House Hunters

Sorry, I forgot to give notice of this sooner. Our St. Louis rehab is going to be on House Hunters tonight. You can check the website for time in your area. It will also be re-aired on Valentines Day.

Face "lift"

Literally, this thing was lifted (by Mike, my dad, and a handy little rented jack) and stablized and freshened up on the inside. What used to be an albatross of a two story back porch (that at one time I hoped would just blow off the back of the house so we could get the insurance money), is now a great little mud room and a sweet, breezy porch for morning coffee and reading (which I actually did for the first time this morning during Sesame Street). I know I am going to wish I took better pictures and posted them in better order. But the truth is I am misspelling about ever other word right now as it is and I just want to get what I have up here before too much time passes.
BEFORE

AFTER

There is a nice crisp (a word I picked up from our realtor), white baseboard down now and the porch upstairs has a cute table and chairs...and a large red truck...the kids need a place to enjoy their coffee too.

The website for the house should be up by tonight - the house officially went on the market today. You can see better pictures of all this on there.

Shutter, No Shutter

Would you put shutters on this house? Keep in mind only one other house on the block has shutters and it looks dumb (It might be because the shutters are really too small, but...). I can take some more pictures of other houses on the block if that would help.

A couple more

Isaiah 58:12
"Some of you will rebuild the deserted ruins of your cities. Then you will be known as a rebuilder of walls and a restorer of homes."

For Sale (in about a year)

Mike took some pictures of our house the other day. We are trying to rent it out for the summer. I was so encouraged by the pictures. This house has been a bit of an albatross of blessing - if I can make up a phrase (why not, I've done it all my life). Meriam Webster defines albatross as "something that causes persistent deep concern or anxiety." (I had to look it up because I wasn't sure I spelled it correctly.) As we have been challenged to cast our concern and anxiety on the Lord and trust in his provision we have been blessed. In many ways it feels as though he has taken a sickle to our lives to attack sin and purify us. It has been humbling and strengthening.

























































P.S. The primary definition for albatross is "any of a family of large web-footed seabirds that have long slender wings, are excellent gliders, and include large seabirds." Hmm.

Vive la differaannz

Here are a couple of long over due house pictures. I would love to put together a set of before and after pictures for the blog at some point, but I just don't know if I will ever have enough time to search through all the electronic picture files and get that organized. This project sure does deserve it though. I wish all the improvements were as easy as a coat of paint - can you believe how nasty those baseboards were? Note the crooked wall outlet - every outlet in our dining room leans to the right???
This is the wall we cut out to join the up and downstairs. You can see the old floors that Mike sanded and refinished and the new entry way he laid. The treads on the stairs have been refinished and we have painted the front part (don't know what you call that) since this picture was taken. All the baseboards are new too. Mike found a local wood mill that makes a lot of trim to match the old stuff. There should be a bannister in between the yahoos in this picture and the camera in another couple of weeks.
This was behind some of the baseboards Mike ripped out in the dining room. I had imagined a million times what the wall paper in this room once looked like (you could tell that there had been wall paper painted over). This is exactly what I had imagined. We also found an old baseball card and a diving card back there.
This is looking out of the front living room into the other foyer. To the left is the second front door. To the right is the dining room.