A Couple of Things New....

To you readers who are homeowners out there --

Do you ever feel as if home repairs seem to hit all at once?

This summer, in the Friesen household, it seems like it -- at least a little bit.

We purchased our house 7 1/2 years ago. We like our home. It has A LOT of potential as far as decorating and such. We LOVE the neighborhood it's located in. We LOVE our neighbors.

Somedays, when I fall into comparison mode (which is NOT good and a VERY dangerous place to be -- especially when it comes to spiritual growth), I think to myself, "We really haven't done much to this house compared to what some of our friends have done to their homes."

Then, God reels me back to reality....we've actually done quite a bit in this house (all without ANY debt AND we've still been able to manage my staying home full-time over the last two years -- which wasn't originally planned when we purchased this house)....

**Had one of the bathrooms almost completely gutted and redone
**New carpet throughout almost the entire house
**New water heater and sump pump
**New oven
**New dishwasher
**New refrigerator
**A few new light fixtures
**Added a couple of ceiling fans
**Stripped wallpaper and painted in front living room, hallway, my office, and Luke's room

SOOOOOO, quit complaining, Sarah....

*****

Anyways, recently, our kitchen faucet started leaking. So, we knew we needed to replace that faucet.

At the same time, Menard's opened in Wichita.

To our benefit (and many others'), they had some great deals.

When we went to purchase a faucet, we found one WAY UNDER our budget.

Between that price and the price of a new sink, we were able to purchase a new sink and a new faucet.

Our old sink (in all of its glory of being porcelein, off-white, and VERY stained)....







Getting the new sink in properly proved to be a process, however....



Once the fabulous plumber had the old sink out, he tried out the new sink -- to see if it would fit.

Nope -- it didn't....we needed a bigger hole in our countertop.

OUCH!

(And just for a brief interlude -- here's a photo of Luke -- "supervising" this project)....





I LOVE people connections that we have as well as other people have.

With this little sink problem, our plumber had a connection.

He called a friend of his who was a carpenter. That day, this carpenter happened to be very close to our house and was available for a short period of time.

Within an hour of the discovery of the problem, the carpenter was at our home. He completed the task of cutting our countertop.

Then, he only charged us $25 to complete this countertop cutting project!

YAY!

At that point, the plumber was able to finish installing the new sink and faucet.

It's stainless steel, and it looks nice! I LOVE it.

(Sorry I don't have one close-up)....



THEN, in the midst of all of this sink fiasco, our dining area chandelier developed a short. We knew, for safety reasons, we most definitely needed to have it replaced.

So, Menard's once again came to the rescue.

I don't have a photo of the old chandelier (as I forgot), but you'll have to trust me that it wasn't the most "dated" chandelier. Also, it was VERY dim lighting.

Fortunately, the day after the sink installation, the chandelier exchange went very smooth. It took less than an hour.

Luke once again supervised.





Then, in the midst of ALL of this, several weeks ago, it hailed pretty hard here in this fine little town we live in.

We knew our roof needed some repair (thanks to some strong winter and spring winds we've had here).

We found out within the last couple of weeks that not only do we need a few repairs on our roof, but we NEEDED a whole new roof.

As always, God has been faithful with His provision.

Not only did insurance come through on a very old roof, but we were able to find a VERY trustworthy company to redo our roof. AND, they had availability in their schedule to get it done NOW.

Sooooooo, we have a nice mess going on this week here at our home.

And, Luke has once again done some supervising.....





Stay tuned....I will have quite a few more pics to post with this new roof process.

But, my heart is filled with such gratitude this week over our roof. We're getting a nice new roof which should (barring a major hail storm) last a long time. The four guys who have been working on our roof have done it in this extreme heat we're having in this state this week. Luke has done VERY WELL about staying out of their way as well as staying out of danger (old shingles are flying off of our roof this week).

In the meantime, Luke (and I possibly) will be hopefully napping a bit this afternoon. Because of the heat, Marc told the guys they could start this morning at 6:00 A.M. (which I didn't mind). But, Luke definitely woke up quite a bit earlier than normal as a result of the banging on the roof. And sadly, there were tears involved. Luke was a bit scared to wake up to banging.