Ten Years and Two Weeks - Part 3

Try as hard as we may for perfection, the net result of our labors is an amazing variety of imperfectness. We are surprised at our own versatility in being able to fail in so many different ways. -Samuel McChord Crothers

Now that the whole starting back to school thing is underway and the consignment sales are ending with me picking up the mound of clothes still left over later today, I have some time to write about how the painting of our new siding and windows went.

The man who was to do the painting was in his sixties and an associate pastor of some small church in the area. He was very nice and very likable, but...well, this is how the first day started:

He came on a day with rain in the afternoon as the forecast. This is typical of summers in Georgia actually, particularly this one, so the painter began only on the siding unlikely to get wet before the paint dried, like the porch and the outcropping under my daughter's window. Before he began, he talked about how he did not know he would be painting yellow on siding with grey primer. I totally get that as that primer color is meant for darker paint colors, but in the end, if the painter did a good job, the primer coat should be covered completely.

If he also said that if he had known he was going to have to paint two coats, he would have charged the contractor twice the amount to do the job. Now this is not my problem, as he is a subcontractor and his agreement is with the contractor, not me, however this is my house and so now I become concerned about how well the job will be done if he feels he is not getting paid enough to do it.

And so he started. He had plastic down on the porch floor but he did not secure it with tape, so as he spray painted, the plastic was pushed back by the pressure and overspray accumulated on the porch floor boards, which are stained like decking. All that was on the new materials so I was not yet concerned that they had not power washed, but I did think it was out of sequence. Then he moved to the outcropping in the front and mentioned that he did not know he would be painting the foundation also as it was the same color as the house. Even though it was in our contract that the house would be power washed before painting, he did not even wash the dirty foundation area before painting it.

Because I was not at all pleased with the quality of work I was seeing, I was thankful that was all he was going to do that day because of the threat of rain, but I also had another issue to consider: The paint color was not even close to the sample. It was supposed to be "Honey Blush" but it was not as warm as the sample. I mean it was significantly off as you can see in the picture. My concern was not so much that I did not like the color that was being put on—in all honesty, it was closer to the color I really wanted not on the samples and I am thanking God for that one—but it was that they had only bought one five gallon bucket instead of the two the job would obviously need and my greatest concern was whether or not color mix of second bucket would be the "Honey Blush" on our house or the sample.

Showing the painter the color difference, he said that I was only seeing the unfinished product, being that it was yellow paint on a grey base coat. Well, I was looking at the thick areas he had painted that were dry to touch and with my knowledge of paint I knew it was never going to redden enough to match that sample. So this was a good excuse to ask him to just stop while I talk to the contractor about the color, but I planned to talk about a whole lot more than that. The painter said he would not know when he could get back to this job as he had another and I was thinking that it might be best if he did not come back at all. Besides that, the trim color was definitely wrong. We found out later that the contractor gave the paint company the right number on their order form, but the paint company messed up and their number had one digit wrong on the label, so instead of the lovely cream color I wanted, we had three one-gallon paint cans of a deep rose color—no kidding.

My husband came home took one look and immediately wanted to fire the painter.

You have to understand that in the meantime my husband had been working several days on the new rails for the porch. This is the second time he has replaced them and this time was all because he had to replace a rotten post with one that was made smaller in width than the one we first had. He was hoping to get the rails done and then maybe hire the painter to paint them. That was definitely not going to happen now, so that was another major job that we were going to have to do ourselves. So my husband painted it with primer and we waited for the job to end to paint it.

We did not fire the painter because the contractor gave us assurances that everything would be taken care of and done right as to the painting and the chimney that was not square at the top. After a few days of delay and a few rainy days, another subcontractor came to pressure wash the house. The man also insisted on washing the sidewalks even after I said not to several times, since my husband had done it a few months before. Later we found out that they charged the contractor for washing the sidewalks that they should not have done. They also pressured washed the porch, including the new rail, which now has to be sanded because it torn up the wood in some places. To top that off, they used bleach. Now we have bleach spots on all of the wood on our deck, porch, and even our metal gold door threshold not to mention that my organic herb garden is now completely disseminated.

I knew all the gardens next to the house would be trampled and I moved what I could and the rest I knew would have survived that, but not from the bleach. After all that, they did not power wash the foundation under out deck or the chimney, so I took a brush and soapy water to do it myself. Oh, and the new paint on the foundation that had just been applied over the dirt, it all came off just as I knew it would.

At that point I just wanted to get it over with so we could begin fixing things ourselves. Every time someone came to fix something, it actually caused more damage.

We had a few good days without rain. The siding crew fixed the chimney, not to the point that we loved it, but it was acceptable.

The painter came and I brought him into my house to show him the rooms I had painted myself, so he could see the detail and how professional I like things to be. He complimented my work and talked about some interior work he had done. I did this as a kind way of saying I expected a better job on the outside as well. So the painter painted....

Even after all that, he painted, again without protecting anything other than using a hand held spray guard. I have to say the coverage was pretty good at eye level, but what was done on a ladder or where he had to bend, not so much. When he was done, we then had yellow overspray on the back deck, the garage doors which were not to be painted, the brand new windows which were to be painted but still, the brand new back door, the handles of the doors, the decorative rocks in my garden, and even our rain barrels that I had pulled away from the house so they would not be in the way!

I just wanted to scream! Really, how much more work does it take to tape and cover a few things like the flooring of the deck and porch or just lay a bit of plastic over a rock! He did not cover anything at all this time. I would have done it myself if he had told me that he was not going to, even after I talked to the contractor about these issues.

The trim was not much better. It was hand brushed, but it had no consistency: some of the trim was painted to the inside corner where it met the siding and some to the outside corner. It was laid on thick with lots of misses.

With the painting finally done—well, as done as they were going to do it, but I will get to that later—it was time for the new gutters. I have to say that this was the one thing I felt was done well, however my husband did not. We do still have some trouble spots that they could have, should have added rain diverters, but my husband will do it.

Are we done yet? No, then there are the windows. Yes, they were in but....

My Lord, my God, how I desire a perfect world! I am so very thankful that there is a heaven, a perfect place because You are there.

It Was One of Those Weeks

Adults are always so busy with the dull and dusty affairs of life which have nothing to do with grass, trees, and running streams.
-The Little Grey Men by BB (Denys Watkins-Pitchford), 1942

Officially, the first school day at the Home Study Center is Monday, August 31. However, I realized about three weeks ago that there are a few high school classes that were scheduled this week. I thought my daughter had to be in the Algebra 1 classes scheduled in the mornings on Monday and Wednesday, but some of my stress was alleviated when I found out that those classes were for the Algebra Honors class, not the Algebra 1 Year 2 class in which my daughter is enrolled. Now that does not mean it is a more advanced Algebra class but rather a class that covers all of Algebra 1 in one year. The school does not offer Pre-Algebra, but instead breaks Algebra 1 into two years, which was the same track I was on with my homeschool before we decided to do the full STEM program at LS last year.

Still, I knew that this week was going to be just one of those weeks when formal homeschooling was really not going to happen.

Monday
I would not have to make the over one hour trip to the school on Monday because she had not classes as I had thought she would, except that I did: not to the school but to my daughter's piano lesson, which is just about four miles away from the school. For this week, I decided to keep her piano lesson on the new day, Monday, where it needs to be from this point on with her school schedule, because we had so much we had to do on Tuesday, the following day. So, we did the grocery shopping and the piano lesson, arriving home early to put groceries away.

Tuesday
Early in the morning, we had a routine dentist appointment for the Princess. From there we went headed back the way we came for a few miles to drop off clothing and books for the third and last of the consignment sales trying to sell off things no longer being used. (And I have to say here that the consignment sales for the last couple of years have not been doing all that well for us; I have not even sold half the items in the first two, when usually I would not have had enough left to be in the third one. Sad.)

Then the Princess and I had time to eat a leisurely lunch with time left over to stop in at Walmart to get a red binder she needed for Algebra class before her Physical Science class started at 1:00. This extra class would have conflicted with her piano lesson, if we had not changed it to Monday anyway. I spent some time at Goodwill while she was in class until 3:00 and then we went to Life Grocery for the board meeting, while my daughter sat in the cafe reading over her Physical Science assignment, which she found to be boring. We finally made it home as the sun was setting.

Wednesday
I was planning not to have to go anywhere. We did some lessons, but my husband texted late in the afternoon saying he would not be home after all to take the Princess and her friend to Youth Group. That is when I realized that not only was I not going to have those precious couple of hours alone that I appreciatively anticipate on Wednesday nights, but that I also needed to get gas for the van and water. (We filter our city water for the house but we prefer water that is even purer for drinking so we have to go out for it.) So we went out to get those things, came back, fed the pets, and then left to pick up her friend and drop them off. Meanwhile I looked around Douglasville as it has changed since I used to go there so often when my daughter was a toddler. We arrived home around 9:00.

Thursday
We went to the consignment sale to look for clothes early and got just a few things. Then we stopped at Walmart looking for markdowns on school items and notebook paper. Afterward, we went to Target for the same and that is when I remembered that I forgot the main reason we stopped at Walmart was for underwear. My modest daughter hates shopping for such things, but when I folded her clothes this week, which she usually does herself, I insisted when such things are unraveling it is time to get some new. When she realized she could get the more modest boy short cuts, she was a much happier child.

We went home for a late lunch and a getting ready along with feeding the pets before the drive to the Princess' piano teacher. We had her staying there while my husband and I endured the 3½ hour LS Mandatory Parent Meeting beginning at 6:00, so we had to leave at 4:30 to make the meeting—I really don't know when these people think most of us eat dinner, I mean for us this one meeting would be about 6½ hours of our time with driving there and back! Normally, the meeting is 2½ hours but there is an extra hour before the main meeting for the parents of high schoolers because it is about the Senior Retreat in November. This is our first year with the retreat, but it very similar to the Science Expedition for the middle schoolers in the spring, except it is more intense, more educational, and instead of 200+ children there is under 100. Again they needed more men for chaperones having enough women and again my husband signed up. How could he not? Two teachers told him when they asked the boys in their class about what was the most memorial part of the expedition last spring, the ones who were rotated into husband's van said it was the conversations they had with him. What can I say, my husband has a gift and that is why we were good youth group leaders, back in the day.

As we were picking up the Princess a few minutes after the meeting ended, Trudy told me that she had acted out the entire play, all the parts, for her and a friend of hers who was visiting with her—the child is a such performer. We stopped to pick up some food at Arby's and ate on the way home. We got in before 11:00 PM but everyone was beat. Even the Princess, who has difficulty with sleeping most of the time, was completely out within fifteen minutes.

Friday
Finally, a day that I do not have to go anywhere! The late night before made for a late start for all of us this morning, but the Princess and I muddled through Greek and Latin, after I printed out the next Latin chapter because I was again not prepared ahead of time. Since lunch she has been off on her own, supposedly doing history. I am not going to worry about what is and is not getting done much today. Next week the Home Study Center starts officially, so she will have classes on Monday and we begin our new routine.

Thank you, my Lord, for getting us through this week. Help us both to get into the routine next week.

My Daughter, the Actress

The best acting is instinctive. It's not intellectual, it's not mechanical, it's instinctive. -Craig MacDonald

Last week my daughter tried out for a play our church is planning for Christmas. The hopefuls were given three different readings from which they could pick. My daughter went for the one based on  "Clue."

Now our neighbors go to the same church. Their daughter is best friends with the Princess—I think I will call her "Angel" here. The father was one of the judges who watched the auditions for the play.

"They were only given ten minutes to look over the reading," he told us. His eyes widen to emphasize how amazed he was to watch her not just read, but actually act it out. He told us that he was so caught up in her acting that he made himself close his eyes just so he could focus on her voice and the inflections: "She acted it out! From a cold read! And she is only fourteen!"

So, of course, the child had gotten the lead. I was not at all surprised actually. I have always known she is a performer and acting is as natural to her as walking—she gets that from me (the only reason I did not get the lead in a high school play was because the other girl looked the part more and the drama teacher told me I was the better actress but he felt he could work with her). We have done skits with the Princess for church and she acted out a poem for one of her piano recitals and she was Pontius Pilate in the traditional Easter play a few months ago. However, I feel this is the first time she has really auditioned. Of course, this is not an actors' group with real competition...at least, not yet.

I write that because this time the actors of all ages are not just learning lines, positions, and donning costumes. The woman who is heading this up actually has taught and is teaching them about acting. My daughter's assignment was to write out a background for her character and to try different accents that match the background.

Wow! Not at all what I expected for a church play with a modernized Christmas story. My daughter is one of the three wise men, which are lawyers in this play—a stretch, I know: lawyers being wise men. I just knew it had to be a comedy and it is.

So, my daughter did not know that we knew. She told us she was in the play but would not tell us about her part. She said she wanted it to be a surprise. She told us her friend is the part she wanted, the angel; she always wants the angel part so that is why I am going to call her Angel here. She told us about the play, but nothing about her part, so we teased her about it, saying that she was probably just a sheep. This went on all afternoon.

Eventually, she told us that we would not believe it if she told us and that we would not be proud of her. We told her that we were certain that she would be the very best sheep. Then she wanted permission to something and I said not until she tells me the truth. So she blurted out that she got the lead...and I said, "Uh-uhh. Now tell what you really got."

"I told you that you would not believe me!"

That was worth another five minutes before we told her that we had known since we talked to Angel's father after church.

So, now the work begins....

My Lord, it is wondrous to see my daughter's talents not only blossoming but also being recognized. Thank you for guiding her.

My Daughter, the Writer

The time to begin writing an article is when you have finished it to your satisfaction. By that time you begin to clearly and logically perceive what it is you really want to say. -Mark Twain

I have been writing articles for a bi-monthly publication called The Lifeline for about 17 years. It is a small newspaper published by Life Grocery, where I have been shopping for organic and health foods since we first moved here. When I started writing there were several writers submitting also hoping to be published within the eight pages. Back then it was far more competitive with professionals having all kinds of impressive initials behind their names, which I do not. Also, the editor had many submissions from which to choose, more than she could put in print, so imagine how honored I felt whenever one of my articles actually got tucked into the last two or three pages.

I had been writing for years and I remember one time looking in the back, but not finding my article, thinking all the other articles must have been better. Then I looked around some more to the pages toward the front, because once or twice my article had been on the second or third pages--no, oh well. I closed it and that is when my eyes fell on the front page: there was my article! I remember it was the Christmas season and it was an article that I would not show anyone in my family, because it was about Christmas traditions I had changed to avoid the tradition of being overweight along with other health problems that seem to also be a tradition in my family. To have something of which I was so proud and not be able to share it with my family--well, it was two-edge sword. Since then my articles have popped up all over the publication and on the front page from time to time, each time it makes me smile!

My daughter has been writing creatively for years. She has started several fiction books, she tells me, but will not let me read them. I assume that is because I would spot areas where she should make corrections and that would take the fun out of it for her. However, my point is that the girl writes and I have been very heavy on Language Arts to give her the best tools to be a very good writer. This year, I felt that she was ready to stretch her talent a bit more.

I asked the editor of The Lifeline if she would be interested in taking submissions from my teenage daughter, sort of a teen writing to teens kind of thing. Through the years The Lifeline has lost writers and gained new ones, but these last few years the low number of submissions forced them to downside to just four pages. Being smaller, there is still as much competition for space, but there also is less diversity. I thought this would be beneficial to the Princess, who is highly health conscious, and The Lifeline in getting children and teens interested in organics. The editor said she always wanted a teen to write, so she would be thrilled to accept her articles.

We had so much going on with the science expedition, end of the Living Science school year, and the work being done on the house that the Princess and I decided that she would write to meet the June deadline, rather than try for April. I suggested that her article be about 250 words or less, for a better chance to fit in. In the past most of the writers articles were suggested to be 500 words or less, but sometimes the material just needs more space.

Although we had decided on the subject and I had talked with her about the format, because it was different than the writing she had been doing up to then, my daughter's first draft read like a science report. It had a too many facts, a bullet list even, and it was dry, not personable. I praised her on the research but explained that she is supposed to be writing to teens, not for her science teacher. I knew her first few articles were going to require a lot of editing, just because she was not experienced with this form of writing. I, again, suggested strongly, in that "mother said do it or else" way, that she create an outline, since she did not do it the first time, with the explanation would help her to keep her topic narrowed down to the one direction as we had discussed, since now she had all these facts in her head.

The second draft was better, but still lacked personality. Writing to teens...? So we worked on it together line by line, which I was trying to avoid, but it was her first time and there was that deadline...and I was trying to get my own article done also, which was about introducing her! We also had a talk about what I call soft and hard deadlines; I usually have a soft deadline for myself at least a week before the hard deadline because things can come up unexpectedly and the hard deadline does not change.

Submissions in on time and the editor loved my Princess' article! Asked her some questions by email, but we were sure it was going to be in, if it fit. Then we waited and waited and waited--this was my baby's first approved article and I was getting impatient to see it in print! The Lifeline is supposed to be published on odd months, but it did not get done until just this last week, six weeks behind schedule.  There was so much going on at the store with the redecorating of the cafe and the editor is also the operations manager, which might account for the delay, but it is out! Actually, I was at the store yesterday and they did not have the hard copies there yet, but it is online.

My daughter's first published article, "Teen Keen on Coconut Oil," is on page 3. She is now a published writer at just fourteen! Yes, this is a serious mama brag!

~ My Lord, thank you for the beautifully talented daughter you have given me. I am in awe of her. ~

People Need People

People are pretty much alike. It's only that our differences are more susceptible to definition than our similarities. -Linda Ellerbee

My muse Ganieda wrote a post titled Introverts 4 Christ in response to another blog post Reading in the Day written by another friend, who described the guilt she feels as an introvert, particularly as a Christian introvert. I have quite a few introverts for friends, most of whom I have met through the Internet, and I have a few extroverts for friends, most of whom I have met in person. Yes, I think there is a correlation.

Introverts are usually more self sufficient types who can stimulate and entertain themselves with their own thoughts and can even feel rudely interrupted by a person's chatter or presence while they are submerged in a thought. They need time to process, not what is obvious, but what is beneath it and when there is much going on, it is overwhelming. While introverts obviously feel more comfortable not being in the presence of people doing the day-to-day business of people, they need people in the forms of individuals. Even those who would rather tune out the world enraptured in a book needed someone to write the book, someone who expressed his thoughts or told the story. In short, they had a deep desire for persons to connect with them and for them to connect with persons, more to the point, the subsurface of each person: how the person thinks, what he believes, the condition of his soul. Introverts usually are starved to share their thoughts with individuals of the same persuasion, but introverts, being what they are, have trouble finding each other because they shun the presence of people; the Internet has provided introverts the perfect meeting grounds.

Extroverts, on the other hand, are people who need people to just be the day-to-day people they are. They absolutely need the stimulation and entertainment that others provide. They want to experience life through people. They want to be involved and to interact. They feel connected to people by their presence. They use technology as a means to stay connected when outside of the presence of people and to arrange get-togethers. They feel lonely without people. Many are quite dependent on people: I have extroverted friends who are not motivated unless they are doing something for someone else or have someone with them while they are doing it.

What am I? Both and neither, but not something in between, either. I am something even more complicated. I have struggled with feeling guilty about not being what I thought I should be, but somewhere along the way I changed my thinking to just being as God wishes and I find peace. I am not in that "God made me that way so I can just be...ME" crowd either. We all have had different experiences that challenged us, even injured us, that resulted in shaping us and when we are seeking God's guidance all those things, bad and good, works toward His good, which means we are not meant to stay the way we were when we found God, but to walk a journey with Him and be changed by Him.

Beyond the introverted and extroverted concerns, I am empathic, creative...and so much more so all those things wrapped up together make me more like a cross-over chameleon. To my extroverted friends, I am extroverted in appearance, sometimes drawing on my creativity which covers an introverted undercurrent. My introverted friends recognize me as one of their own, one who sees beneath the veil. It is not that I am trying to fool anyone, but rather that I have found special niches in which I can happily flourish and honor my Lord.

For instance, I often offer to face paint at large get-togethers with children. This way even adult introverts and extroverts have an opportunity to meet me while the crowd is funneled down to just a few at a time doing something creative that I enjoy. Everyone thinks I am as friendly as I really am (after that initial meeting), but I did not have to think of a way to approach them, which is where I trip awkwardly over my introverted tendencies. In the end, everyone benefits. I also do well on stage as a speaker or acting, even singing or playing a guitar, it is better for me than sitting in the audience. The reason is because being empathic the closeness of so many people can really affect me, strong emotions added to the aches and pains that I can feel from so many; although I try not to think about it, sometimes it is very distracting. I know I am suppose to pray for those people, but sometimes I just want to be left alone while I am watching a play or listening to a preacher. So, I am drawn to things where I use my creativity as a buffer with crowds, but am still contributing and even interacting with everyone.

We all like to think we had something in common with Jesus and I am no exception. I believe Jesus keenly felt the sufferings of people but He was also driven by His love for people. I believe that once in awhile also He needed to commune with God alone. I believe that He was neither introverted nor extroverted but something more complex and yet so very simple: He is God. I believe God made us all unique and gave us the Holy Spirit, not just so we would be saved, comforted, and have His gifts, but also because God could experience the uniqueness of each of us.

As to feeling guilty, that is simply a person placing a judgement upon himself. The only guilt one should ever feel is as a warning when one is disobeying or not acting on what God wishes him or her to do at any time, when we are being self serving rather than God serving. We can judge ourselves so harshly but the only judgement that is true is God's.

Thank you, my Lord, for the differences in people and the two things we all have in common: the need for You and for each other.

Blog Gone Wild

If you think math is hard, try web design. -Trish Parr

If you happened by the last three or so days, you know that my blog took a walk on the wild side. I have been messing with some customizations in the background and I though I messed up some code. It can take as little as one keystroke missing or added and kablooey!

After spending two days checking nearly 4,000 lines of code, I did find a few things wrong that could have been problematic, yet none of them corrected the layout jumble. Having eliminated where I thought the problem had to be, I began to dismantle the entire thing, which really was a disappointment for me. I did not have the new layout all set up exactly like I wanted, but I was to a point that I could have been contented if I had to leave it that way for a long while, since I do have a number of major obligations I am juggling right now (which I will explain in a following post).

So, I still am working on the design, but I found the problem! It was not in my modifications to the template or any of the widgets--no, it was in the post itself. It was simply a missing a </div>. And the worse part is that blogger did warn me it was missing when I published the post, but I was in a hurry and then I forgot about it.

You can cannot ignore bad coding....

Thank you, my Lord, for giving me an understanding family and patience when I need to seek out problems and fix them.

Ten Years and Two Weeks - Part 2

It is surprising what a man can do when he has to, and how little most men will do when they don't have to. -Walter Linn

Although the ten years was the longer portion, I was blogging for at least half of it, so I do not really want to rehash that part of the story in detail, which included me making a gripe website where other people with complaints about the company could post their pictures and stories; the company filling a lawsuit against us for five counts including trademark infringement; the news of the lawsuit went viral all over the Internet; news people trying to find us for interviews and offering to fly us to New York, which we did not do; finding a nonprofit law firm to take our case; the company not paying their own contractors and salespeople; an attorney looking to file a class action lawsuit against the company, but there was no money; the company president/owner arrested for cocaine possession; the company closing within a year; and no one gets any restitution to fix their houses, but the trademark infringement complaint is still debated in law schools today! The company really shot themselves in the foot by filing the lawsuit against us and the only real good that came out of it was that the business could no longer scam any other people.

Now we are in the "two weeks" portion of this story.

Have you ever watched the 1986 movie Money Pit with Tom Hanks and Shelley Long? If not you have missed out on a comedy that will stick with you the rest of your life. I cannot count the times that some portion of that movie has been replayed in my mind. Throughout the movie there is this horrendous renovation and whenever the contractor is asked how long it will take to finish, the answer comes without hesitation: "two weeks."

Homeowner Walter: When I do get the permits, how long will the job take?
Contractor Curly: Two weeks.

Four months later (at the end of her rope)....
Homeowner Anna: [yelling] All right, that's it! I've had it with you, and the house, and Max, and the orchestra and everything! How long will it take to put this house together?
Contractor Curly: Two weeks.
[Walter and all the workers start laughing]

You get the picture...so imagine what went through my mind when we asked for a time estimate and our contractor said it could take just "two weeks," depending on the weather. We signed the contract in March, but it rained nearly everyday in April so they understandably were behind in finishing some jobs before getting to us; it began in May.

Two weeks...I knew better than to expect that one, but overall we were sure that the Lord led us to this company, which I wrote about at This Must Be a God Thing. We still did not expect everything to go perfectly, but we had hoped it would have gone just somewhat better than it did, especially when all the subcontractors were Christians--some were even church leaders and pastors--with families who had lived in the area for generations.

Taking one side at a time, they ripped off all the old, damaged siding, carefully collecting nails as they went, and began installing the fiber cement planks that had a grey primer coat. The windows with frames were also taken out. The trim around the window on the inside was removed. I knew that there would be some damage to the walls around the windows and to the trim itself on the inside, but it was more than I had hoped, particularly in my bedroom which has a lovely, subtle faux pattern that I did not want to repaint. I have to say that first window was the most difficult to get to so I hoped things would progress better with the others and being an artist, I knew I could match the wall paint to blend in, but I also knew it would be work to do it, so the less damage I would need to fix, the better.

It was when the man began putting the trim back on--the trim he had just taken off--that I knew we needed to rethink the plan. There were chunks of wood on the sides missing from the trim and it just did not fit well. By the time he did three windows with a few broken and one of the trim pieces had nine nails in the corner--my husband counted--we decided to ask him to leave the trim off and we would replace all the trim with new ourselves. We felt it would be money and time well spent.

My husband was not satisfied with how they alternated the siding planks...rather how they did not. It was not randomized enough where the joints were and the patterns of the planks also. He even asked them about it as they were working, but it did not change anything. They were pretty good as craftsmen but not as artisans.

The south side of the house was the worse. The siding was just about to fall apart, especially the siding on the chimney. When they removed those pieces, it was obvious that we needed the chimney to be completely rebuilt. The chimneys of houses in our neighborhood are not made of brick but are made so that they hang above the ground on the outside of the house. They are not ideal, but functional when in good shape. However, the materials used are no longer available and not to code, so it was a good thing to replace them with better materials. We already had it in the contract to replace the chimney cap which was rusty, but we had to approve of the additional cost for the rebuild. Unfortunately, the subcontractor crew had high paying commercial job schedule to start the next week in a city about three hours away, so they hurried to get the chimney done, which ended up not being as straight on one side as it should have been, and to install our new back door, which was not cooperating.

I just have to say a huge thank you to my Lord here. Termites had set up home on the south side of the house which had been treated about a year ago, so we were relieved when the workers saw nothing active that way and the load bearing wood structures were secure. Termites were bad enough, but the one thing we really feared with all the moisture problems was mold. There might have been mold inside of the siding, but there was absolutely no mold on any of the wood or walls or even the sides of the siding! That had to be a God thing!
 
The backdoor had issues even though it was supposed to be new. It is one of those window doors with blinds on the inside of the window, so necessary with it being on the west side. After the guy worked on it for two days, it had a lot more issues than when he started. He had actually removed the hard plastic bottom under the metal step to get it to fit but that would have been a great way for bugs to get in too. At that point, the only solution they offered was to pull back the carpet in my dining room and plane a hump in the underlying flooring. I looked at it when he got it in, to secure our home for the night, and told him it was warped. My husband actually put a straight edge to it and...it was warped!

My husband knowing he was going to be working away from home the next week and wanted us to be secure, looked for a door himself. That morning he told me he was not sure what to do because he checked that night and Home Depot did not have any in stock, but since I have a friend that works for Home Depot, I know they stock the store late at night and looked online again to find they had five available. So, off he went to buy one and then he had to install it by removing a plank of wood on the door header that was there just to make the door fit better, plane it down, put the top of the door frame flush with the top instead of the bottom, and then we had a door that actually could open all the way into the house, the first time since we had replace the carpeting when my daughter was a toddler that it was not rubbing significantly.

With the doors, windows, and siding replaced, then it was time for painting and that is when things began to go south...but that will be in Part 3.

My Lord, thank you for protecting my family and our house against mold. Thank you for helping us all get through the "two weeks."

Ten Years and Two Weeks - Part 1

If two wrongs don't make a right, try three. -Laurence J. Peter

You know the saying "two wrongs don't make a right"? Well, this is a tale of two bad products making a roundabout right...sort of, but that is taking the most optimistic approach possible.

The first bad product was the wood composite siding, basically a fancy textured form of particle board. We bought a house just three years old and every house in our neighbor had this same siding, which looked quite good at time.

However, just a few years later it looked like this:

The problem with the product is that water droplets hang on the bottom of the panels and eventually get absorbed up into the porous attributes of wood pieces glued and pressed together as a sponge does water, which causes expansion of the bottom edges and the more expansion, the more spongy it becomes and the further up the panel the damage goes. Apparently, even if we had painted every every few years to better protect the siding this still would have happened to some degree.

When we saw this was beginning to happen to our siding, we just were not even considering residing the house and we had been hearing of another product with the claim of never having to paint again. I was not so convinced as I have this natural caution of anything new. For instance, as much as I love technology, I am not the first to jump on the latest Windows version, as I like to give it a good year for everyone else to do the beta testing and them fix all the bugs before I commit to it. My husband, on the other hand, is more of a risk taker.

Next thing I knew we were signing a contract. That was in 2004.

Sometimes taking a risk works out well and sometimes it just does not. This may not have been the worse mistake we ever made but, as I see it, this one was tied with two others for first place...and we are not going into those today.

The product itself was a very thick latex "coating", equivalent to something like 20 layers of paint, that would cover every bit of wood composite siding so that there would be no porous areas for rain to get in therefore it would stop further deterioration. That was the promise. The reality was...well, quite a bit different that we anticipated.

From the time the crew first arrived, this whole project just went wrong in every which way possible. They caulked everything, and I do mean everything, even where siding panels overlap each other and bottom of ever panel to fill in the porous areas so that water would not be soaked up ever again. The repairs to replace the rotten wood was done horribly wrong. The coating color was wrong, way too bright of a yellow. I wish we had fired them when we saw the quality of the work, but we were assured it would be rectified.

I rarely regret anything from my past, because I know that I would have done the same thing in the same circumstances but this one is the exception. I wish we had looked into replacing the siding back then; the sad part is it would have cost about the same. I really wish we had never signed that contact, but once that was done I wish even more I wish I had not handed them that final check.

We were not the only ones taken by this product and I learned a lot about the engineering of why this was the worst possible thing we could have had done to our house, perhaps to any house. You see, housing engineers will say that the problem is not so much about moisture getting in, but that moisture has to be able to get out. A house has to breathe and the way they had done all the caulking and then applying that coating was the surest way to trap in moisture so it could not get out or dry out. We had a moisture analysis done and the greatest moisture was in the corner structures and in the frames of our wood windows.

Having the coating removed was not only labor intensive, requiring heat guns for it to blister up, but would have been more damaging on the already deteriorated siding taking some of the composite pieces of wood with it. Besides, removing the product was only part of the problem: removing the caulking filling in the siding edges was impossible. Our only solution, since the coating company went out of business within a year--lifetime warranties only work for the lifetime of the company--was to reside entire house and replace the windows, frame and all, and we did not have the money to do that.

We planned to begin for residing the house as soon as we paid off the costs for the coating, but in May 2007 my husband was injured by a horse and was on medical leave for about four months and was making about 60% of his usual take-home pay. He was back on the job full-time for a couple of months and then the first of  December 2007, he lost his job for the first time in his life and the company car also. We lived on severance pay for weeks and the Lord gave him the job He had promised, but it was at about the same take home pay as his severance pay had been. We eked by, but there was no saving toward the siding for two years. However, we also had a four-year drought, which was becoming alarming as to water availability, but it was saving our house because moisture levels dropped. Yes, there are blessings for some people even in things like droughts.

In 2012, the Lord gave my husband a new job, out of the blue, that paid more like he used to be, but no company car and we would need one since he would not be flying as much as the last job. So, we went into debt for an old used van, which we had repaired and paid off within a year. We still lived very frugally, but also had a few things fixed that we did not have the money to repair previously.

Finally, in 2013, we were able to start getting some traction on saving to get the house fixed. We had a few estimates to know what our target amount would need to be and last fall, 2014, we figured we would have about half of the cost saved up by this spring and the Lord again provided a company owned and operated by Christians that was a few thousand lower than our other estimates.

In May of this year (2015), the major work we needed done on our house began. Ten years later I can say that one thing was true, we did not have to paint nor will we ever have to paint those siding panels again, but we are now in debt for half of the costs.
 

My Lord, the journey has been so long just to get to this place. Thank you for making it possible. Things could have gone much worse than they did without Your presence.