Like my Father
Order out of chaos
What did I do?! p.s. there is ONE tool in my tool belt - heheh
I’m going to switch gears for my post today and talk a little about myself. When we were looking for a house, my husband and I wanted as much land as we could get. This meant that we ended up buying a half-acre property north of the Twin Cities with a FIXER-UPPER house. The first thing we did was rip out all the disgusting old carpets and put in new flooring. We spent two weeks living outside while we renovated our kitchen - which I think looks amazing now. All of this was labor and time intensive. It was pretty much all there was in life while we were doing these projects and my husband was getting tired of DIY… BUT, the bathroom in our house (the only one) needed a little make-over, I felt. So, I decided to take out the old tile flooring and wall coverings and put in new luxury vinyl flooring and wallpaper.
I promised my husband that I would do everything on my own.
Well, as anyone who is familiar with DIY projects in fixer-upper houses is aware, it’s just not going to be that simple.
In removing the tiles from the floors and walls, I discovered that our drywall had very bad water damage. I discovered that the previous owners had put a wrap over the old bathtub (with tiled wall) area and had simply covered what had been there before - and what was there before was rotting. In taking the bathtub wrap off, I found a cast-iron bathtub underneath - and underneath that, the subfloor was rotted through - a literal hole under the bathtub (it was, thankfully, held up by a brace on the wall studs).
And I had promised my husband I would do it myself.
So, I spent a very long time breaking the cast iron tub into pieces so I could carry it out of the bathroom. I borrowed my neighbors hacksaw and cut out the rotten subfloor and added a few joists for extra support and put in the new subfloor. I watched MANY youtube videos on drywalling, took out the rotten drywall and found mice nests in the insulation. I removed the icky insulation and put in new and then proceeded to drywall the whole bathroom. I bought a new bathtub and wall panel unit and installed it - plumbing included -
I might have humbly asked my husband for help a few times during this process…
We installed a new toilet and I created a bathroom vanity by adding a sink to an antique dresser. Finally, it was time to put in the new flooring and cover the walls… which was my original project. I leveled the floor (poorly, unfortunately, I had to redo it later), installed the new flooring, painted the walls and then covered them in wallpaper… and finally, my husband installed the trim, which, frankly, had almost done me in. The trim!
Because this was our only bathroom, we did not always have a toilet or showers accessible… We kept a bucket for when the plumbing was disconnected (I’ll let you connect the dots) and took showers at the YMCA when the bathtub was being dismantled and re-mantled.
My husband, as you can imagine, was thrilled…
I will tell you, despite the discomfort during this project, I felt so much joy. I felt like I was doing the work of God. I was taking something broken, rotted, and poorly executed - chaotic - and making something that was whole, beautiful and orderly. I was copying my father in a very small and insignificant way. Kind of like this Jason Upton song:
In our lives, in our world, God takes the messes, the rot, and what is wrong, dismantles and cleans it, and makes it whole and beautiful - and as the original creator, he does it perfectly. He is making all things new (Revelation 21:5).
My husband appreciates our new bathroom (particularly the structural fixes) and thankfully, still loves me too. I’m not sure if my bathroom remodeling felt like worship to him, but I do know that my husband appreciates when things are done well and right, something that we can trust God to do much better than either of us.
Taking off the bathtub wrap
Getting out the bathtub. This was HEAVY.
New subfloor for under the bathtub!
New tub and wall panels.
In the home stretch…
