A Church Adventure – Week 2

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This week we have obligations at our Home Church. Brenda has the flu that had a firm grip on the Hill children last week. I so far have dodged it… I look forward to Sunday school and worshipping this morning with some of our church family. In the mean while, I need your opinion. Above there are two logos for our Church Adventure. I was just playing around with paint.net this morning and came up with the one on the right. I like it better, but wondered if you, the readers had any input. So I would love it if you would vote now by leaving a comment here, on twitter,  or on facebook. 
It’s simple, a 1 for the logo on the left, or a 2 for the logo on the right.
Thanks for visiting and have a blessed Sunday and week!!
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RTH – First Floor - Update: I am officially a blind man.

  I have to start this post with a little history of how the end of last week and weekend transpired.
   So while I rented the sander, Bethany was sent home Thursday from school due to the flu…It figures, time is money when you’re renting equipment. On a positive note, she was not throwing up all over, she was mainly really tired. Thank god the family room/attic has a separate heating system, she in no way needed to by inhaling the little dust that was emitted by the sander. I was able to get the floors sanded in the amount of time I originally figured. I rented it on Thursday morning and returned it on Saturday morning.
  Our original plans were to go as a family to Lowes on Saturday to get the remaining supplies to finish this phase. These supplies included the stain and blinds that neither Brenda and I had looked at. It was something that we needed to do together. Well with one kid being sick, that was not going to happen, as a family. Brenda went to Lowes and looked at the stain, and ended up at Home Depot to look at their blinds, Lowes blinds were not what we were looking for. She verified what she liked and came home with her list.
  Sunday morning, Bridget was suffering from the same flu, so I, went supply shopping alone after church and picked up all of the stuff from the two stores.
Now onto Monday, this was going to be a day of staining. Well with two kids home for Presidents day, Bethany was coughing quite a bit and Bridget with the flu and a cough. I didn’t know how strong the fumes would be from the stain, I had to refrain from staining. I’m glad, because later we found out Bethany had a slight case of pneumonia. I decided that the majority of the dust creating phase was complete, I would move on to doing blinds.  We went with Faux Wood 2 inch blinds. I would apologize for the picture quality, but these were taken with my phone. I am having technical difficulties with the old canon. It’s consuming batteries like I consume cookies…I guess we need a new one. *sigh* We just spent all of our money on these…
When we moved in our house it had curtains, see through, lacy curtains all through out the first floor and some valances in the kitchen. This equaled, no privacy. We blinded all of the 1st floor windows except the entry way door with sidelights and transom. So here are the pictures with captions.


Above, is the living room, with leaded glass above the slider, we were not sure if this would look okay, but I like it.

This is the dining room entry door, with transom. This door/window would let the sun shine right on the same wall as the thermostat during the morning hours, and thus the furnace would not turn on, because that one wall was 75 degrees resulting in the rest of the house being 60 degrees. I know I could have moved it, but I didn’t. The house is now very comfortable throughout the day.

These are the windows in the dining room.

This is one of the windows in the kitchen. I can honestly say that I did not realize how much it bothered me, that our neighbors could just look right in on us at night and see me doing dishes, cooking or just talking while we ate dinner. I like having our privacy.
Curtains are one of the finishing touches, we will probably use the lacy things for now, until maybe we hit the lottery, or start accepting donations…..I kid!
Thanks for visiting and have great weekend.
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Random: Cute But Not Allowed

Get that dog away from the table" is what I said after I snapped this shot. I know, but I have to blog about something. My kid and dog seemed to fall right into place. Happy Friday!

RTH–Update: Sanding Costs

If you are thinking about restoring your hardwood floors. There is something you should know. If you are going to rent one of these random orbit sander or a Usand sander.

You will paying about the same amount for this…

…sandpaper, as you did to rent the machine.
I knew this going into it, and it’s all good. I still saved about $1300-$1500 doing it myself, and it was easy. Very time consuming, but easy. A definite DIY project I would recommend.
I have made some great progress staining, I will update again once the poly urethane is on. Then I have to install all of the baseboard….I’m starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Yay…

Random: Snow & Sun

I took this yesterday morning with my phone as I was shoveling a path to Brenda’s side of the garage. It always amazes me how it can be snowing and blowing when we are falling asleep, the snow can be piling up and then we awake to the sun rising upon a beautiful landscape. A new day comes. Hope is alive! God is Good!!

A Church Adventure – Week 1

This week our Church Adventure began, unfortunately I had to fly solo, because of another illness in the Hill household.
I feel the need to repeat something I think I may have glossed over in my previous post. Valencia Presbyterian Church (VPC) will most likely always be our home church. This adventure we are taking, is about showing the girls the diversity of Christ’s followers, experiencing other denominations and there different traditions in worship service. We are not dissatisfied with our church, nor are we looking to change churches. We just wanted to mix things up and educate the girls. This will not be a sounding board, to criticize these churches we visit. Who am I, to say anything negative about a church when visiting for just one or two times. I also will refrain from naming the churches we visit, for obvious reasons. This is not about the particular churches we are visiting, its about what we as a family of Christ’s followers, experience during this adventure. (Of course if you ask in a private message, email or or in person I will gladly disclose the information.) Lastly, as sticking to my one word for 2011, Positive, I want to keep this positive and encouraging.
I know Brenda has a few churches in particular that she wants to visit, but as for me on this Sunday morning, my decision was determined greatly by the fact that I needed to shop at the two big box home improvement stores within a mile from the church. So the one I chose was a non denominational, large church. Did I say LARGE? It had a ton of stuff to offer families, including a play area for the kiddos, resembling the play areas in Chuck E. Cheese or Fun for All, they also had lots of classrooms, a book store, a coffee shop and a very modern sanctuary/auditorium with a stage and all of the state of the art technology as well. The music/Praise Band was great and had me clapping along and moving a bit in my personal space. Being a Presbyterian, this was quite different from our worship style. We are referred to as "The Frozen Chosen" for a reason. I left humming the last tune we sang and it also was stuck in my head while I shopped for my supplies. The other thing I thought was amazing, was the pastor encouraged us to use our cell phones by doing a poll via text votes. We watched live as the results came in. Being the technology junkie I am, that was amazing!!Overall I believe we as a family will return there, for the girls to experience the BIG church atmosphere. It was a great first day of our Church Adventure.
Thanks for visiting.
Everyone have a blessed week!

A Church Adventure

This is the church we attend regularly. We are members of this church, Valencia Presbyterian. This is our home church and we love the people that make it what it is. 

Recently we have gone through some changes, like all churches do. Our Pastor retired last July, and we now have an interim Pastor to walk and guide us through this transition period that may take up to two years. 

In the last year both Brenda and I have stepped back from being as involved, to take a moment, mostly to worship as a family. You see, for several years Brenda and I both sang and the girls were in the congregation sitting with friends or other adults. I will speak for myself here, I have enjoyed the past few months of worshiping together. 

On to the title of this post, "A Church Adventure". Brenda and I were talking last week about how this could be an awesome opportunity to visit other churches, experiencing with the girls the different styles of worship, and different denominations. We prayed about it all week and decided jointly that it was a go. 

We still plan on financially supporting our home church and will be fulfilling all of our obligations we have there. We are looking forward to and plan on blogging about this great adventure. Thanks for visiting.

RTH - First Floor Hardwood (Update) Sanding Complete

Here are some pictures of the hardwood floors after they have been sanded. I'm pretty stoked about how they turned out. I can't wait to get some stain and poly urethane on them. My back and hips are very sore, but I guess thats what I should have expected, after an old guy dances with a sander for 18 hours. We have made some positive progress this week. ++ 

Dining Room

Entry Way

Living Room

Wordless Wednesday

Prayer Request

I missed an opportunity yesterday to post. So here it goes:

• Pray for Bakerstown’s Mission Team traveling to Honduras on Thursday. A family friend, Cathy and our retired, Pastor Gary will be going. Please pray for safe travels and God’s work to be done during this trip. The mission travels to Honduras and provides medical care and other support to the poor and needy.
• Please pray for our family’s health. We have had a string of illness from the common cold, conjunctivitis, the stomach bug, to overall having some of those winter blues. If you follow me on twitter or on Facebook you know that Bridget is home with the stomach thing. Poor little girls was up most of the night throwing up like her sister, Bethany was last Thursday night. Although it is nice to see the sun shining through our windows I would like the temps to be spring like as well. I can’t wait to do some camping. I guess I got a little bit of cabin fever.
• Pray for those that have lost loved ones. My brother-in-law’s girlfriend has lost her father to cancer Monday evening. Pray for peace during this difficult time for Holly and her family. Also,  an acquaintance of mine via Twitter has lost his Grandma this week. Pray for Ben Davis and his family as they mourn this loss and will be traveling.
Thanks for all the prayers.

Peace and Grace,

Bryan

RTH – Living Room, Dining Room and Entry Way Renovations Part 3

Fireplace, Cabinets, Closet and more...

I know it’s been a while since my last update, but I didn't think it was way back in September. Click here to see part 2 if you missed it. I try to make these videos short, but it is hard. This one tally’s up to almost 6 minutes. I know for myself I am lucky if I get through a 3 minute video online. So if for some reason you don’t have time nor the energy to last through the video jump below it. I posted some pictures there of our progress. There are some outtakes at the end of this episode. Enjoy!!

 

Above, is what the fireplace looked like once we opened up the fireplace.

This is a close up of the firebox floor. It was actually cracked right down the middle where the gas line was. I imagine that the gas line most likely fueled some sort of parlor heater. I also imagine that every room in the house has a similar set up. All of our rooms have what looks like fireplaces. Most of them are closed up but it would probably be how they heated the rooms back in the day.

This is after we installed the slate tile but before I grouted. I have to mention that our intention is not to use this fireplace conventionally. We will never set fire inside of it. I capped off the inside and insulated where the flew would be so our heat stays in our house. A reminder that the only reason we touched this was because the floor was patched in front of it. Brenda will probably use it for some sort of decorations.

Here is the surround unpainted and with out the embellishment/accessory under the mantle.

The mantle up close. I used several different pieces of moulding/molding to build up to the depth and detail that we desired. Then capped it of with a board of poplar. Both Brenda and I were amazed at how much the material just for this little project cost. I give Brenda all of the credit for design, she is amazing!

 

  

Here is the finished product.

Notice where the piano is, below it is gone and there is the closet we built.

I rebuilt the lower portion of this cabinet to lower the original doors to the hard wood floor. Once the carpet was lifted an inch gap was left under each side.

Just one of the forty some pieces of hardware that I wire brushed all of the coats of paint off of. We love the old vintage metal finish.

Positive Post Tuesday

If you listen to K-Love radio you know they had been encouraging their listeners to pick one word. They ask this question:

What kind of person you want to be at the end of this year? What's your "One Word" for 2011?

My one word for 2011 is “Positive”. I find it personally hard to be positive in such a broken world. I will be in prayer to be a positive influence for my daughters, my wife and anyone I come in contact with. I will be praying, that I can react positively to any and all situations that I may be presented with in the future. I will be in prayer that I can make a positive impact on the readers of this blog. I appreciate prayers of support, it is far to easy for myself to be negative or as Brenda calls it a Negative Nelly….. This will be a challenge for me. Thanks for visiting and have a blessed week.