Our “Ugly Duckling”

(circa October, 2009 – April, 2010)

The summer wore on and on – and on and on… Every weekend the 140 mile commute to and from Flagstaff seemed to get longer and longer. My little Toyota Matrix spent its summer wearing ruts into the blistering Interstate 17 asphalt. Our house continued to languish on the market – not one person even came to look at it. After all, it was 2009 and the housing market was almost non-existent those days. Our once-$550,000 house was now worth nearly half that amount. It was October and even in good years, few houses in Flagstaff sell in the fall or winter.

So we reluctantly realized that we had to put our house up for rent, put our furnishings in storage and move in with Shannon and Gabe in their little two-bedroom, two-bath, upstairs condo in Phoenix. Yes, four adults and two dogs. Their home continued to be a welcoming haven for us – a true gift from God. (And we really did have fun together.)

We had three days to pack 24 years’ worth of life into boxes and prepare them for storage for an unknown amount of time, to eventually be unpacked into an unknown, yet-to-be-determined home. And with the help of faithful friends, we did it, just in time for “Two Men and a Truck” to haul it down to Phoenix and stuff it all into two storage units.

One storage unit was for our home furnishings. The other was for (drum roll!) – the garage – Bill’s tools and machinery! Yes, he does have that many tools! (Oh, did I mention that he’s a serious “DIY-er”?)

But we had to make one more trip back to Flagstaff. With heavy hearts we had to do a little work on our house to get it ready for our renters. It was empty now. Our house that had once been full of children and friends and pets and laughter and love (and yes, heartache too) – so full of life, was now empty. The hollow sound of our footsteps descending the stairs for the last time echoed through the whole house – and it echoed through the chasm in my heart. Closing the front door for the last time signified the final closing of a sweet chapter of our lives. Our hearts were broken.

But, life does go on. We had to find a permanent place to live. When we began our search for a house in Phoenix, as long as we were forced to move to the desert, I had grandiose visions of buying a large, beautiful villa with spectacular desert mountain vistas and gardens and a pool and waterfalls … After all, it was 2009. The housing market was at its lowest and foreclosed houses were abundant.

Every morning Bill would check online at houses that might possibly fit our criteria. Then he would spend the day driving by them. Occasionally, if a house seemed unoccupied, he would even look through the windows (although he was caught several times in embarrassing situations if people were actually inside…Oops!) Then in the evening after I came home from work and on weekends we would go out together and check them out. Bill probably looked at over 200 houses.

And then there was our very patient, wonderful real estate agent, Mike. He treats his profession as a ministry and he took such good care of us. He had an innate sense, knowing exactly what we needed and directed us accordingly and made helpful suggestions along the way. (By the way, if you ever need a real estate agent in Phoenix, talk to us.)

But our beautiful desert villa never materialized. We had to face reality: a 1971 foreclosed, but very affordable, fixer-upper. (Shannon didn’t even want to step foot in the house at first. Ewwww!!) But apparently this was just the house that God had in mind for us. We had to look beyond its ugly reality to its possibilities and apply ourselves to the task of transforming this “ugly duckling” into our home. No, this would never be a “desert villa” but it could be a warm, loving, welcoming refuge – if we worked hard enough.

And so it began. Escrow closed on January 28 and that day our work began: day and night, 7 days a week (except for Sunday mornings). There was no surface that was left untouched. We scraped, re-surfaced, textured and painted the walls. Bill used a demolition hammer removing old floor tile and the underlying vinyl and then we scraped off the remaining adhesive. Then we re-tiled and grouted. We poured concrete to raise the level of the sunken living room. (We actually paid someone to do that.) We replaced every door (16 of them) and every inch of trim. We completely re-did the master bathroom and built a new patio cover.”

“BEFORE” PICTURES:

Bill would work on the house all day and I would come over after a hard days’ work and work even harder at night until it was time to drive back to Shannon & Gabe’s to get a few hours of sleep – and do it all again the next day. Finally, by the end of April, the house was livable (barely) so we moved in.

One night, I was sitting on the hallway floor in a puddle of water, scraping old vinyl adhesive off the floor. I looked up to the heavens and breathed an agonized prayer, “Lord, why does everything have to be SO HARD? Why couldn’t you give us just a little break?” But the heavens remained silent…

…and even after we moved in, the work continued for another year and a half (and the landscaping took another five years). Bill worked on the electrical and plumbing systems. We gutted the kitchen, built new cabinets (from scratch) and tiled the counters. We tore out the entryway wall and installed a new front door and glass bricks.

Of course, Bill did the lion’s share of the work and sometimes I would look at him in amazement. After all he had gone through with his physical problems, nearly dying several times and suffering untold pain and discomfort, he had mustered the herculean strength, ability, knowledge and perseverance to thoroughly transform our “ugly duckling” house. (However, I think his passion for home improvement had been stretched – and stretched – and stretched to its limit.)

“AFTER” PICTURES:

Today, I can lounge in my comfy recliner and look around at my home – and remember. Although work on a house is really never finished, the difficult part is done – and through it all, we’ve learned some valuable lessons.

Whenever faced with an “ugly duckling” situation, don’t look at the mountain of work that needs to be done. Focus on the possibilities. What looks ugly now could turn out to be beautiful – if you persevere.

And in the midst of your toil, whenever you look up to the seemingly silent heavens and pray, God really is listening. He may not “say” anything right then, but somehow he will provide the strength, perseverance and wisdom that you need. Your faith will be strengthened and you, through God’s help, will transform “ugly” into “beautiful”. At least that’s what happened to us.

And one more thing: a house is just a house, whether it’s ugly or beautiful, big or small. A home, on the other hand, is so much more than that. A home needs a heart, its very essence, love. A home needs to love each person who enters. Our prayer is that the love of Jesus, through us, would fill our home.

Now we enjoy the fruit of our labors and, doggone it – we’re still actually married!