Makeover or Overhaul

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When our family moved into this old house in 2004, one of the bathrooms was a mess. We have been dreaming of gutting it for years. The time has come.

Ray and I enjoy meeting other folks who serve homeschooling families and who travel to one homeschool convention after another each spring and summer. Last summer we became closer friends with a couple we have known for a dozen years or more. I’ll call them Mike and Jenny.

When we found out that Mike does home repairs in the fall and winter, we told him about our bathroom. Amazingly, he agreed to come anyway.

Mike and Jenny arrived a week ago Saturday. Ray and I have been enjoying them tremendously. We have so much in common–we are about the same age; we homeschooled our children; we are grandparents.

Even though I have put my foot in my mouth a few times, Jenny  is graciously loving us anyway. Even though this has turned out to be one of Mike’s most challenging projects ever, Mike still loves us, too.

Surprise has been the key word during this project. Some of them have been pleasant ones–“Hey, there’s tongue and groove under those ugly ceiling tiles!”

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Others have been more challenging–“Look how much fun termites used to have under this floor!” and “Why do those pipes go straight down into the dirt?”

This is obviously not the first time someone has decided to improve this old bathroom. When we moved in, the walls were covered with paneling that had been painted. In some places the paint was peeling.. My temporary solution a few years back was to cover up the peeling parts with wallpaper and to paint the parts that weren’t peeling.

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When Mike took that painted and wallpapered paneling off, he found evidence of previous improvements. It had been papered five times before! You can see four of them in this picture.

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I’m particularly fond of the swans.

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We endured the bathroom when the main problem was the soft spot in the floor. We endured it when the commode was a challenge to flush. When the sink started stopping up, too, I washed my hands in the bathtub; but when the bathtub started stopping up, too, and the gallon of stuff the plumber sold us didn’t take care of it, we decided not to spend another penny on that bathroom until the job could be done right. That’s when Mike came to our rescue.

Sometimes our problems are small and we just need a new makeover. At other times we need a major overhaul. God cares about the little problems and the big ones and He is powerful enough to take on them all.

Therefore humble yourselves
under the mighty hand of God,
that He may exalt you at the proper time,
casting all your anxiety on Him,
because He cares for you.
1 Peter 5:6-7

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