In All Labor There is Profit...

Proverbs 14:23 "In all labor there is profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty." I keep on thinking of this verse over and over again while working on the house. There are many times while we are working on the house that requires much prep-work that doesn't really energize you or make you think that much is being accomplished. So many times, the work that is done just demolishes things and makes it more messy. I have kept on reminding myself that this work is profitable! Thankfully, this past week, we got to see some very large examples that this is true. In our pictures, pleas keep in mind that we are a work in progress. Our home isn't as "put away" as I prefer it, but it is a working zone. I also keep having to remind myself that "Where no oxen are, the trough is clean; but much increase comes with the strength of the ox." Proverbs 14:4

We were so blessed that my parents got to come out this past week, and boy were they ever a help! Boxes have actually been unpacked, all of the popcorn ceiling in the living room is gone, and you can actually see through the kitchen again! The old, grease-covered stove is gone (looks much cooler in picture than in reality), and we sold the old refrigerator. They installed new shelves in the multitude of closets in our home (which we are so grateful for!), and things are actually moving into their homes. New baseboards were painted and put in the bedrooms, and things are looking like sane people actually live here now! All of these words don't even begin to capture how hard they worked while they were out here. We love you guys so much, and thank you for helping our house become our home!

The wonderful job of texturing, sanding and painting that Tim has done (along with help from the Ashley family!) finally got to the point where we could see some light in the midst of the tunnel. We have carpet, beautiful paint and furniture in our bedrooms! Though I am still in the process of finding our decorative accessories for the bedrooms and putting those in place, it was an awesome reminder that we are sane people who will have a great home at the end of this process! It's like Christmas getting to unpack our artwork and decorative acessories! I got to do laundry in our own washer & dryer again, and some paint is actually getting on the walls in there!

On top of all of this, we had an experience with our plumbing this week. My parents were such troopers as we hit the inevitable vacant house wall...our showers stopped draining the day after the new carpet was installed. We were so grateful that none of the water from our Master shower leaked out onto the new carpet, and that we could take a shower at the TLC at the Church in the meantime. Two days later and many conversations with our home warranty providers (Thanks Emily!) later, we have beautifully draining plumbing again!

This weekend was a reminder that we need to actually take a break from time to time on working in our house. We were able to sleep in on Saturday, and get some much-needed rest. I really do believe that this has been the first time we have stopped and relaxed since April of this year. I was reminded that God gave us a Sabbath for a reason. We need to make sure we use what He has put in place for us!

Though much has been accomplished, much is still yet to be done! Thankfully, with the money we made off the refrigerator, I get to purchase curtains for one of the guest room windows. Our next steps are to finish putting all of our clothes in the correct closets, putting the final paint coats in the laundry room and installing the paneling in there, and starting to texture in the living room. All of the rest of the flooring in the house is still to be replaced, but it is coming! We get to go pick up our kitchen cabinets & appliances from Ikea this weekend, and spend a few days with Jennifer, Chauncey & Cohen (sister, brother-in-law & nephew) as an added bonus. We could not be more excited to get more stuff going, and I hope to have more progress pictures for you soon!

Our Place of Retreat.

Throughout our crazy journey of demolition, we have found a place that we LOVE...our back yard. Moving from the land of humidity in Fort Smith, we didn't fully appreciate how much we would love our covered back porch. It is the place that we find ourselves when all is chaos and we need a quiet break. It is a great place to cool off in the shade on a hot day's work. It is a sanctuary!

We are so fortunate to have not only a covered back patio, but also a huge pecan tree that gives tons of shade. It is a beautiful place to sit and read my Bible with a cup of coffee in the mornings while the doves are out cooing. I wish you could all enjoy that with me. While most of the work on the outside of the house is limited to next year, we do have a few things we get to do soon.

We plan on giving the back gate some TLC with a little paint and planting trumpet vine on the wall the gate is on to give a little appeal. We also plan on placing an arbor in front of the gate and training the vine to grow above it. In the land where "the wind comes sweeping down the plain" is so much more real than in Oklahoma (we hadn't really understood what real wind was until we moved here and experienced the occasional dust storm), we are so grateful to have a cinderblock fence. We just want to hide it a bit! We are also grateful that our new dog Zeke will have a good, fenced-in backyard where he can be safe!

In addition, we plan on greening up the grass (already on the way to that!), painting the iron supports on the back porch, and planting a white jasmine vine to cover the iron and bring some of the garden to the patio. A ceiling fan will be added to the porch to give breeze on the hot summer days when there is none. We have great flower beds already in place, but that is at the bottom of our priority list right now. We are so grateful that God gave us this place of retreat and sanctuary where I can get my mind together while our house is torn apart!

Before Pictures: Bedrooms & Bathrooms.

We are finally back from camp, and I wanted to continue taking you on a journey through our crazy house. Thankfully, with the help of many different people, much has changed already!

The bathrooms are going to take a little creativity on our part. The main bathroom in the house is currently decked out in pink. Though it could be really cool in the right person's house, we aren't those people! The pink curtains and shower curtain are in a donation box where someone might appreciate them. We have already torn out all of the carpet and will replace the flooring with tile. I must stop and pose the question...who puts carpet in bathrooms!?! Anyhow, it is gone now, and will be replaced with beautiful ceramic tile.

The space in both bathrooms is very limited, so Tim is going to build some custom cabinetry to create storage in there. The vanity in here will stay, but only with a good coat of espresso-colored paint. The medicine cabinet above the mirror will go to leave room for a custom-built mirror & frame will hang above the vanity. A custom upper cabinet will also be hung above the toilet for storage. At the bottom of the mirror, Tim is giving me a small wooden ledge where I can put something decorative. Bamboo blinds will go on the window, and a shower curtain will have to cover the pink tile until next year's budget :)

When we do get to replace it, we plan on using white subway tile with an accent tile (yet to be chosen) throughout. When tile happens in both bathrooms, the plumbing will be raised to accommodate anyone over 5 feet tall. Our shower head comes out of the wall right now in about the middle of MY forehead. To survive until that time, we have bought shower head extenders. Though you can barely see it, the pink tile is also on the wall. It will come out soon and simply be patched with drywall. We will replace the outdated wall light with can lights from Ikea and add a new plug since there wasn't one in the room. Tim will also be adding a vent in the bathroom to pull out moisture since none currently exists. Whew! I'm already sleepy just thinking about this. Thankfully, all of our tile is in really good, clean condition, so we can live with it for a while.

The other 3/4 bathroom has very similar needs. The tile has to go, both on the wall and in the shower, and the carpet has been torn out. The same custom cabinetry will go in here, but Tim will also be building a vanity to fit in our little two-feet slot while still having room to place my straightener and hairdryer when I get ready in the morning. We will also tile the floors in here, and haven't decided on what type of tile we will do in this shower.

All three of our bedrooms were decked out in some shade of pastel (yellow, pink and blue), baseboards and trim included! Since Tim & I don't share their love for pastels, we have textured all of the walls, painted the woodwork white and painted the walls. The drapes throughout the bedrooms are gone, and we will eventually get around to putting up new ones! In addition, new carpet goes in on Monday! I cannot tell you how nice it will be to actually be able to put a room together like it will be long-term.

This is our crazy before! Hope to have a new post up soon to show what has been accomplished!

Before Pictures: Outside, Dining Room, Kitchen, Utility Room & Living Room.

In order to fully appreciate what we are doing to turn our house into our home, you really have to understand what it was like before us. We are so grateful that God has provided this wonderful, sturdy home for us, but it will definitely need some updating to reflect our style and really become our home. Hope you can get the full effect of the house from these!

When you hear that a home has established landscaping, usually that is a good thing. Well, in our case, we really didn't like most of the well established trees & bushes that came with our home. Thankfully, we are already well on our way to being able to see the actual house again instead of the bushes & trees! We also plan on removing all of our "zero-scaping" from the side of the house and growing some grass. In addition to this, we plan on painting the entire house, adding shudders and possibly some planter boxes under the windows in front. Unfortunately, the outside of the house will probably wait until next year, both for energy and budget's sake. We're just glad to have the yard mowed for now!

All of the house has carpeting throughout, even the bathrooms, and the carpet definitely reflects the 70's. We will be replacing the carpet in the living room with laminate wood flooring, placing carpet in the bedrooms, and putting tile throughout the rest of the house. The outdated texture on all of the walls will be replaced with new texture and paint to give the house some new life. Unfortunately, the baseboards and trim are all painted the same color as the walls (which in some rooms means pink, peach or blue). All of the woodwork will be painted a crisp white after we sand everything down. My arms already hurt from the little bit we've gotten done! We will be adding new lighting throughout the house using can lights, a chandelier in the dining room (directly above where our table will be placed), and ceiling fans in the bedrooms and living room. I know they're not the most glamorous fixtures, but it gets hot out here!

What was formerly the original living room (the room with the blue curtains) in the house will become our entryway/dining room. The house came with an eat-in kitchen, but it was so small that we could barely fit our little table in there. It also greatly blocked off the flow of traffic to the living room. This change will provide much more entertaining space for us!

The front room (now dining room) leads right into the kitchen, and it is also a reflection of the 70's. The gold kitchen will be gutted, and the cabinets will be re-purposed throughout Tim's workshop on the back of the house and in the utility room/pantry for extra storage. In addition, we will be closing off a door to the back patio from the kitchen (the door sits directly opposite from the stove) as well as the opening to the kitchen from the hall to make room for more cabinets and re-position some of the appliances. The current location of the refrigerator will be moved to where the door currently lives, and that portion of the wall (where the fridge is in the picture) will be torn out to create a more open feel to the room. Since we're tearing out some portions of walls, we figured we'd open up the flow to the living room a bit more and tear out part of the walls dividing the entry to these two rooms. The furdown (sp?) will be torn down to open up the space after the vent work is moved into the ceiling to create a more open feel to the kitchen. We will also be creating a little bar area at the end of the cabinets on the wall with the door, and thankfully, there will be NO cabinet above it!

If you turn around in our kitchen, you look directly into our utility room. This furnished the washer, dryer, hot water heater & water softener for the whole home. Tim has been working his incredible plumbing skills to move the hot water heater & water softener to the garage (just on the other side of the wall). In addition to all of this, he is changing out our water heater to a tankless system and installing a whole house water filter. This will allow us to turn the other side of the room into a pantry by moving the existing storage to the adjacent wall. I'm really excited about this! Much change has already taken place, and I'll try to post pictures later. Tim has been doing some pretty incredible work in there already!

The last room you walk into in this section will be my favorite in the house once it is done...the living room. We have removed all of the wood paneling from the room, taken out the brass fireplace insert, will be scraping all of the popcorn ceiling off, and will give some updates to the window treatments. We are so fortunate to have a HUGE window in the living room that makes quite a statement. However, we're going to have to replace it because it has a crack in some of the glass and isn't energy efficient at all (only one pane of glass...yikes!). We obviously are living in denial about this until we absolutely have to because it is a big window to replace! In addition, Tim has already removed a gas wall heating unit, capped the gas line and patched the hole. The mantle will be sanded and stained a rich espresso color, and the door fronts on the cabinets will be removed to create more of a bookshelf/built-in feel. We haven't figured out if we will stain or paint the shelves, but it will change! I cannot wait for us to get more progress on this room already!

For more pictures, you can check out the album on my facebook page. Hope you enjoy!

Here We Go...

Tim and I have been on a whirlwind adventure of moving to Artesia, NM from Fort Smith, AR where we have worked with students. We are slowly getting settled into the town, and are loving it. In addition to all of this life change, we are working on remodeling our very first home. It definitely has come straight from the 70's, but we are so excited about the great potential for our home. More important than anything, we want our home to be a tool for ministry. We pray that as we work on this home, it will be a safe place for people to stay, a welcoming environment for people to come, and a place of connection, both with students and with the people we meet out here. What a blessing that we just get to add to the group of people we love out here! Join us on this crazy journey as we turn our lives upside-down!