Remember the back room of our house? The one with serious safety issues? The one missing a floor? This one? Yeah, that’s the one.
These days its transformation is almost complete. The joy room has come together beautifully thanks to my very talented and hardworking husband.
I’ll share pictures of the whole process soon, but for now, know that the dream of one day dancing across those floors is a reality.
When we bought our house, there was a room that looked like this:
An addition to the house, it had old, uglier than ugly linoleum, a mushroom/jellyfish randomly painted on the wall, a dangerous looking gas space heater, and a smell that photos don’t do justice.
But it had potential. Amazing potential. A brick wall, a nice sized closet, and a row of windows overlooking our massive (untended) backyard. Its future is our art/sewing/craft room. It will be a place where all three of us can give our creative spirits freedom.
We’re pros at changing the surfaces of our homes. Walls, floors, cabinets, countertops; we’ve done it all. We planned on scraping up the linoleum and if the floors beneath were salvageable, refinishing them; if not, then we’d put down some new wood floors. Pretty simple, right? Yep.
Except after a day of pulling up linoleum, the room looked like this:
Because when we tried to remove the linoleum, we discovered it was glued to plywood. So we pulled up the plywood. And then we started noticing how unlevel the floor seemed to be. Then we thought, why don’t we pull up one of these boards and see what it looks like underneath.
And now, here we are without a floor.
The support beams were barely holding up the room. Seriously, they weren’t touching. There was a half inch of space between each board with a single nail bridging the gap. And beneath those beams were piles of dirt and junk that instead of being cleaned out, had been sealed in.
What began as redecorating has become rebuilding.
As my husband labors away with crowbars and saws and hammers and nails, I think this room is an example of something bigger.
How often do we notice that some part of us, our compassion, our generosity, our budget, our patience, our hope, our faith, our health, needs a little cleaning up? We see how worn that part of our life is looking. We see the stains and the tears and the dirt. We smell the stench. And we decide to redecorate. How hard can it be?
All we need is a little spring cleaning. A retreat, a gym membership, a commitment to reading the Bible daily instead of weekly, a donation to a charity.
But once we get started, we discover that what we thought was a surface level issue goes much deeper. Splitting and splintering. Buckling and bowing. It’s an unstable structure. Pieces intended to strengthen are instead weakening. We see the places where we took shortcuts, the times we settled for good enough, the anger and the guilt and the sin that we swept under the foundation and built upon.
I have thought more than once, “Let’s just put the linoleum back. We’ll pretend like we haven’t seen any of this. Surely, if it lasted so long in this condition, it’ll make it a little longer.”
But why live that way? Why spend each day praying the facade holds?
I wonder how many of us tiptoe through an area of our lives because in our hearts we know it can’t support the weight of truth.
We never planned to rebuild a room of our house. Demolition is dirty. The physical labor is exhausting. Storing that room’s belongings elsewhere is inconvenient.
But it’s all worth it.
Because a day is coming when we won’t walk with caution. Knowing what’s beneath us, being confident in our foundation, we will dance recklessly across those floors.
I’ve been disconnected from all things computer related for days now. More by choice than force. We spent the entire weekend sanding down the original hardwood floors in our house. By Sunday afternoon, we had managed to prime three rooms in preparation for painting, and get all the floors down to the natural wood.
This week we both feel like we’re working two jobs. He is teaching during the day and then spending nights staining the floors. I am being a mom and packing during the days and then spending my evenings grading papers.
We are now completely aware of why companies charge thousands of dollars to refinish floors. It turns out that they are worth every single penny.
It is exhausting. We are exhausted. But in that exhaustion, we are so thankful that we have a house.
When I have a second to breathe (and not breathe in laundry, papers, paint, or wood stain) I’ll post some pics of the house.
We were going to spend the day dreaming about paint and fabrics and furniture to come,
but Abby had a few other ideas.
Like singing
and twirling
and climbing
and swinging
and basically being a kid.
Even my favorite house stands no chance against her.
We bought a house this weekend.
It is old.
It is beautiful.
It is charming.
It is unique.
It is ours.
Before buying it, I prayed for big things:
Walls.
Roof.
Yard.
God is so generous.
He took care of the big things.
And He gave us little things I didn’t dare ask for:
Fruit trees.
Flowers.
Chandeliers.
And because God knows my heart better than I do, He gave us this:
I would have been happy with a plain old key.
God doesn’t do plain.
He does spectacular.
He does abundance.
He does grace.
He does love.
And we love Him.
And we love our new house.
And our new key.
