Three Years and $30,000

 So teach us to number our days, that we may gain a heart of wisdom. (Psalm 90:12, NASB)

Between our 30^th and 31^st anniversaries my wife and I made two very important decisions.

The first took place on Mother’s Day in 2012. That was the day we decided to begin renovations on our 55 year old home. We commemorated the decision by hiring, that day, our son-in-law as project manager (a decision we’ve never once regretted) and then, 15 minutes later, allowing him to take out the walls separating the kitchen from the dining room. It was a rather informal event but not one that we hadn’t been prayerfully considering for many weeks.

I stood in the kitchen as the old paneling came down. And when the interior wall studs were exposed, and I could see through them my son-in-law’s 6-1/2 foot frame in the dining room, I knew we were committed.
At the time I remember telling my wife I thought this would be a “three years and $30,000” process. As of right now it’s been 3-1/2 years. Here’s our progress check list to date:

• Laundry room: done.
• New electrical panel and wiring: done (pretty much).
• New opening into the living room: done.
• Old carpet and tile: gone.
• Old living room and dining room furniture: gone (went out with the flooring).

Next up is gutting the bathroom. Of course all this is less progress than hoped. We now realize remodeling is going to take longer and cost more than first planned.

On the bright side, we’ve now got the empty space we need to create the changes. With that, we have no remodeling loans to worry about (we pay cash as we go). And so far, we’ve not yet spent near what I first predicted.

On the down side, progress has definitely slowed, especially over the last year. Unplanned expenses used up extra resources. And life, as always, has had a few surprises in store. I suffered a hernia sometime in the late spring. Not critical but requiring repair none the less. The injury slowed me down physically, as did the surgery in the fall. It was while we were planning for my time off and recovery that I remembered something interesting, something my wife and I hadn’t thought about since first purchasing our home in 1997. 

It seems the house and me were both “born” in the same year: 1957. And now, years later, we are both apparently in need of some work and maintenance, repairs and remodeling -- both inside and outside.

That realization lead to another: God has been putting me through a spiritual renovation. He’s been using the remodeling of my physical house to make spiritual repairs on His spiritual house (me). He’s making internal course corrections, attitude adjustments, and true spiritual fixes, not cosmetic makeovers.

This all seemed to start with that first Mother’s Day decision made by my wife and me to “fix things up around here” and to begin the process by taking out that first wall.

It was the removal of that first wall which led to our second important decision.