Mending Floor

31st December 2010 and the 3rd January 2011

Floors and walls; perform more or less the same duties and in my house both in need of some help. Mending wall is a poem by Robert frost discussing walls their fragility, their necessity and their drawbacks, 'something there is that does not love a wall' He questions whether or not we really need walls separating us. Frost grapels with the annual tradition of meeting with his neighbor and mending the wall between them, it is said 'good fences make good neighbors' Frost asks why? why, if they are good neighbors do they need fences? thinking about the same issue it strikes me as slightly sad that everything I have done so far at my house is either to keep the 'neighbors' out or fixing what they have damaged when they have gotten in.

On Friday the 31st I had my first visitor/helper (with the exception of immediate family) an old school friend Alex came out to have a look and give us a hand mending the floor. a patch in the lounge had been broken before I bought the place; I gather to give some kids access to the house.  there was also a larger patch of flooring in need of replacement in the back bedroom due to the fire described in an earlier post 'fire & water'

Let me take this opportunity to say a big thank you to Alex; I really appreciated your help my friend. anyway Friday was the day to fix the chard floor so first of all we had to rip up all the burnt boards, I had some photos of Alex demolishing my flooring but they all disappeared so I can't post them.  

 
 Once we had cleared the damaged timber and made the resulting whole neat and ready to take the new boards it was found that the new boards were of a slightly different width and therefore the final board had to be cut down to fit.

A smaller hole where the fire had damaged a larger area was able to be patched with of cuts salvaged from the rest of the flooring that was removed.

Here is a quick tip; its a good Idea to pre-drill the nails at the ends of the boards or anywhere else where there is a risk that the new boards might split.

As you can see the finished product is quite a different colour from the old timber floor, it has always been my intent to polish the floorboards throughout the house and while this would make it quite clear that repairs have been made I am still inclined to do it. I quite like the look of miss matched timbers, in my opinion they give the house some character and a history.there is a kind of honesty to this kind of exposed repairs that I find apealing. I like the thought that you can say you've had some trouble, you've taken a hit or two but your mended and back on the right path. I've heard a couple people say this kinda thing since I've been out here and if they can do it I reakon my house can pull it off too. If this kind of patching is done well I think it actually adds to the look of the room; lets hope potential buyers in the future agree!

Monday the 3rd

Monday was the new years public holiday, my last day off work and just enough time to patch the whole in the loungeroom floor and tidy up some more of the wall patching.

I started by talking about how walls and floors keep people out but the poem really talks about fences, walls between neighbous in a house while they do the same thin the also do so much more, my house now has a sturdy floor, in some ways a solid base. Now I can start building up from there.

The Straight and Narrow.

The 30th December

One of the obstacles I knew I would have to face with this property is the fact that due to its location and the fact that it has been empty for so many months it had become something of a thorough fair; half of Bidwill seems to cat through my front gate, down the side of my house and through my back yard into the back 'lane' so they don't have to walk an extra fifty meters (maybe a little more) to the next street on there way home from the pub, the school, the bus stop or where ever. Today I had a temporary construction fence put up to stop people, this will probably not make me the most popular new resident but it kinda had to be done.

Standing and looking at the hopefully now disused path worn through the grass of my front yard; I thought how often the right path is not the easiest. It seems that when you always try to make the right choice or do the right thing; more often then not you end up making more work for yourself, taking the more difficult road or just having to wait longer for what you really want. hopefully this fence I had erected this morning encourages people to take the right path home rather than the one through my yard and hopefully no one gets too annoyed at me for forcing them to walk the extra distance, hopefully they understand where I'm coming from, I know that there are a few paths I've walked down I wish someone had blocked off but I guess this life would not be the same without the freedom to make the wrong choice.

I also had a 4 cubic meter skip delivered this morning which we wasted no time in filling with all the rubbish that has been created cutting out the plasterboard and the garbage that was lying around in the house and backyard. We also did a bunch more patching 

It was a beautiful day and we got a fair bit of stuff done, again my whole family was out helping; things are starting to improve at my house.

 

By the way, just occurred to me that I've never posted a photo of the front of my house, so here is one:

Let there be light!

So I'm already well behind with keeping this up to date; time for a bit more catch up:

29th Dec 2010

Today I felt like I was back at work already I spent all the morning on the phone trying to get tradies out to fix the plumbing and the electricts (for anyone who's not sure thats what I do for a living except usually not with my own progects and usually with much bigger contracts). then I spent much of the afternoon running around getting paperwork together to set up a temporary construction quote set up and then returned to the house in the afternoon to start some plasterboard patching. A huge thanks to the whole family who worked right through  the day and finished heaps for me!

By the end of the day, I felt like I had done next to no actual work at all but the cutting out of gyprock was done, and we'd started to cut new pieces to fit the holes:

 
Mum, James and Davina had started sanding back the kitchen window frames and cupboards:

I have a working Toilet (of which we don't need a photo) and we have power & we have light!

It gets worse before it gets better.

28th Dec 2010

Well you'll be happy to know that this morning I arrived to find a house still securely locked up and free from any further vandalisum. As you have probably seen; my house is full of holes, infact when I'd been right through the house and checked every wall, turns out there were only two that didn't have at least one whole or some fire damage and one of these two 'undamaged' walls is the one that I want to rip out between the toilet and existing bathroom to make a more reasonable sized bathroom.Today was the day that we needed to start cutting out the plasterboard to make way for patching.

 

Now let me pause for a moment for a side note; as it turns out my little sister (big thanks to her for all the help so far) has developed something of a passion for kicking through gyprock so if anyone needs a hand with any such jobs, you know who to talk to!


Anyway as is often the case in life, when in a bad state often things get worse before they get better. when your driving the wrong way; you sometimes have turn off the right road completely to turn around, when you make a hard decision to; you often have to work even harder to make it a reality and when you want to patch holes in gyprock you have to make the holes even bigger so that they're right to take new plasterboard.  I'm pretty sure I'm about to steal an Idea of Lewis again but here goes anyway: It is a lot like the life of a new christian, or any christian realy; there are things in our lives, broken and damaged parts. sometimes it does seem like we are having to give up parts of ourselves when God wants to take them but in actuallity there is better to come, full unbroken life like full unbroken plasterboard in place of the old.

Here is my house full of even larger holes getting ready for its new life!

 

Also Today my mum and sister took the doors off the Kitchen so I can get them ready for their new look, it was a bit of a reality check to think about moving out to this place for a few month once its livable; there is quite a contrast between my kitchen and the one at home:

 

Life is about to change hey!

Fire & Water.

It has now been 6 or so days since I got the keys to my house & work is underway, I am already behind on my blogging so here is the story up to Monday:

Day two 24/12/10:

I arrived at the house the day after settlement to find that the previously closed doors were all open, and my bathroom had gone from this:

to this:

I became aware that there was a problem when stepping through the half open back door, rather than the unpleasant cruch of broken glass beneath my feet I could hear gushing water. I made my way through the house to the bathroom and found it flooded with water cascading from the now mangled pipes. unfortunately when I got to the  water mains out the front to turn the water off I found that the mains valve had been damaged as well so that at best I could slow the water to a gentle stream. I began to feel uneasy like perhaps I had bitten off more than I could chew, but It was Christmas eve so I did what I could to try and keep the doors closed and I drove away to finish my Christmas shopping and get ready for Christmas.

Work begins (27/12/10)

Christmas and boxing day were great, they came and went and it was time to get to work on the house. it was mid morning, I was approaching my house and the first thing I saw was a shinny red fire engine blocking part of the road, my brother was in the car with me and I asked 'is that my house', I don't remember his reply but by that time it was pretty clear so I circled around and parked outside my back gate.  we walked up beside the house and into the front yard; the older of two cops saw us and in what I would call a slightly sarcastic tone asked if he could help us. at this point I wasn't sure how bad it was but I was presented with an opportunity to use a line I have always wanted to use; I shot a quick look over at the house and then back to him, 'I own the place' I said and I watched the expression on the officers face change.

The damage to the building wasn't too bad, the back bedroom was the only room affected and as the following photos show it wasn't wide spread;

Before:

 
After:

We had spoken to the cops and fire fighters had given the all clear, we looked around the house and then got to work. I got up on the roof and cleaned out the gutters, a job apparently neglected for far too long. Looking out across Bidwill I will admit that I was beginning to wish I'd bought a house somewhere else, the police told me that unless I got someone staying in the house ASAP there was no chance that the fire would be the last of the damage. They were not very positive, in fact they were quite negative about the area. there was something almost hateful in their tones as the spoke about the kids in the area. I was sitting on the roof scooping muck out of the gutters thinking the mornings events over and a voice came from below; some guy I had never met before was offering to have a go at fixing the water, turns out he was unable to but he showed us how to drain the water through an outside tap so that it stopped running into the Bathroom. A small part of my faith was restored by this anonymous  stranger in a fluorescent yellow tradesman shirt. Later My new next door neighbor offered to make me up some 'private property, Keep out' signs, I politely declined his offer but I can honestly say it was the first time has ever offered to do that for me.

After this excitement the rest of the day was spent tidying up the house (broken glass etc) and securing all the windows and doors properly.

I decided to use aluminum angle to reinforce the door jambs that have been kicked in repeatedly and now appeared to have very little strength left to give. it was a case of temporary bolt locks and padlocks to round out our current security solution.

My family had spent the day out helping with variouse jobs and My mother worked all day getting the whole place a lot tidyer, towards the end of the day she and my brother were blocking a hole in the floor when she tripped and knocked a large piece of plasterboard out of the already extencively damaged walls, this is mum holding her handy work;

Thanks Mum!

My House

'If we really think that home is elsewhere and that this life is a 'wandering to find home' why should we not look forward to the arrival?'

C. S. Lewis

A home is a dwelling place, a retreat, the place from where we come, a place where we belong. C. S. Lewis knew that our real home is not a place on this earth but rather in heaven. Truly our home is not a place that has been built  to suit our earthly needs but a place where we were made to be; so that we might live with our maker. Our homes here should therefore reflect this; a home or at least a good home should be a safe place, a refuge, a place of comfort, of belonging, freedom, relaxation even a place to hide when the world gets too much.Our homes on earth should give us a picture of this asspect of heaven and although even at best it would be only a glimps it is a sad fact that many homes fall far short of this potential.

 While the majority of a home is the people that live in it, the house forms an integral part and in this blog I'm planing to record my journey as I try to turn a house back into a home, This is my house:

My house sits in a suburb known being undesirable, many of the houses there have seen better days and unfortunately some of the people I have met have not. My house was built bu the housing commission, I believe in the seventies; three bedrooms, a living room, a small kitchen and dinning area, small bathroom, separate toilet and a laundry. Since then it has been neglected and abused. I don't know its whole history but from a conversation with an elderly neighbor I know that it has been home to a number of families over the years, at least 4 or 5 and has recently stood empty for a 5 months or so. I think that in the last 5 months it has had to endure the most damage and now could be described as little more than a tired shell of a home.

Since I put in the winning bid at the auction just under a month ago ideas have been running through my head; images of what this home could be but as you can see there is work to be done. As I've mentioned; this blog will tell that story, but I am also very aware that no matter how nice a house is Lewis was right and our true home is elsewhere. It is my hope and prayer that God will use me as I go on this journey. I feel like this is where God wants me at the moment so I'm sure that in the process of redeeming this mistreated little home I will meet some people and it will be my aim to point them in the direction of someone who can redeem them.