Far too high a price

28th Jan

At first I was quite concerned that the asbestos removal was going to blow my budget, I got a quote of $800.00 just to do an inspection to identify what definitely contained asbestos and what did not. I knew there would be a bit of asbestos in the house but I didn't realise how much and I didn't realise that I would have to remove so much. when I had a good look around the place I found the following areas I thought might well be asbestos:

- The entire bathroom and toilet room walls,
- All the laundry walls,
- The eaves,
- The kitchen splash back and some of the 'wet wall',
- And the kitchen and dining room vinyl flooring
(Also a small piece screwed to the lounge room ceiling someone was trying to do a good job patching a hole).

- The eaves will stay as they are not being disturbed and would be very expensive to completely removed and replaced.
- The laundry only needs one wall removed as it is not being disturbed but someone has kicked a large hole through the one wall to gain access to the kitchen
- The kitchen splash back will be replaced as I want to re-tile the splash back but the wet wall I will leave in place as I want to re use the cupboard units so I will re-paint so that it is sealed and meets code.
- The bathroom all needs to come out
- And finally the flooring all needs to come out as I want to polish up the boards.

Once I realised how expensive it was to get the proper report done I decided just to make the decision myself that it was asbestos and have everything I wanted gone taken out professionally. I was able to get a few guys to look at it and got a good price from a very helpful contractor who agreed to come and remove it all the very next day. Although I had to work all day I was able to meet him a 6:00am to open up and run through it all again and then my brother James was able to go out and lock up when they were finished. Thanks James, all the asbestos that was going to cause some grief is gone!

What does concern me a little though is that while I have spent, what turned out to be quite a reasonable amount of money employing professionals to get rid of the necessary asbestos so as not to risk my lungs: there were big holes kicked right through a couple of asbestos walls in the bathroom and laundry. When it really boils down to it, it's incredibly sad to think that in 30, 40 even 50 years if there are a handful of people from around here fighting mesothelioma; I may have found the kids who ruffed up my house and they may be paying far too high a price for a mistake they made before they had any idea what it would cost.

Have a seat ... because loneliness won't do!

23rd

I watched a film the other night with a few mates and it really made me think, in fact most of the next couple of days it's was turning over in my head. When stripped back to its bones what the movie was commenting on was loneliness and specifically every Christians ability to do something about it for everyone around them. So often its easy just to live our lives for ourselves, trying to be good people but never giving a second thought to people around us who are struggling with life. It is our job to love because God first loved us; God loves everyone and therefore we should love everyone and with that in mind you realize that for people to be stuck in loneliness just won't do.

For the last few years I have felt that my home (where ever it is) must be a safe place and a place were anyone who might need it is welcome. It's a nice thought and while my house is slowly getting to the point where it will be livable it is still empty and it is hard to make anyone feel welcome when there is nowhere for them to sit, nowhere to eat & nowhere to sleep.

As you may have guessed I am now paying off a house and renovating a house which together cost quite a bit of money, unfortunately buying a whole bunch of nice new furniture is out of the question and I'm not a huge fan of cheap plastic furniture so I headed to the streets and lucky for me it's the council clean up season:

the first thing I found (actually just before Christmas) was a dinning table; its probably 30 something years old, its solid and in my opinion its got some character. In my mind I'd have to spend a lot of money to get anything better and this was completely free.       
   

Next I found a couple of interesting Chairs around the streets near my parents place, these two seats are actually the first two pieces of furniture in my house.

And more lately I've found two more cool chairs on the way home from life group last week.

On the afternoon of Sunday the 23rd me and James (my brother) headed over Frenches Forest way after he spotted some dining chairs on his way to a party the night before, we found them and picked them up. if you have a good look you'll see that the dinning chairs have the same legs as the table pretty cool hey!

The next few hours we spent picking up a couple sets of draws, a coffee table, a small cupboard and more chairs.

As you may have thought; none of these chairs match or even look good on their own. I will be teaching myself how to re-upholster very soon, fingers crossed it goes well. They all look a bit off now but give me some time and I reckon they'll all look pretty good and should be very comfortable for anyone who ends up at my place ... for what ever reason & I pray that God will use them. 

A bit of strig and a bit of board

22nd Jan 2011

So quick tip: if your ever using a trailer to transport some materials back to your house and some guy at Bunnings gives you a few meters of skinny white string to secure it... don't just settle for that; get some more rope and make sure nothing is going to move. Learning this lesson half way home when you turn a corner and almost lose your load is not worth the worry.

It was time to plasterboard at my place, I went to Bunnings and I got myself 13 new sheets of plasterboards and I drove it home, I practiced my trailer skills reversing it up to my back porch and we unloaded the sheets into my lounge room. In an earlier post I spoke about things getting worse before they got better, now finally it was time for things to start getting better.

Each sheet needs to be glued and then nailed into position but not before being cut to fit its final position. I have never really done any plaster boarding before (with the exception of patching a few small dings) so this was quite interesting and fairly challenging. I will keep you up to date in future posts on how well we've pulled it off, I'm a little concerned that once we've set and sanded, we will find that the walls look fairly uneven, fingers crossed it all works fine!

Putting up the new plasterboard made one thing very clear; I spoke in an earlier post about cutting away the rubbish old plasterboard to make way for the new and how the same principle can apply to making a change in your life. There were several situations where I had tried to cut away as little of the old plaster board as possible; thinking I can just fit the new board around the old and save on materials, this did not work as well as I had hoped. I found myself going back and cutting away more of the old board because the other way just wasn't going to happen. Often I catch myself making the same mistake as a person and as a Christian: there are times when I know I have to cut parts of myself out to make way for something better. I need to get rid of a habit or an attitude, sometimes a temptation. Even though God makes it clear I need to get rid of it I think to myself 'well this bit around the edge is pretty good I'll keep that bit, Gods new thing can easy fit in around that' or 'I need to stop that habit but the occasional dabble would be fine as long as I don't get too involved again' It’s usually the case, as with the plasterboard that trying to make the new piece fit around the remaining old bits is even more trouble than it would have been to get rid of them and ends up making a huge mess. That’s what I’ve found anyway! 

Once again a big thanks to Mum who always seems to get stuck with the worst jobs, I want to re-use most of the original skirting and trim once the new plasterboard is in, unfortunately having pulled them all off they now need to be cleaned up and have all the nails removed. An annoying job done well!

Fear

12th Jan 2011

It is very clear now that keeping this blog up to date is going to be hard; the work I am about to talk about hapened on the 12th of January and as it is now the 2nd of Fed I am actually getting close to a month behind. Not only have I found that its been hard to find time to blog, I have also been finding it hard to find time to physically do the work on the house. While the house is not ready to live in it is not really possible to do much work during the week, I work till 6 or 7 and then the additional drive out there plus the trip home to sleep would give me very little time to actually work. Most of my Sundays are full so this leaves Saturdays which have had to do, even Saturday are not always available. My comitment to Kids camp meant that I pretty much lost an entire week, although thankfuly due to my Mum graciously giving up more of her time I was able to have a security alarm installed while I was away.

When I was thinking about the works that would need to be done to the house to get it 'back on its feet' so to speak, an alarm system didn't even occur to me. When I spoke to the realestate agent about resale however, the first things he said were a security alarm and an air conditioning unit. It’s fair enough air conditioning is a luxury on everyone’s wish list when their looking for a home these days. On the other hand an alarm is not a luxury, it’s not a convenience in fact if anything it’s an inconvenience. I’ll bet if you asked a bunch of people ‘what’s one thing you would really like if money was no object?’ no one would say a security alarm. A security alarm is only in demand (especially in this particular area) because of Fear. Unfortunately Fear has a huge impact on this type of an area; it's the reason for its bad reputation and also the main contributing factor towards living up to it. It's Fear that keeps a lot of good people out of the area and it's Fear that forces a lot of good people who live there to keep to themselves and ignore what’s going on around them.

  

I realize that having detailed how my house was trashed, broken into and set on fire in the preceding posts, it might seem strange for me to imply that these Fears are unnecessary. Actually more recently my mother’s handbag was even stolen right out of her car while it was in my backyard just outside my backdoor. But may I make two points:

-          Firstly I never said that the Fears were unfounded, just unfortunate. 

   

-          And secondly everything I have encountered thus far I am relatively sure is the work of kids, maybe in their early teens, perhaps stuck in a bad cycle, probably under the influence of some questionable friends and various substances (that is if the bottles and bongs that I’ve cleaned up paint an accurate picture).

It’s obvious that these kids need something and I am fairly confident in saying that what they need is not; for us to Fear them. In my first blog I spoke about redeeming a home in the hope that I could also point in the direction of someone who can redeem souls, It would be great if these same kids came back and saw where I was pointing. It would be great if what I offered them was not Fear but a hand in taking the first steps towards life and life in all its fullness.

I now have a house with a new hardwired alarm system which I got for a good price due to a deal that was going at the right time, including 12 months free back to base monitoring! I also have a new prayer; That God will use this house as a sign post to redemption, as a wise woman (you know who you are) once said; a light house in a dark place.