Restoration Rescue

I don’t know about you, but I know that I am a procrastinator at heart. Especially regarding things that make me feel overwhelmed or not knowing where to begin. For several years now, we have faithfully filed an extension for our annual taxes. This provides me with several additional months with which to procrastinate in getting all my tax info together. It would be much healthier to just grab the bull by the horns and get the dreaded work done. Instead I experience the pangs of panic in the wee hours of the night, when everything seems so much more dramatic and dreadful.

Our house was becoming one of these dreaded projects. At 25+ years of age, our house needed some serious repair and would require substantial funds ($). Our cedar siding needed a good stain/paint job. Some boards needed to be replaced. The wood peckers had taken a liking to the neighboring homes. We had received a few quotes to have our roof replaced. A metal roofing company had given us a quote of $45,000 or some crazy amount. Many of our big beautiful windows had lost their seal. A fog developed between the panes of glass and mold around the window edges. Our big bay window could have cost well over $5000 in itself. Our furnace and air conditioner were original to the house. It was only a matter of time for those! The most obvious project was our wrap around deck. We had a large deck outside our kitchen and dining area. It also wrapped around the back side of the house and had stairways leading down into the wooded ravine. The wood had been in poor shape when we bought the house 7 years earlier, although not obvious at the time. After staining the wood and watching huge sections peel up, we realized it was not just a cosmetic problem. Then the hand rails started rotting and coming apart. Frequently we had to scold the kids and their friends for running full speed across a deck that probably was no longer safe. The summer before the fire, we began the process of pulling up the nails on the boards. We planned to use the existing boards as a template to cut the new lumber. Somehow we never fully took on the challenge of buying the lumber and recruiting the labor to get the deck rebuilt.

On Memorial Day weekend of 2009, we had a family gathering at our house and ended up moving the party to the garage and driveway, because of our dissected deck situation. Turns out, that was the last party we held at our house. The following Friday, the kids had a half day of school. I spent the afternoon with the boys working around the yard and doing some projects. Bennett and I replaced our mailbox feeling a sense of accomplishment. The mailbox had been missing the door for many months! The mail had been getting snowed on and rained on! We felt good about finally taking care of that project and we also beautified the flower bed in the front yard with a fancy new bird feeder and some hanging baskets. It looked really nice.

The next morning we had our world shaken. We stood as a family, watching our house go up in flames, from across the street. A mixture of horror, dread, disbelief, confusion . . . all these things and more running through our heads. “But we just replaced the mailbox!” “I guess it is good that we didn’t put all that time and money in all the repairs.” “I bet the firemen almost killed themselves when they stepped up on the deck. I hope nobody got hurt on our crazy deck.”

In the days following the fire we talked about a feeling of relief of not having all the repair projects hanging over our heads. It was a burden lifted. A small silver lining.