The last time I posted was August 5. Two and a half weeks later our lives changed in a pretty significant way.

On August 22, it was a Monday, I had a plumbing inspection scheduled. We’d started the apartment area, and I was trying to get the rough in inspections wrapped up because I had drywall scheduled for the following week. The only problem was, this plumbing inspector was different than who came out last year, and in that time they decided I could no longer use galvanized pipe in the showers. I’d been running all the plumbing with PEX, which is way better and easier to work with, but I assembled the shower with galvanized. That way I could put the valve, shower head, and the drop for the tub all together and just mount the whole assembly.

I didn’t pass that inspection on account of the galvanized pipe between the shower valve and the tub spout and shower head. He asked me to replace the pipe and call him back to come see it. These were the instructions that I promptly forgot as soon as I came upstairs.

The reason I forgot is because on August 22 Katie wasn’t feeling very well. In fact, she’d been not feeling well for a few days at that point. While I was in the basement with the inspector, unknown to me, she decided to take a pregnancy test so that she could get the negative result and set her mind at ease.

Well that obviously didn’t turn out like she expected.

At this point in the game, what’s one more, right? This year we sent our youngest to Kindergarten, our oldest biological child started college, and now biological baby #4 is on his way, and I’ll be honest that was definitely not the plan. I will also fully admit that maybe I set myself up for this when one of the very first things I said when we started this blog, one of the first things i said in the very first post was, “We are not pregnant.” Because that would have been absurd, right? Starting over at our age and with everything else we have going on?

Well. It’s happening pretty soon now. And we are honestly so excited and ready for this new adventure.

In terms of all of our other adventures, we are settling into something a little more stable in the house. We are not taking all the placements that we did last year, as some of those teens have moved out we have not moved new ones in. We are finishing up some of the projects in the basement while we are looking forward to our new baby arriving soon.

That’s not to say that we are giving up on our plans, far from it. It means that we are pressing ahead with the building plans for the small houses and making those happen as soon as possible. When we first began this journey we dreamed about providing space for youth who age out of foster care to land. A place where they could work on their life skills, employment, education. All of it in a safe space that they could call their own. We are still close to making those spaces a reality.

We’ve used the last couple of months to really nail down the site plan and what we want to do with the small houses, and we got a little help with that plan from the city. When we started making these plans, I researched the zoning requirements to find out what the restrictions were. For dwelling units in the city, a one bedroom house or apartment had to be a minimum of 850 sq ft. 850 is a fair bit bigger than what our needs are, so we decided to build 2 bedroom houses in order to maximize our space. An extra bedroom only adds 100 sq ft to the minimum size requirement, so we could accommodate 2 youth with 950 sq ft.

In October, the city made a change to the zoning ordinance in an attempt to make it easier and cheaper to provide housing in places where it is much needed. Now the minimum size of a one bedroom unit is only 550 sq ft. This means that instead of building a 2 bedroom house at close to 1000 sq ft, we can now build a duplex at almost the same size, with separate 1 bedroom dwelling units on each side.

I’ve been a little bit nervous about how the roommate situation was going to go out in those houses. Matching youth up, dealing with roommate issues and how each person would keep their own space clean, who puts the utilities in their name, all those were issues I’ve been thinking about. If youth have their own space to themselves, many of those questions have simpler answers.

The focus now is on clearing the hoops that the city has asked us to jump through so that we can begin building as soon as this spring. We are also drafting what that program is going to look like, because let me tell you we have learned a LOT over the course of this last yet.

But that’s a story for another post.

I’m sitting on my front porch this morning typing up a few thoughts. First among them is how much I really love our porch. I am so grateful for this quiet spot in the mornings, looking out on all the trees surrounding our house. It’s a place of respite and connection, sheltered from the sun and rain, a place we can sit and watch the kids ride bikes and play in the yard and driveway. (Even though the yard is still just a sand pit, but hey, low maintenance!). A front porch was really high on Katie’s list of wants for the design of this house, and I’m so glad it was.

We are coming through our first summer in the house, and boy has it been a memorable one. I’m not going to lie, it’s been Challenging – that’s with a capital C.

First a quick update on where things currently stand: We still have details to finish on our house (won’t we always), but the main floor living space is pretty much done, and one of the halves of the basement that we are finishing is pretty much done. We have 15 finished bedrooms and 6 finished bathrooms. We’ve started the construction on the “apartment” area on the other side of the basement where there will be 2 more bedrooms and one more bathroom. It is framed in and electrical is almost roughed in, I’m hoping to pick up the work on that this weekend and try to get through rough in down there soon so we can start drywall. After that side is done, we will have finished all the space we plan to finish. Considering we’ve been in the house less than a year, I think we’re moving very quickly on that.

We split our parcel into two parcels now. Our house sits on 3.5 acres, and in front of us is a 1.5 acre parcel. We finally just finished with the appraisal process with the bank, and big answer to prayer, the appraisal came back with enough value that the bank just signed off on that front parcel and cleared their lein. That’s big, because now that the bank cleared their interest in it we can begin the process of transferring ownership of that parcel to our non-profit. Once that is complete, we will be ready to actually start building the small houses.

I had hoped to be farther along by this point in the process of building the small houses, but honestly we’ve had some other challenges that have taken some of our attention and has given us a little bit of pause. We are still committed to the plan, we’re still committed to the property and the houses and all of that, but I’m not going to lie and say that we haven’t had some discussions that started out with, “Should we be doing this?”

This summer we jumped in to the whole point of this particular property and this particular journey, which is helping teens. We’ve had some teens through foster care and some aged out teens come to live with us.

We have had teens before, we have some experience in this area and have had some real challenges, but even so we have learned a lot this summer.

I won’t go into details or give you the full story. I’ll just say that we’ve had days of wanting to quit, we’ve had days of questioning our abilities, we’ve questioned ourselves and our plans more than once. We’ve called the police multiple times this summer, I think we are going to get to know our local officers pretty well before all this is done. We’ve dealt with substances we’d rather not have to deal with. We’ve tightened our rules and expectations. We’ve spent some late nights staying awake to supervise older kids. We have just reopened our foster care license only to have a licensing investigation immediately brought to our house by one of the kids. We’ve installed new security systems and cameras to better watch the house and the yard. In over 11 years of foster care, we’ve never had a run as tough as this last month or two has been.

And through it all we’ve asked the question, “Is this still worth it?”

I think that this summer is either going to make or break us. Either we don’t make it through and we close up shop and say, well it was a good idea but now we know why people don’t do this. OR we are going to be better prepared for the challenges of this next season because of the challenges we have faced in this one. Right now I”m leaning toward the latter.

Some other things we’ve seen this summer:
– Teens who have made really poor choices, but also take some first baby steps to taking ownership of them and try to grow from them
– Kids who have struggled to control their impulses, but have eventually found their way through to dealing with their consequences
– Kids who have wrestled with the chaos, but have also acknowledged the ways they are growing from it
– Friends who have showed up and been supports in tangible ways
– Kids who have taken positive steps toward their future, even if they are very small steps

I’ve seen some small moments, and sometimes you have to watch for them because otherwise you might miss them, where kids have demonstrated great empathy for one another. I’ve seem moments where kids stretched themselves to include another person who might otherwise be excluded, or acknowledge and support another person who needs extra grace and acceptance. I’ve seen small flashes of insight from a person who seems otherwise to be so lost and without perspective.

And there have been a few quiet moments sitting on my porch where I can reflect on some of the good and the bad. At the end of the day, sometimes that perspective is what it takes to keep going, so I’m taking the opportunity to write it down now so that I don’t forget.

This summer is shaping our future plans, for sure. I originally wanted to rent houses in a very hands-off kind of way, offering support where needed but not in an invasive kind of way. That’s probably not going to work the way I envision it. We’re going to need to be more involved, more directive, and a little more demanding. The youth who rent the houses are going to need to prove their abilities a little bit more and we’re going to need to be more involved until they do. For some that might take a long time.

Every kid who has come through this house has shaped the policy for those that follow. After this summer, we are not assuming anything.

I’m not complaining by any means, and I actually have rested some. We made a big push to get those basement bedrooms done, and we have done that now. At my last update we were just inquiring about having our drywall guy come and finish up the basement drywall more quickly.

Just a little interruption about drywall, because I’ve had this conversation with a few people now… unless you are doing a very small piece of a room or something, just don’t do drywall. Everyone thinks, Oh I’ll just save some money and do it myself. Yes, you CAN do it yourself, but unless you really enjoy it or are pretty quick with it you will also hate yourself for doing it yourself. It’s not worth it. If you are reading this right now and wondering, should I call the guy to do that drywall project I’ve been thinking of? Call the guy.

OK, my drywall came and in a week the rest of the basement was hung, mudded, and sanded, and I didn’t hate myself when it was done. His work looks 10 times better than mine, and it was over in a week. I wrote the check, and I will forever write this guy checks as long as he is willing to continue doing the drywall I need done. Well worth it. (And if you need a great drywall guy in the West Michigan area, let me know and I’ll hook you up with his number)

I kept pushing through to finish drop ceiling, flooring, and trim for most of the basement area that we are finishing. Once I got the bedrooms and basement living room area finished, I did take a break and that’s where it sits now. I still have a transitional area that needs flooring and ceiling, the stairs still need painting, and 1 bathroom is still unfinished. Once I can cross those items off my list, the second building permit will be complete and we can rest a little bit, right?

As we used to say back in the 80’s… NOT

We are already looking to the basement apartment area and the bedrooms and bathroom that are planned for that side of the house. Honestly, we could really use that space sooner than later, which I know sounds ridiculous, but no matter how many bedrooms we have we always think, “If we just had one or two more we could…”

Currently the house has 15 finished bedrooms and 5 finished bathrooms. There is one more bathroom that needs to be finished soon, that will bring us up to 6. Every time I say it’s a 15 bedroom, 6 bath ranch, I just think it sounds so absurd!

In terms of life and kids, we’ve had one teen move out and we have another moving in today. We will have another move in within a week or two most likely. We have taken another foster care placement since my last update also, which as of today brings us up to 15 total kids in the house. We are doing some doubling up of bedrooms, which we always planned on doing to some degree, but we are making space for kids who need some of those main floor bedrooms. If we could just get those apartment bedrooms going…

As we’ve slowed down working on the basement we have turned our attention to the outside. The plan is to build teen homes in the woods in front of our house, and we see no reason to wait on that. Currently I’m working on getting building plans together, splitting the front 1.5 acres into a separate parcel, clearing trees, and laying out house and driveway locations for those houses.

I intend to build the first of these houses this year. Through a generous and amazing matching gift offer and an end of the year giving project through our church, we’ve raised just over $100,000 already. I don’t want that money sitting in the bank when it could be benefitting some youth who need that space, so we’re pushing ahead to get the ball rolling.

If you are not connected to our nonprofit yet, Kids Belong, this would be a good time to get connected with our website and social media pages. We will have a lot of updates in the near future about this project and funding needs for it. Currently we need to raise some extra money to get some of the utility infrastructure in place before we begin. Yes, we could just take each unit on it’s own in terms of sewer and water, but it will save us time and money in the long run if we can invest a little more in those things up front.

Program page and details: kidsbelong.org/firstplace
Website: kidsbelong.org
Facebook: Facebook.com/kidsbelong
Instagram: instagram.com/kidsbelong
Twitter: twitter.com/kids_belong

When we began this project, we needed to use all the equity of the old house in order to make up the difference between the construction loan and the actual cost of construction. We did this by taking out a home equity loan and we maxed it out for construction costs. Which means we’ve been paying our mortgage plus the home equity loan, plus the new construction loan. The math all worked in theory, but it meant leveraging ourselves out pretty far financially. As long as nothing significant broke, the cars kept running, and no other major financial disaster came along while we were paying on 2 houses, we’d be fine!

The first thing that happened before we even started construction was the water line in the old house started leaking and needed replacing. So that was fun. In addition, the township required us to replace it with copper, so that was only about a $4000 fix. Perfect timing.

The old house was good to us for the almost 20 years we lived in it. It changed a lot over the years, we added on 3 times and moved kids around to make the best use of bedrooms and space constantly. I don’t know how many layers of paint are on those walls, but it is a LOT. We maximized every square inch of that place to make it work for us for so long. It’s a little bit bittersweet, because it’s the only house our kids have ever known. Every birthday and Christmas was spent there up until this last Christmas. It was years and years of memories we are leaving behind.

I truly hope the next family will be blessed by it. The house definitely needs a good amount of work, I mean we packed as much living into that place as we could over the years, and it shows. But I feel like there is still so much potential for it to be a great house for someone. My hope is that it will be a blessing to a family who can make the most of it’s less than traditional space.

I was also encouraged by the new owner’s request to keep the play equipment. I built a ninja warrior course in the backyard (That was not coming with us either way). Also 2 trampolines and a zipline, and of course there was the rock wall in the living room. The fact that a new family wanted to keep those things gives me hope that there will be a young family to appreciate the space and the fun that the house has to offer.

And I hope they someday do foster care.

Speaking of foster care… we closed our license a couple years ago after we finalized our last adoptions. They said 11 kids under 18 was too many, so no more foster kids for us. You might recall that this was all just a few months before they sent us 2 more foster kids by direct placement. So we’ve been living these last couple years with 2 foster kids and no foster care license. Such is the nature of child welfare. All the rules are mandatory unless the state really wants to break them anyway.

WELL, that brings us to our new foster care license. Aiden is 18 now (that seems insane to actually type that), so he no longer counts toward our total. Jared is going to be 18 later this year, so he’s kind of a gray area. The the 2 fosters aren’t ours still, so they don’t count either, right?

I wrote a post a while back about Child Haven, which was the temporary group home in Muskegon where they could drop kids off they were having a hard time placing. Since that home closed down, the goal has been to replace it with TPP homes, which stands for Temporary Placement Program. TPP is kind of like a temporary shelter for foster kids, but instead of one building they are housed in designated TPP beds in various foster homes throughout the community. These are kids they couldn’t find a place for, a lot of times they are older kids, and they need a temporary place for them to stay while they find a longer term solution.

As far as we know, Muskegon currently has none of these beds. I can tell you that this is a need, because a couple weeks ago we got a call from DHHS at 11:30 at night asking us to house a teenager overnight. I was asleep, Katie took the call. I vaguely remember her waking me up enough to tell me they were bringing a teen who needed a place to sleep that night, and I vaguely remember reminding them that we aren’t a licensed home anymore. Not that that matters if there is a creative way around it, which of course there was.

So there is still a great need for TPP homes. In fact, there is enough of a need that they are willing to license us again as a TPP home.

So here we go again. Our license has been closed long enough that we have to begin the licensing process all over again. I haven’t heard for sure if we have to do the full training again or not, you know, since I am one of the ones who teaches that training.

We’re evaluating exactly what that means for the house and where everyone is going to go. We weren’t planning to double up most of our kids, but we’re wondering if it’s working well enough to keep a couple more of ours sharing a room in order to designate a bedroom for TPP.

It also moves up our timeline a little bit. We’ve been plugging away at the basement bedrooms, and we’re pretty bogged down in drywall right now. I’m not sure that we can afford to continue at the pace we’ve been going, since we are going to need that space to be considered for licensing the house. Tonight we had our drywall guy come back to quote us on finishing the job downstairs in order to get it done faster. We’ll see where his quote comes in, but we’re hoping to be able to swing it to have him get it done in a fraction of the time that we are spending on it.

Also, every day I am hating drywall more and more. So there’s that.

The only other space in the house that will still need to be finished will be the apartment area. If we can get that project going sooner than later, that will give us 2 more bedrooms we can use to help kids transition into a little bit more independence within our house while we wait for the additional houses out front to be built.

Pieces are coming together and we’re excited to add this TPP foster care into the fuller picture of what we’re doing here.

Which means when something comes up we need to look into it and see if it is something that God is doing. This is what leads me to ask this question:

Is there someone that God has been inviting to be part of this story with us? We built this house here so that we could live next door to the small houses we are going to build to rent out to aged out youth. That is a mission that I intend to give the next 20 years of my life to.

A couple weeks ago, the house across the street went up for sale. The house is directly across the street from where we are building those small houses. This is a photo taken from my front porch.

It’s a 3 bed, 1 bath house. It’s not large, but I’ve looked at it and I have ideas on how it could be made a little larger (because of course I do). And it’s a good sized lot, actually a little bigger than our old lot in Grand Haven.

So the question is – have you been reading our story and thinking, “I wish I could do that too”?

Has God been nudging you to relocate and be part of something like this?

Let’s talk.

First of all, I would rather build 5 more houses than ever move again. In fact, we still aren’t fully moved out of the old house, though we are fully moved in to the new one. The old house itself is almost completely empty, though there is still some junk in the garage and in the yard that need to be dealt with. I really didn’t feel like trying to move the trampolines and play stuff from the yard, or the rock wall in the living room, so I left it in hopes that a family would want it all when they came through to look at the house. Of course we could remove it if they didn’t want it, but we could always hope, right?

The house needed a fair bit of work, but we really don’t have the time to dedicate to it, and we felt like it needed to go on the market as soon as possible. We gave it exactly one weekend and did as much as we could with it, patching some holes and doing some painting, and completely redoing one of the bathrooms with paint, flooring, and a new bathtub. We did the best we could in one weekend and then listed it – and a huge THANK YOU goes out to a few amazing volunteers who came and helped with all the patching and painting that weekend while I redid the bathroom!

This week we accepted an offer on the house! There are still a few hurdles to clear including inspection and appraisal, but I’m feeling hopeful that we can cross those things off the list as we get to them. The main goal is to sell that house so that we can roll our construction loan over into a regular mortgage. It’s going to be a lot easier to get that new mortgage if I don’t own 2 houses, so the sale of the old house would be huge!

We celebrated our first Christmas in the new house, and the space was so amazing! It’s been a struggle these last few years to have a big holiday like that, because there’s just not really enough space for it. Kids were in too close quarters, opening gifts was difficult, and keeping track of them was almost impossible. It was so amazing this year to just have the space to spread out and it made the day so much less stressful.

Of course if you’ve read the earlier posts on this blog, you know that a big part of the house is to make room for teens, so for Christmas we had 3 teens come and stay with us for a few days over Christmas. They were each kids we’ve had some connection with but all of whom were living in foster care residential programs around the state. Coming for Christmas meant a few days with a family and some normalcy, and the more the merrier, right?

The plan with the new house was to finish the main level and get moved in, and then start working on some bedrooms in the basement right away. So before our first building permit was even finished, we opened a permit for part of the basement. The 9 bedrooms on the main floor are 2 more than we had before, but still just not enough. This is especially true when we have extra kids in the house. We are still moving kids around, doubling and tripling up in bedrooms in order to make things work. Last weekend, for example, we had 3 extras for respite for a night or two, and then we’ve had one for respite who needed his own bedroom for this whole last week. So we find ourselves still moving kids around bedrooms quite a bit, because there just aren’t enough still for what we’re trying to do.

So with this new building permit we’re finishing 6 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms in the basement. I know, I know, that’s basically another whole house. It sounds really absurd when I say it, but the house will be a modest 15 bed, 6 bath ranch when this permit is finished. Emphasis on modest! It’s a very simple house, no-frills and nothing fancy. Just very, very functional. And quite large. Will 15 bedrooms be enough? Almost, because that doesn’t account for the apartment yet. Those will come with permit #3.

The basement framing beginning:

For the basement project, we are through all the rough in inspections, which means we have gotten through plumbing and electrical already. The plan is now to fully finish one room at a time. We learned a lot in building the house, so the inspection processes were painless this time around. In fact, I did almost none of the electrical work. My 17 year old did pretty much the entire thing, all the wiring, outlets, switches, and breakers. Since he did the work, we let him stay home from school on inspection day and handle the inspection on his own too! Here he is with his well earned inspection approval:

As for the rest of the basement, what will be the apartment area is pretty much storage right now. It’s kind of the catch-all for anything we don’t know what to do with. Well, that and the garage. There’s a lot of stuff without a home right now.

The other main part of the basement is going to stay unfinished, but we are making it really fun and usable for the kids!

Another pretty major update — we’ve had our first independent living teen move in with us!

Remember those three who came for Christmas? We knew that one of them was eventually going to need a place to stay through the independent living program. We were originally thinking she would come somewhere around March or April, that would give us time to finish some bedrooms and move some kids downstairs and get everyone in bedrooms where they are supposed to be long term.

Well, as often happens, plans had to change and we needed to make some space sooner. So we shifted kids around and freed up a bedroom for her. It puts a little bit more pressure on the basement bedroom situation, because it makes it a little bit tight upstairs for some of the kids until we can get some of that basement space usable, but it works. We’ve had much less space before and we’ve made things work, so we figure we can do just about anything temporarily.

Our oldest biological child also turned 18 last month, so now we have two 18 year olds in our house. How did we get so old? It doesn’t feel like we are that old. Maybe it doesn’t feel that way because we also still have a 4 year old.

We are excited to be able to offer a little bit more respite to foster kids and foster families. The local child welfare and mental health agencies are starting hear about all the space that we have, and it seems like somebody always needs some kind of respite. Depending on how all the bedrooms shake out when the apartment is done, we might find we need to have a bedroom or two set aside just to do respite for some of these other kids and families who really need it.

So to sum up, this is what we’ve been up to in the month and a half since I posted last:

– We moved in to the new house, finishing off a few small projects to get our final occupancy
– We have had several kids for respite days/nights/weekends
– We did Christmas and 6 birthdays
– We fixed up the old house (somewhat) and hopefully have sold it
– Did all the framing, plumbing, and electrical for the basement bedrooms and bathrooms, and we’ve started drywall
– Rearranged bedrooms (already) because a new independent living teen has moved in with us
– And we switched all the kids over to new schools

Next up – finishing the basement and getting the mortgage all situated. Once that is done, we can start pushing ahead toward the next big thing! I’ll have lots more details about the teen housing stuff in the weeks to come.

For now, I just have to tell you how amazed and grateful I am. We LOVE the house, and we LOVE where we live. The kids have space to run, they play hide and seek and nerf and laser tag and all kinds of things in the house. They have space to spread out, to play games, and it really takes the stress level of the house down a bit when kids can play in smaller groups in separate spaces. That’s just not something we could really do before. It also makes it a lot easier on everyone when there are extra kids in the house for respite.

Sometimes in the morning I’ll drink a cup of coffee while it’s still dark outside, and I look out in the yard at the snow and the trees and I just can’t believe we live here now. Or when I’ll watch my kids play a game or chase the dog through the house. Last weekend the house was full of kids. I mean, obviously it’s always full with just my kids, but we had some extras with us too, and they all hung out, they played games, they watched movies. The house was full of life and conversation and I was just so grateful for it all.

As of today… We have occupancy!!

Back in March of this year we were clearing trees and branches. In April we closed on the construction loan and we broke ground in May. All along we had in mind that we hoped to be in by Christmas. This weekend we will have made that goal with 2 weeks to get in and get ready for the holidays!

This week started with an electrical final inspection, which I only partially passed. There were a few things that I thought were optional, like in-use covers for the outdoor outlets. It turns out… no, those are required. On Sunday while cleaning up in the kitchen I looked at the end of the peninsula and I thought, I should really put an outlet right there. The inspector apparently agrees, because he said I was required to put one there.

We finished up the list of items Monday night and passed the reinspection on Tuesday, along with the insulation inspection for the basement and attic. Both of those went smoothly. I had scheduled a plumbing inspection for tuesday also, but somehow that one got missed by the people doing the scheduling so they didn’t show up. We rescheduled plumbing for this afternoon, along with mechanical and final. Today I had 3 inspectors all at once poking around at all those things. I ended up getting a full approval for plumbing, and partials for mechanical and final.

The mechanical partial approval was to be expected, since my HVAC guys aren’t actually finished yet. We got bumped from their schedule a couple times and they are now trying to play catch up. They will be wrapped up by the end of the week, and we’ll be able to get that crossed off the list.

I still have a fair bit of trim to finish up and a few other details, but for the final inspection all I’m missing are some handrails on the front steps and guardrails on the back slider doors until I can get a deck or something built.

Oh, and apparently you’re also supposed to have tempered glass if you have a window near a bathtub, which we do. So, oops on that one. They tell me there’s a plastic film you can put on the window that will do the same job, so I just need to track some of that down.

While I’m working on those things, I have a temporary certificate of occupancy. Once I have those things in place we’ll be able to get the final and be all done with inspections! Now, that’s an exciting prospect.

Once we are done with our building permit, we’ll be able to start another one so we can put more bedrooms in the basement. The main floor of the house only has 9 bedrooms, so that’s not going to cut it for very long!

The last month has been kind of a blur. The closer we had gotten to finishing the more pressure there has been to try to finish. One of the good things about this part of the project is that the house has become livable recently, so it’s a lot easier to bring kids along with us. In the last month we got a little bit of furniture, the kitchen has come together, and the bathrooms have gotten plumbed in and are working. No more stopping work and bringing a child to Wesco every time they have to go to the bathroom!

We put 2 of the countertops in on Thanksgiving morning, just in time to have Thanksgiving dinner in the new kitchen! The double ovens make a huge difference when preparing that much food! One of the nights we were at the house with all the kids we had frozen pizzas for dinner, and we cooked 8 of them at one time. It’s such a time saver to cook them all at once instead of trying to feed kids in shifts!

There are so many things that have come together to make this dream possible, and we’re so grateful for everyone who has helped and served and contributed to make it a reality. There are many evenings I finish working on a project at the house and before I leave for the night I just look around in amazement.

We actually still have a long way to go. There are lots of details to finish in this phase 1, and phase 2 (the basement) actually needs to get underway sooner than later. There are reasons for that, and I’ll try to share some of them soon.

There are a lot of details and lessons that I’m hoping to share here in this space, and one of these days I’ll put the house projects aside long enough to share them with you all.

Also – I’m thinking about putting together a virtual tour soon that I can share here, so look out for that. Possibly an open house also to be able to see the whole project in person.

We’re going to start the process of moving into the new house this weekend, taking it kind of one day at a time. We will move things up as we need them rather than trying to do a big moving day all at once.

This story is far from over. In many ways it is just finally getting started.

In the beginning there was a push to get started, and then each phase requires pushing ahead to the next one. For a long time it felt like I was pushing toward getting roughed in. Once rough in is done, then things can really start happening. Drywall is something I hired out, so I thought maybe the work could go on auto pilot for at least a couple of weeks there. Because I did all the plumbing and electrical (mostly because of the plumbing), getting to rough in felt like such a huge hill to climb, it just took so much effort. What I didn’t really anticipate was how the overall project intensity would actually turn up even higher after rough in.

The list of things that need to be finished feels like it grows every day. I’ve got to finish the siding still, it’s almost done but I’ve been working on that for a good 3 weeks now. The water system isn’t finished, I need to wrap that up and install the water heaters in the basement so that when the water gets connected in a couple of weeks I will be ready for it. I still have some dirt to move and bring in to finish the front and get the approach to the garage poured before we have snow, getting that part done has been difficult and I’ve had to find new people to help with it. On my short list I have finishing the porch, siding on the front peak above the porch, paint, flooring, then cabinets, doors, and trim.

The drywall guy finished up this week and did an awesome job, so I feel really good about that. But he’s also the last subcontractor I’m planning to hire, which means the rest of all those things I just named are up to me to get finished.

The good news is I think we are on track to be able to finish and move in before Christmas, which is what we are really hoping to do. My dad is coming up this next week to help with flooring. My brother-in-law brought his paint sprayer and I’m using that to get the whole house primed tomorrow.

Lots of things are still happening just in time. We got the gas hooked up and one of the furnaces turned on just in time to finish drywall and with the onset of the really cold weather. We finished the insulation upstairs that same week so we are able to keep the house warm and drywall was able to dry, and now for painting and flooring. After months of trying, I finally have sewer and water scheduled and should be connected in 2 weeks. Power was connected just in time to get lights on for the drywall installation and to start up the furnaces. We spent a little bit extra to get the siding that we wanted and we are loving the color. We even got the porch fixed!

One quick side story on the siding – We had a hard time deciding what we want on the peak over the porch. I thought about white, I thought about doing it the same as the walls, but nothing really sat right with us. Katie decided she really wanted the same color, but a different texture, and she really liked the vertical siding. Well, the vertical vinyl is special order, nobody has it in stock. So that was possible, but it wouldn’t come until mid-december. And with out track record of special order things not coming at all, that seemed risky. I talked her into looking at a lighter gray shake style, and there was one store in Holland that had it in stock. So on one of our many recent date nights at Menards, we went to take a look at it. While there I talked with the sales guy just to see what other options they had. He pulled it up on his computer and said, hey this is weird because we don’t stock this, but my system is showing we have some pieces of vertical siding, maybe somebody special ordered it and returned it. Wouldn’t you know it? It was our color. Thanks God, for the little blessings like this one. Right now that patch of siding is the last I have to finish, but the pieces are in my garage ready to go.

Lots of great things are happening and we’re really excited to see the progress and for it to start looking like a real house!

After we passed the rough in inspection, the next job was insulation. I was very grateful to a few people who volunteered to come out and hang insulation with me. Every hour that someone helps is an hour less that I have to do on my own, and it’s an hour closer to getting us to the point where we can move in. So every hour really counts for a lot right now.

With help, we wrapped up insulation within a week. I had a punch list of things that needed to get finished up in order for drywall to start, just odds and ends left over from other projects. Now with all of those things finished up, drywall has begun!

It’s really exciting to see drywall going up, because it’s the first “finish” for the house. And once that is all hung, the interior will start to look like a house. I’m also happy to report that I’m NOT doing drywall this time. From the very beginning, I said no way to drywall. I’ve done it on all my other projects, and I’ve always sworn never to do it again. It’s one of those things that you really need to be practiced at to be any good at it, and by the time I finish a project and feel like I’m starting to get the hang of it, I’m done and I don’t touch another piece of drywall for 7 years or so. There are some things that are worth doing yourself to save money, but for this project drywall is not one of them.

While drywall is going up inside, we’ve started siding on the outside. We had a big crew help get siding started last weekend. That was such a huge help! Once again, this is a project that is going to take a lot of hours to finish, so even just a few people helping can shorten the amount of time we spend on siding significantly.

On a side note, we agonized over the siding color for a while before finally settling on one. Now that I see it going up I’m really confident in that choice, we really love the color.

My next big obstacles are utilities, specifically water and sewer. Electric and Gas are supposed to get hooked up this week, but sewer and water continue to be a challenge to get them done. Part of the problem is that prices have gone up since I had them quoted at the beginning, part of the problem has been settling some legal matters with a utility easement, and then part of the problem is finding someone to actually do the work. I’ve run into a few challenges in each of those areas, but we’re getting closer now. At the rate we are going, though, I think it will be November before we get all the utilities settled.

We had a setback this week in regard to the front porch. When lumber prices skyrocketed this year we decided to do a concrete porch instead of wood. No maintenance and cheaper! Sounds like a win/win. And it will be, once it gets fixed. Unfortunately after spending a whole day getting that thing ready, when they took the forms off after pouring the concrete the front settled and cracked immediately. They’ve poured 100s of porches just like this one and have never seen that happen. Lucky us! Now we will have some waiting to do until they can decide what to do with it, if it can be fixed, or if they need to start over. Meanwhile, we can’t really put the siding on the front of the house until that porch is finished. It just means we try to keep moving on the things we can control, and hope and pray for the things that we can’t.

As far as timeline is concerned, we are trying really hard to move in before the end of the year. It’s a really ambitious goal considering how much of the work we are still doing ourselves, but it’s possible. It will require a whole lot of time and effort, but if we keep pushing ahead and get a little help along the way, we just might make it.

Speaking of help, I’ve had a few people ask me to give updates as to when I’m going to be working on things. I will do that on my personal Facebook page from here on out, but if anyone wants to help out with projects like siding, flooring, painting, etc, you can also reach out through email if you have my contact info, or if not you can reach me here through the blog by leaving a comment. When I have days that I’m planning to be working, I’ll try to keep everyone updated on when that will be.

Thank you to everyone who has helped and supported us so far! We are really amazed and humbled by the amount of people who have volunteered, donated, and prayed for us along the way. I’m not one to ask for help usually, but even just one weekend with a few volunteers has really helped and is very encouraging!

I wasn’t there when he came to inspect, because apparently scheduling a time for an inspection actually means nothing. If your window is between 1 and 4 pm, don’t be surprised to find that the inspector had been there already at 10:00. Especially if you weren’t quite finished because you went to a morning meeting and picked up the few last fittings you needed to finish by 1:00. Just saying.

Anyway, on the inspection sheet that he left behind he listed the violations – pipe slope incorrect, bracing incorrect, vents too far from traps, etc. Helpfully, when he followed up with an email later he included the sections of the code that referred to the specific violations so I could easily see how to fix what needed fixing.

However, the part that bothered me was underneath all of that. Near the bottom of the page he wrote, “Hire a licensed plumber.”

Dude. Harsh. Especially since I am picturing him shaking his head disapprovingly when he says it.

The hardest part of failing that inspection was feeling like I was pushing so hard and that the end of plumbing was just around to corner, only to turn the corner and find another long road ahead. I’ve been working late nights for a while now trying to push hard to get it all done.

Well this week I had my re-inspection and passed! I get so nervous for these inspections, I guess because I don’t do them very often. But this time we breezed right through, I had corrected all of the problems he identified to his satisfaction. That’s a huge relief! AND, I did it without hiring a licensed plumber:)

After passing the plumbing rough in, the next step was the full rough in inspection. Approval on this inspection means the framing is all finished and that we can begin interior project like insulation and drywall. Once again, I get so nervous for these inspections, mostly because I’ve got timelines that are riding on passing them. The last framing project was building a wall around the perimeter of the basement so that we can insulate. Once again the framing crew came in and got that wall knocked out on wednesday and thursday, and we followed up by passing the rough in inspection on Friday!

That means we have only 2 inspections left – insulation and then final. There’s a pretty big gap between those two, of course, but it feels like we are coming over the top of the hill and now we will get to start doing some of the finishing things like drywall, paint, flooring, etc without a whole bunch more inspections.

It’s not time to rest yet, though, because it’s really important to keep things moving forward at this point. I have a drywaller who is able to start the week after next, which means I’ve got 6 days to get insulation approved so that drywall can start on time. If all goes well, we could be painting before Halloween.

The number of details relating to outside finishing and utilities is pretty overwhelming, so we’re just trying to keep focused on next steps to keep the ball rolling. We just keep asking God for favor, time, and energy to keep going!