God the Carpenter

We’re in it up to our elbows now, or deeper depending on where you’re standing. This morning the forms were going up for the basement walls. Hopefully they can get the concrete poured in this afternoon since it’s going to rain tomorrow. Trusses are coming on Thursday. I was hoping to have a work day this coming Saturday, since family will be visiting, but I’m not sure there will be any work for us to do yet.

I’ve really wanted to share with you just how God has been working before and during this renovation, and a bit more of the inside scoop.

Here’s a secret: Even though I am beyond thrilled that we’re doing this renovation and I’ve wanted to do it for a while, it really was just a pipe dream. This is not at all what I thought we actually would be doing once it was time. We had planned on just fixing the foundation, gutting the area and starting over; the space was more than big enough. But that wasn’t going to work.

We knew the foundation was nearly non-existent under that part of the house. Once we talked to the guy who is doing our foundation we basically decided to just tear the structure down. There was no benefit to staying within the existing structure. Because of how unlevel it had become, everything inside would have buckled and broken and needed to be replaced anyways. Not to mention it was going to cost us more to lift and gut, than it was to tear it down and start over.

So, where has God been in this {since I mentioned Him in the title}?

God was quite literally holding our house together and up. Once our contractor got under the addition and started looking around, there was, quite literally, a 2x4 holding the entire thing up, and ONLY a 2x4. Kind of scary.

Then there was that whole troublesome building permit issue, which showed up on our doorstep literally the last possible day for us to call the foundation company and have them put us on the schedule for the following week.

And of course the “where are we going to live while our house gets destroyed?” question. Oddly enough, Matt’s parents built a new house a few years ago, of which we are residing in the basement {which is bigger than our own home is}. Enough room for all of us.

God….very simply was in all of it. Keeping our house standing until we were ready to move forward, putting all the details in order so that we stayed on schedule, and providing for us a place to live in comfortably while the work is done. It’s often so easy to forget He has our backs and is looking out for us, but it’s always nice when we can see what He’s doing.