southeastern to one class: Introduction to Computers. 

What have I been doing with my spare time you might ask? Well, I have been working on the house more. It used to be that during the semester I could only work on a small project. I had to wait for breaks to get stuff done. Now, I have a little time many evenings to do stuff. We've been working on the kitchen, the fireplace, molding throughout the house, and more. Below you will see pictures of the kitchen progress.

BEFORE

NOW

It is still not finished. We will be making new doors 

for the cabinets and adding marble tile counter tops

and backsplash.

BEFORE

NOW

We needed more storage room, so we added a

pantry. We will be replacing the 4 ft. kitchen 

window (just to the right of the picture) with a 4 ft 

french door to replace the lost door.

 BEFORE

NOW

The wood door will be replaced with a white door

to match the other doors in the kitchen.

I will be posting pictures of the fireplace as soon as I am done with it.

We also made time for some fun during December. We had friends over to help us go caroling in our neighborhood. Cindy's Mama stayed with us during Christmas week. We opened our home up for friends on Christmas. And we had a big New Year's Eve party with (and without) lots of friends.
As for writing ... I will try to be better in 2009. I should have a series come out pretty soon on the senior pastor: a paper that I am revising and expanding and that I will post here, probably in February. I also have many more other thoughts that I want to write down ... we'll just have to see what happens. In the meantime: y'all have a Happy New Year!

It is finished.

Well it took a while, but the living room's wood floor is finally finished. This week we put in the final corner, finished the border that goes around the room, and set it up so that when we are ready, we can start flooring the dining room. Next flooring project: the upstairs hall and the steps.

I can't stop …

So we left our renovation site (home) for our Christmas break and went down to Georgia. Obviously, though, construction is now in our blood. What did we do for most of our break? Yes, you guessed it, we built stuff. Cindy's mom was in definite need of shelves for her collection of books. They were all so improperly stored in many cardboard boxes. So with the very generous loan of tools from extended local family and lots of work, the books are now properly displayed and stored on her new bookcase, featuring 20 fixed shelves and 15 adjustable shelves, in her new reading room. We did not have time to do the finishing touches, so we will have to go down to add molding and to paint the adjustable shelves. For the meantime, though, we rest content that the books have a proper resting place.

Progress on the front of the house

the original siding with rotten fascia boards (07/18/06)

close up of the porch with our new light, old everything else (11/02/06)

new second story, old first story (01/18/07)

siding and new fascia boards on the second story, new siding to the right of the front door. Old siding being ripped off where you see black to the left of the door. (06/14/07)

more siding has been removed where you see black (06/16/07)

all the old siding has been removed from the front and more new siding is going up (06/19/07)

more new siding is up to the left of the door (06/19/07)

look at all that new siding! (06/20/07) compare to ->

blog-bernation

As most of you can tell, I have not written in almost a month. I have two series that are not yet finished, and I would love to spend some time finishing them, but I have been busily working on the house.


Hopefully, I will find some time in the near future to post some, but in the meantime, I am in blog-bernation (both writing and reading blogs).

Grout gives hope ...

Just a word of encouragement to y'all tiling out there. Grout really makes a difference. You might look at your pre-grout work and even be slightly disappointed, but once the grout goes down ... wow, what a difference. I furnished the three pictures above to make my point. BTW - we are almost finished with the kitchen floor. Praise God!
Another tip: since we could not go without using the kitchen, I grouted the inside and I will grout the outside on Friday, that way there was always a part of the kitchen that we could walk on.

Updates on the house

So I started to do some before and after pictures of our progress.


Here you see the guest bathroom (the only functioning bathroom in the house). We tiled the floor (it used to be linoleum), painted the walls, painted the vanity, and changed the countertop, sink, and faucets. We are still in the process of painting the molding and the vanity doors. We look forward to my having time in January to make our mirror frame so we can finally have a mirror in this bathroom.


Here you see the progress on one of our guest bedrooms. This room required a lot of attention to the walls, new shelves in the closet, and the addition of the fan/light. Since the last picture, the junk is gone, the closet shelves are installed, the bed has been set up so Mama (Cindy's mom could stay there during Thanksgiving), and I started on the wood floors.