Easter is always such a beautiful time to think about hope and new life. We had a sweet time celebrating with Thomas' family.
Hobbs house continues to be a reminder that nothing is as it should be. We live in a world that was not meant to see decay and destruction. But we have opportunities every day to participate in restoring order, whether in physical jobs or in relationships with people. I need to remember this on hard days of work.
Recently we faced a rather daunting situation when the guy who was going to finish our sheet rock needed to back out. After four weeks he had only been able to partly finish two rooms, and a few family situations prevented him from focusing on it further. I was disappointed. And then terrified when Thomas told me that he was going to try to do it. It's a ton of messy work, which takes longer without much experience, (and might not look quite as nice).
Thankfully, he remembered that in some cases it's better to at least get a bid from a professional. Thomas called our neighbor, Juan, who "has a guy for everything". He gave Thomas two phone numbers. The second guy, Luis, came that night to give a bid (half that of the original) and then started right then. He was finished in 4 nights.
Luis did a great job of handling even the really difficult areas, like the big gaps in the sagging ceilings.
And with all of the time not spent finishing the walls, Thomas was able to start the cabinet building. We have spent the past several weekends at the wood shop at his parents' farm building the boxes. They are starting to look like cabinets, but there is still lots of finishing work, like sanding and building the doors. Oh, and the drawers.
The next big challenge will be figuring out what to do with this back room. Originally we planned to build out a new mudroom/entry and add a bathroom. Since it would cost several thousand dollars, we wanted to make sure we could make a reasonable profit off of the addition. It was hard to know where to look since there really is no precedent in our mill village. Thomas decided to get an appraisal for our house, Hobbs house finished as is, and finished with a new bathroom.
Surprisingly, our house appraised higher, even though everything at Hobbs will be new. We are learning a lot about how houses are valued and have a hard time accepting that so much of what determines the price is surrounding houses. We have to restrain ourselves from outbuilding the neighborhood.
The Hobbs appraisals revealed that the addition would add less than $10,000 and is not even close to worth it. So now the back room just needs to be repaired. The foundation looks terrible. I'm not ready to think about this yet. Which is generally ok because Thomas mulls everything over for a looooong time :)
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