It’s been a very busy and productive weekend ’round here. We’ve been pressing on with the outside of the house. On Friday my house smelled like a pumpkin spice candle, paint, and saw dust! It was a lovely combination.
There were two guys here installing new doors.
The one pictured here was a jokester. He would say things like, “Mam’, are you going for the castle look?” And then he would snicker and laugh. I didn’t exactly know how to respond to a question like that. He was referring to my new lights; I really didn’t think they “castle-ish” but apparently he did. Anyway, they did their job and got the doors in and they are SO much better than the originals.
If anything is “castle-ish”, I would say it would be our old doors and hardware. Of course, he went on and on about how much he liked them! 🙂
We had the same 4-lite door installed at our side door too.
Since these were taken on Friday, the doors have been painted and the hardware installed.
A few weeks ago the front of our house looked more like this.
It had a very “original to the house” look. The house has had 2 additions and in both additions the previous owners apparently couldn’t match the brick. The garage was the worst… it was very peach and the rest of the house had black bricks in it.
You can see clearly in this picture of Rover that the garage brick {on R} was very different from the house brick {behind Rover}.
Painting the house has been on the agenda for 2 years and I’m thrilled that it’s now complete and much more uniform.
Out front, Justin used the tractor to remove the iron handrail you see here behind John Martin {sniff sniff… Kipper please come back!}.
Once the railing was down we added a step. My sister-in-law conveniently had the bricks in her backyard! Score!
The new step will be painted tomorrow.
I’ve been torturing myself over the window mullions. They were all “light gold” which was the original color of the trim. I haven’t worked on any of the ones you see above yet but in the last few days I’ve been slaving over the ones below. My goal was for the “outside” side {the side that faces the window glass} of the mullions to be brown to match the trim and keep the other 3 sides white… did you know such an endeavor could drive a woman to drink?
Dear friends, it took me 4 hours to tape off the window mullions in the center bay window alone. 4 hours. That was with Rover’s help. Without his help the other bay window {there’s another one identical to this one} took 3.5 hours to tape off. But I am done, with both big windows and the windows adjacent {which in this picture haven’t been installed yet}. For those of you who may have no idea what I’m talking about, those brown lines above are “window mullions” and they pop out in one giant, fragile, wooden grate. And I painted one side, trying my very hardest not to get brown paint on the inside side because our trim inside the house is white, not brown. And when I was done with these bay windows I broke into Handel’s Messiah with lots of loud “Halleluiahs”!
I’ll be back soon with sources, paint colors, etc.
While we’re on the topic of house renovations… do any of you get a channel called DIY Network? I probably should have asked sooner because they’ve already aired a show twice called Bathtastic that features our ORANGE BATHROOM renovation. It will be on one more time: Friday, Sept. 18 at 9:30 pm and 1:30 am! The show is titled “Old Hollywood!” Isn’t that perfect for that orange bathroom? Anyway, if you get the channel {we don’t}, tune in. Has anyone happened to see it yet?
Now, I’m going to make a very drastic subject change to prayer. From house renovating to PRAYER… just like that. Our Associate Pastor is teaching our Sunday school class and going through a book called A Praying Life . I don’t have the book {yet} but his lesson this morning was on “Learning to Be Helpless”. Basically Paul Miller {the author} says that prayer is taking our helplessness to Jesus, admiting that we cannot fix things on our own. I know my prayer life suffers because so often I am not weak before the Father. Instead of coming to him in weakness and helplessness I either don’t come to him at all or ask for “help to keep it all together” when in reality I have nothing together at all. He says that strong Christians pray more not because they’re more disciplined but because they more aware of and recognize their own weakness. Weakness is the channel that allows them to access grace. Edith Schaeffer {author and wife of Frances Schaeffer} was asked, “Who is the greatest Christian woman alive today?” She replied, “We don’t know her name. She is dying of cancer somewhere in a hospital in India.” Miller says, “I’m talking about that woman. Underneath her obedient life is a sense of helplessness. It has become part of her very nature… almost like breathing. Why? Because she is weak. She can feel her restless heart, her tendancy to compare herself to others. She is shocked at how jealousy can well up in her. She notices how easily the world gets its hooks into her. In short, she distrusts herself. When she looks at other people, she sees the same struggles. The world, the flesh and the devil are too much for her. The result? Her heart cries out to God in prayer. She needs Jesus.”
I need what this woman has, not the cancer and hospital bed in India. I want her sense of helplessness, I taste of it regularly but I don’t breathe it. Too often I trust myself. The lesson this morning was about praying, not blogging but I couldn’t help but think about what is my purpose in all of this? I think about it a lot. What makes me think that any of you actually care that I took my handrail down out front of my house or that I painted my brick because it didn’t match. In general, blogging does not provoke a poor spirit or a spirit of helplessness. I just want to be completely honest with you all that I struggle with this on a regular basis. I sit down to type a post and think is this for His glory or my own? And sometimes I can’t tell. But if I daily came here and told you how rotten I am, how I walk around in the world look at people, compare myself to others, judge others, get frustrated with my children and husband {and yell at them} it would be a very different blog. I guess, I always want to be clear that I am a big sinner, that my hope is in Christ, that in my own strength I can do nothing but I have a Savior who is bigger than my sinful self. I share my interests and hobbies with you and it is my prayer that my conversations will always be seasoned with salt…. that you can taste of the goodness of Christ and be encouraged.
And to once again change subjects … Marla will be here later this afternoon with the answers to your questions!