Posts Tagged ‘house’

Top 10 Ways Your House Falls Apart

Sunday, July 22nd, 2012

house-falls-apart

I’ve been thinking about this Top 10 humorous blog post for months now, dissatisfied with it, wanting to throw it in the trash. It was in my “Unfinished Blog Posts” folder, just rotting there. My problem was that after reading it, I wanted to cry rather than laugh:

  1. Turning the handle to flush the toilet is like playing on a Vegas slot machine. You never know when an out-of-control cascade will come out of the thing. Looking around helplessly, you find it impossible to keep the pot from dispensing its contents all over the floor.
  2. The paint on the outside of your house is chipping. It has needed a coat of paint for years now. It looks like an abandoned ghost town, except for the children running around.
  3. You try to open a drawer, only to have the handle come off in your hand.
  4. Your kid hangs like a monkey from your towel rack, and the bar falls on the floor with a clang. It’s still on the floor months later, because you haven’t gotten around to re-hanging it.
  5. The faucet is constantly dripping. There’s a trick to shutting it off, you know. As you’re falling asleep, you incorporate the dripping into a rhythm so that it’s not so irritating.
  6. The sprinkler system leaks every spring, no matter how much you empty it before winter. Checking it for leaks is like one of those games at a carnival that sprays water unexpectedly at you when you think nothing is happening.
  7. The instruction booklet on repairing appliances was written by someone who obviously doesn’t speak fluent English. How do you make heads or tails out of the abrupt, unintelligible sentences?
  8. The remote control for the garage has to be disconnected from the sunshade flap and aimed out the window to get the garage door to open. It’s like the remote control is a gun, and your house won’t let you in unless held at gunpoint.
  9. The cream carpeting has so many stains that your guests naturally assume you have a polka-dotted carpet. Or they ask if you’re still potty training.
  10. The spin cycle on the washing machine goes “ka-clunk, ka-clunk, ka-clunk” and sounds like it’s going to fall apart any minute. You never know when one of your appliances is going to explode. (Refer to the Exploded Cauliflower post to hear how one of my appliances exploded.)

Old Deck/New Deck

Friday, August 13th, 2010

rotten-deckI am so amazed by God. Earlier this year my husband and I looked out onto our rotten deck and realized that it had to go. Ten years ago when we moved into our house, the inspector told us that we needed to replace the deck. For ten years we haven’t had the money. My husband kept wanting to smash it to pieces, but I knew that it would be a worse eyesore to have nothing. I was using that deck. I’m ashamed to say that I told him, “Just wait ’til someone falls through. Then we’ll replace it.” I was stalling for time. I didn’t want to go into debt for something that was optional.

old-deckWhen this spring came, I saw how awful it was. I had planned to teach a poetry class and film it outside, but alas! The deck looked so putrid that I had to cancel the class before I even announced it. It was dangerous. My husband started chopping the deck to pieces, and we burned it all in our fireplace little by little during the spring. It was nice to have firewood. The wood burned so quickly, I had to keep throwing on more wood just to keep the fire burning.

I had no idea how we were going to pay for the deck, but I thought that at least the hideous thing would be gone. At the worst, there would be a sheer drop off, and no one would be able to go out into the back yard to play.

new-deckA check suddenly arrived in the mail from a relative who had no idea we were replacing our deck. She just decided to give us what she called “early inheritance money.” I had prayed that God would somehow send us the money we needed for the deck, and God certainly answered that prayer. I felt all choked up and ready to cry from gratitude.

My husband designed the deck with benches and planters, in a style that I had never seen before. We hired a Christian handyman to go ahead and begin the work. The entire deck was built while my husband was on a missions trip to the Czech Republic. On the day my husband came back, before going to the airport to pick him up, I planted flowers that were on sale, since it was so late in the summer. It looked beautiful.

I sometimes go out there with a cup of coffee to read my Bible and pray in the morning. God gave me that deck. My husband worked hard to remove tnew-deck-2he old deck, and he was creative to design a deck that I absolutely love. My husband never ceases to amaze me, when I see more good qualities that I haven’t seen before. He would have built the deck himself, but for the lack of time and energy. Even though my husband is a computer programmer, he has done nearly all the renovations in our house himself. I just wish our house would stop falling apart so that my husband could get some rest!