The ever-lasting kitchen saga.

When we decided that 905 E. Pembroke  would become our home, we knew that the kitchen was kind of small, but that it had BIG potential. We loved using the 7 x 5 pantry that was lined with shelves on both sides, complete with its own window. Yet we somehow new the space could be used more efficiently. We also detested that the mud room was a poor renovation of what used to be a back porch on the house, but we loved that the laundry had it's own space.

After we tore the flat roof off of what was to become our future bedroom and put a new pitch roof on August, 5th, 2007, the weekend before we moved in, John was feeling ambitious. 

That fall he ripped all the paneling down in the main kitchen area and discovered flaking lead paint, an old chimney covered in plaster, and a transom that had been covered up by the paneling and all of its hideousness. We also made the doorway bigger (6ft) and put up a 12 foot header after sawing our house in two (the beams in our house are balloon framed, meaning the same stud goes from the crawl space to the attic) because the wall between the kitchen and dining was load bearing. In fact it was holding up a good portion of the 2nd story.

This is how it stayed for nearly a year. Not for lack of working, but because he went back to the bedroom for some demolition...

Secretly I think he just feels manly destroying things... jk!

Those of you all who know me know I LOVE to cook and have people over for dinner, so this has been hard. The next project after the bedroom was supposed to be the kitchen.... 

and we did do some of the kitchen in the fall of 08... i.e. we knocked out the walls between the laundry room, pantry and kitchen. We (and by we, I mean John) knocked out the kitchen ceiling making it 13 feet instead of 8. After Christmas, in Jan 09 we put in a sliding glass door with the help of my dad's Christmas gift to us. Then the kitchen stopped. 

The kitchen plumbing and the bathroom plumbing were tied together, and therefore the upstairs bathroom needed to be re-plumbed and re-done before the kitchen plumbing could be done.

So John completed the upstairs bathroom in the summer of 09.

In the fall of 09 John returned to the kitchen to put the ceiling up before our Christmas party and the winter set in (remember: We have had NO walls in our kitchen since the fall of 07) but I thought it would at least help keep SOME of the heat in to have insulation and sheet rock up... this meant John had to redo the electrical and get the lighting plan from me. Then we realized that in order to lay the sheet rock flush against the ceiling beams john had to extend each of the beams to be even, and he had to replace more newly discovered, but old, termite damage.

Then it came to pass that families were going to move in with us (YEAH!), so we needed both bathrooms to be fully functioning. 

Hence construction stopped on the kitchen once again, with the promise that once the bathroom was done the kitchen would be completed.

YES!!! Our downstairs bathroom is NOW complete....

This means that John is moving on to the kitchen right? RIGHT? no such thing....

He will be spending the next few weeks mudding Mary Dawn and Adam's future bedroom, tearing out the hallway ceiling upstairs (because it looks like it might fall on someone at any second), and putting in attic stairs. THEN he will move to the kitchen.

Lord willing.... for the last time. Stay tuned....

Downstairs bath.

Once upon a time, long long ago, with no air conditioning, on one of the hottest days of summer, a good friend of mine, Becky Filkins and I, set our minds to completing a quick paint job that would update our small master bath. And I do mean small- it measures 7 x 5 feet.

It was on that day that we decided to paint the wall a color that would compliment the beigish-taupe walls- Raisin. Before we painted we wanted to prime the walls because the color was dark and we only wanted to paint it once. As we painted the primer on the walls, the walls began to bubble and rise....

Low and behold, we came to find out, to our utter dismay:

The bathroom had actually been wallpapered before and painted over with white paint!

Our "little project" was quickly turning into a grand mess. We knew that we couldn't just continue painting so we decided to peel the big chunks of wall paper off. Unfortunately, as the wallpaper came off, so did the face of the sheetrock. After we peeled and peeled and peeled, and peeled some more, sweat dripping from every orphus of our body, and our hands and arms covered in paint, we quit.

That was more than 2 years ago, in the dreaded summer of 07.....

In the interim we turned our attention to the kitchen (yet to be finished), the master bedroom (complete) and the upstairs bathroom, along with about 5 other side projects along the way....

To tide me over I just painted the half peeled wall board with kilz, raisin paint, put up a new light fixture, mirror, and picture, and called it bearable until  "later".

In the fall of 08, When we were about to finish the master bedroom flooring we noticed a small line of "wetness" outside of the bathroom wall. It was made clear to us that  the shower was leaking- from somewhere...Henceforth we showered as much as we could at our gym and resolved that we needed to fix the bathroom "as soon as possible".

So John completed the upstairs bathroom in the summer of 09. When this was complete, we stopped using the downstairs bathroom shower all together. We decided we would eventually get an estimate for replacing the shower floor.We got an estimate on replacing the shower floor and were told that the shower liner (a lead pan) needed to be replaced, and that it would cost $1500.

Because we needed it done, and because John had never done this kind of work before he was willing to just pay to have it done. I, however, was not in favor, and suggested that we could redo the whole bathroom for less than that, to the detriment of the kitchen progress. He did not like that idea, but it came to pass that families were going to move in with us, so we needed both bathrooms to be fully functioning. After mulling the bathroom redo idea over, he decided that it would be ridiculous to spend that kind of money on a 40 year old bathroom- so he tore everything apart the day after our Christmas party.

We started researching "special" tubs after realizing that a traditional tub was 4 inches too big for our bathroom (who does that?) because we did not want to move the outer walls of the bathroom. We settled on an "Aker by Maxx" 48 inch tub that was going to take 3 weeks to deliver. However, after a trip to Lowes, we quickly discovered that a child would take little pleasure in taking a bath in that tiny bathtub, let alone a full grown adult. So we canceled the order and decided to go with a shower insert.

Now our bathroom is small, so our bathroom door is even smaller, which meant getting a traditional shower insert inside a 24 inch door was going to be next to impossible. Yet, Southern Heating and Plumbing, right over in Yorktown,  said they had a 3 piece shower insert that could fit through the door. Hooray!!

So John spent 2 hours on New Years Eve morning at the showroom in Yorktown picking out trim and fixtures for the shower- only to find out that they didn't have the shower that they said they had in stock. John left empty handed, quite perturbed.

He then did some research with Ferguson Enterprises and came across a shower insert, 3 piece, that both of us agreed on (there aren't many out there to choose from anyhow...).

He brought it home with much success and unloaded it off the truck. He went to close the tail gate, and knocked the dolly into the corner of the base, causing the base or the shower to crack in the corner- amazingly ironic, since the whole reason we were doing this is because there was a crack (i.e leak) in the old shower base (lead pan).

However, with God's great humor he also has great provision. My ever-faithful friend Becky (you know, the one who helped me peel 40 year old wall paper off a wall with wet paint?) knows how to repair fiberglass, so she will be able to seal the crack. It really is only about the size of a dime though....

Sooo!!! 1557 dollars later (thats right, woot woot), persevering with God's strength and grace,  our downstairs bathroom is NOW complete.... No more is the taupe tile from 1968. Welcome brilliant white wainscoting and bamboo flooring!

Now if we can just get the glass to come in the shower doors and I can find some time to seal the floor with urethane...

I can't wait for you all to see the bathroom- as soon as I charge my camera.

For now, here are some pictures before and during demolition....

Our latest completed project: Upstairs bathroom

I am so excited that our bathroom was finished a couple of months ago. This project is what afforded us the ability to invite others to live with us. Before, the only other working bathroom was on the first floor, right inside our bedroom.

I used to "affectionately" refer to our upstairs bathroom as 1950's barbie decor. It cam complete with a laminate floor, pressed wood sink vanity, and a tub that used to have a fern growing in it. The walls were two toned with plastic sheets of fake white tile with black grout on the bottom and salmon colored plastic on the top. The salmon plastic sheets extended to cover the ceiling and they had begun to sag. Oh, and lets not forget the radiator painted bright green.

I thought the bathroom was so awful that I submitted it to HGTV, sure it would get some attention. I think they thought it was so awful they didn't even know what to do with it, because I didn't hear from them at all.

Here are the pictures of the hideousness:

Pretty hideous huh?

However, I am proud to say that after much watching of HGTV, looking online, and thumbing through REAL SIMPLE and Pottery Barn magazines, our bathroom is quite lovely and modern.

This will be the Carriers bathroom, minus all the glass becuase they have two little kidlets...

What do you think?

People rather than stuff.

I spent pretty much my whole Christmas break cleaning and purging the contents of our house. Why? Well- here is the story (the short version):

John and I have been looking for a house for about a year now, that we thought would be a good investment property, to fix up and let someone live in for cheap, where they otherwise might not be able to have a home.

In November we found a house that fit the bill. It was 37,000 dollars and it was a foreclosure in downtown Newport News. We started praying about the house and if we should pursue it. We went three days later to look at the house in the daylight (since the utilities were off) and looked at the home.

The home was in remarkable shape for being 37,000 dollars. It was brick and had 3 bedrooms and 1 bath (1350 square feet in all.) Plenty big enough for the two of us, and an opportunity to move into downtown Newport News. We put on the house and won the bid by 5 dollars. It seemed as if God was really wanting us to make this move, so we asked some friends of ours if they wanted to rent our home from us. They agreed and also asked another family (another set of our friends) if they wanted to move in as well. They also agreed.

Then we found out that HUD had forgotten to attach the correction notes on the home that needed to be fixed before moving in. This changed the financing. We then needed to spend another 6500 on the house and get a 203 k loan. It seemed like no big deal, but it was. They wouldn't let us finance the house with that kind of a loan (or any loan for that matter)as a primary residence, even though we were going to live in it. We needed to finance as an investment property because they saw us as shady and trying to get around the larger down payment (25% vs. 3.5%). We didn't have that much, so with the Lord's guidance we walked away.

Yet we had 2 families planning on moving into our home in 6 weeks....

So John and I again prayed, and then told the families the situation and asked them both to still move in. They both agreed.

This meant that we needed to purge 3 rooms worth of stuff in our home. Hence my break being spent cleaning and purging.

Most people call us crazy.

I say that we are blessed and able to give Glory to God for this decision.

A couple of things we have in our favor:
We all have gone to church together.
We all like each other and have hung out with each other over the past couple of years by choice.
We all have lived in the same building before, in community : LivingStone Monastery
We know how to set boundaries.
We all believe in the One and only God and he directs our paths.

Please pray for us through out our transition process. There will be some kinks and quirks to figure out in the beginning, but God's grace is sufficient.

Far better for our home to be filled with people rather than stuff.

905- our little pembroke haven.

John and I bought our first house in June of 2007, just 6 months after we were told that there was little to no chance that we would be able to get approved for a loan. And that was when it was "easy" to get a loan". But, God, in his grace and mercy, gave me and John both jobs that allowed us the affordability of a home, and the only money we brought to the table was the money for our home inspection..

Haven't the times changed? We have not stopped spending money on it since. So much more work, love, sweat, and money than we ever anticipated we have put into this house.

Just recently, our home has taken a turn in direction and purpose, While we are getting dangerously close to finishing the projects, we still have a lot to do before:

Two families move into our home with us. See the story of how that happened here.

So, this blog is going to dedicated to the ways in which God has blessed us with the ability to turn a house into a home, and extend hospitality to our neighbors; our sisters and brothers in Christ; and our families. This will document our journey...