One Year Later…

If I’m being completely honest, I’m feeling a bit raw this week. The day this post goes live will be exactly one year since we piled our bags in a rented van, and drove away from our home in Haiti for the last time.

I remember waking up that morning, knowing it was the last morning. The packing and sorting and trying to clear out the house of our personal stuff had felt like it went on too long, while also feeling like it wasn’t enough time. There were decisions about what to take that felt easy, and there were decisions that felt so hard. For years I had had moments where I would think about what items I’d take if we had to leave, and when it came time to actually make those decisions it was interesting to see what made the cut.

• Things from my Granny, like the green pottery dish she made that we kept our matches in by the stove, and a carved wooden box I used for my jewelry.
• My soaping molds, cutters, and various tools and supplies.
• Sentimental items from the kids lives, like their baby books and all the teeth they’d lost that we’d saved in little baggies.
• Favorite shoes and clothes, but only the ones we could still wear in the US where the climate would be colder.
• Favorite books, video games and things like that – but only the really important ones.
• Some of my favorite wood dishes that I’d collected over the years that were made in Haiti by Haitian hands.
• My stand mixer and Chris’ brewing supplies, or at least most of them.

I know there was much more, and yet there was so much we left behind. Months later I’d have a moment where I realized I left a few things that I wished I’d brought, and a sweet friend who was traveling out would go over and rummage through boxes with Alexandre and find those things and ship them to me along with a bunch of coffee.

The day we left we piled our bags in the living room and anxiously waited for the rented minibus that Alexandre had hired to arrive. The tensions were high around the property because tensions were high with our staff. I haven’t really talked about this much because it was very fragile at the time, but along with and related to the insecurity, part of the reason we knew it was time to leave was because we’d discovered a massive theft that had been taking place for at least all of 2022, but probably ongoing for several years in a trickle that we had missed. We had been pretty good about catching other issues, but we missed this one for way too long.

It was such a big issue that it would have been impossible for anyone on our staff to not be aware of it to some degree, which meant they were either participating in it, or allowing it to keep going because they were worried about speaking up about those that were responsible. Dealing with it completely would have meant firing our entire staff and starting fresh, but we knew that would be incredibly difficult and put our family at risk. If we did that, an already fragile security situation in country and in our general area would explode on a personal level as people would be upset about a massive firing. Chris and I had dealt with things like that before, but it was before we had a family to factor in. We also couldn’t move around the country freely, so hiring new staff and starting over and trying to train them the way we’d need to just wasn’t physically possible.

We knew that Alexandre, as a retired police officer, would have the ability to deal with staffing issues in a way that we couldn’t, and that was part of the reason he was the best person suited to step up and take our place at Clean Water for Haiti when we knew it was time to go. The feelings of leaving our home and recognizing that pouring ourselves into something so close to our hearts that we now had to say goodbye to was complicated by a lot of questions and not enough answers about all the relationships we had over the years, but that’s probably an entirely different conversation. At the very least, it made leaving feel heavier and more complicated because rather than leaving people we had worked with for years and simply grieving that, we were leaving with that and a side of feeling betrayed and hurt.

As we sat in our living room I remember chatting with the kids and trying to not feel overwhelmed. We had gone out to take a picture in the yard as a family earlier, and I look back and know all the feelings behind those smiles. I see them in the pictures I took in our living room for the last time. Then, after what felt like waiting for an eternity, I heard the van rattling down the road. Yes, it actually rattled. When it came into view I tried not to panic. When we had talked about a “minibus” I was thinking 15 passenger van. This “minibus” was a 90’s era Chevy van. I looked at our pile of luggage and tried to do the math and the math wasn’t mathing. I couldn’t imagine that everything would get in – all 8 50lb duffel bags, 4 carry ons, 3 backpacks, a guitar, 4 Rollings, an Alexandre, the driver, and two police officers we were picking up along the way for security. But you know what? It and we all fit in. It was kind of a loaves and fishes situation, if you know what I mean.

I have a bunch of snippets of memories from that trip…

• Alex sat on Alexandre’s lap from St. Marc to the dirt airstrip so the two police officers could share the front passenger seat. One of them ended up sitting on the console, and I just kept thinking about how chill they were about the fact that they had to do that because no North American would be okay with that.
• Olivia spent most of the trip kneeling on the floor in front of Chris and I because that felt more comfortable than trying to squeeze her butt onto the seat with us.
• Driving through the Artibonite Valley for the last time and seeing all the rice fields, the clear blue skies, and thinking of all the years living on that little island.
• My head held Chris’ guitar in place for the whole trip.
• The van had tinted windows and looked like it could barely drive, yet it flew like the wind and was actually perfect because no one would have expected it to hold an expat family and all the things they felt most important at the time. This was proven true when we stopped on the side of the road to buy a couple gallons of gas and one of the guys saw me through the passenger window and was startled.
• We got to the airstrip in great time and with zero issues on the road. At times I stifled giggles because it all seemed so ridiculous, but was also the perfect way to leave the country. Because Haiti.

We ended up having to wait on the airstrip for a while because our plane was late arriving. When it came time to load up I remember hugging Alexandre for the last time, having no idea when we’d see him again, and knowing the huge responsibility he was stepping into. Then I watched as he and Chris hugged and I had to stifle tears. Relationships in Haiti are hard. In that moment I was reminded of the depth of their friendship, everything we’d all been through together, and the fact that one of the only reasons we’d been able to keep going as long as we had was because of Alexandre.

We got on that plane, and the sun was just starting to go down. As we took off and flew over the Artibonite Valley I looked down and saw the place where so many of our filters had gone, where so much of our work had been done. So many lives touched. Chris was sitting in front of me and I remember seeing him doing the same thing, and just feeling the sadness. Olivia hates flying and she spent most of the flight holding my hand. About halfway through I felt her relax and I looked over to see her staring out at the mountains. She turned to me and told me how beautiful it all was. Chris got to fly the plane for most of the trip, which was an unexpected highlight. Our pilot from MAF was so caring and thoughtful of what our family was going through. I won’t forget him praying for us before we took off and his kindness. As hard as that flight was, it was also such a gift.

If I’ve learned anything in all my years of living in Haiti, and in the past year it’s this – grief can coexist with so many other things. Grief and an appreciation for beauty. Grief and joy. Grief and comfort. It’s never an either/or. It’s always a yes/and.

As I’m writing this and reflecting on that day I’m fighting tears because it all still feels so raw, and yet life feels so different now. When we arrived so many people were happy to see us. That felt so good, but was also hard. In their well meaning and loving welcome we heard many say, “We’re so glad you got out and are safe and are home…” But this wasn’t home for us. We left our home. The life that Chris and I had built together, and then welcomed our kids into. The life we built as a family. The house we physically designed and built ourselves. Our community. Our way of doing life. And for Chris, his work and identity as the Executive Director of Clean Water for Haiti, one of the things he has been the most passionate about in his entire life. We’d smile and nod and say thank you, then later I’d cry because we had lost so much.

This past year has been full of grief and loss beyond Haiti as well. We lost Chris’ Dad to cancer in April. Relationships have been different because so many of the people in our life in Haiti have also been traveling a similar journey of trying to figure out how to do this life that none of us planned for. We’ve talked about planning to get together, but life happens. Jobs, kids in school, sickness, just trying to breathe and get through another day. Then before you know it months have gone by. Trying to establish a new community is so hard, especially when you’re grieving a life you’ve left behind that so many would struggle to connect with or understand.

But, in the midst of all of that things start to shift. The grief has felt a bit lighter in recent months. There are more moments of contentment and joy. Again, I’m learning to hold space for all of it.

I’m once again an immigrant, and that’s giving me more opportunities to learn. We submitted my green card application in March and we’re slowly making progress. I got my work permit back in June, which made it possible for me to get a social security number, which means I can do other things too. That felt good.

Chris started a new job in April as the Executive Director of a nonprofit in Portland. It seemed like a good fit initially, but over time we both started to see that it wasn’t for a lot of reasons. None of them were bad and there was no crisis, it just wasn’t right for him. He knew he didn’t want to be in charge of anything anymore, and if he was going to be fundraising for anything, he wanted it to be Clean Water for Haiti. We decided that he should leave that job and look for something else. In the end he decided to apply to the school district to be a bus driver. It might seem like a strange career move, but we’re both actually excited about it. They pay for all his training and he gets paid during training. They’re so short of drivers right now that he’ll most likely have a full time route in the next 2-3 months. The pay will be equivalent to what he was making before, he has benefits, a pension, and it’s a union job, so wage security. The best part is that he’ll have all the same holidays off that our kids have off. We know we only have so much time with them at home, and we want to savor that.

We took the kids to California for two weeks to visit Chris’ brother and sister in law in July. It was a great trip. It was the first time we’d been able to hop in a car and just travel somewhere for several weeks, then know when we got back we were going home and not having to get on a plane and manage all of the travel stuff like we had for the entire life of our family. We had a lot of fun. We did touristy things. We did family things. We went to Disneyland and had the best day. We remembered we loved and missed traveling.

We bought a house. I weekly look around and am baffled at just how all of that came together, and how I once again saw God’s provision for our family in such a specific way. We didn’t have concrete plans to do that this year. We had a very specific list of what we wanted, and were prepared to wait. But then this house popped up and it checked every box for way less money than anything else that had been on the market, or has been since. We’re fixing it up and making it our own. Some days it feels overwhelming to realize we’re home owners and we’re setting down roots.

Our house, when we toured it for the first time, even had the space for me to have an entire, dedicated space to make soap. I had dreamed of this for years in Haiti when I was running Mozaik Soap. I would imagine a space where I could make soap and work and leave everything organized and not have it spread all over the house. In the past six months I’ve realized once again how much I need to be creating things because that feeds my soul, and not being able to make soap because we didn’t have space in our rental was really starting to affect me. This past week I finished putting my soap studio together and I now have this beautiful work space in our basement that I can walk into at any time and just start creating.

Last Friday night while Chris and the kids watched a show in the next room I made my very first batch of soap in almost a year and a half. I was using some familiar tools and things, and yet so many things were new and different. I felt like I was bumbling through in many ways, but I also saw my muscle memory kick in and things came back. I focused on just making soap, and not worrying too much about making it the most beautiful batch ever. I just needed to do it for the first time, to remember that I could, and why I loved it. The next day I unmolded and felt myself exhale a bit more. I felt more like myself. More complete. All that while still grieving all that we’d left behind. The boxes of soaping supplies I’d left. And yet I had gained so much that I can put to work now.

I’ve been starting the process of setting up a little soaping business and am hoping to launch that in the new year. Again, I had dreamed of being able to sell my soap more consistently outside of Haiti, so the fact that I now have a soap studio in our basement where I can do this makes my head spin in a good way. It’s fun to think about all the things I want to do, but also be able to make decisions based off of years of experience and trial and error in Haiti. I’ve had a lot of encouragement from friends and family which has been so sweet.

In Haiti we had a community around us, many of whom made up our church. It was a rag tag group of expats over the years, but they were ours. We also tried to connect with the Haitian church multiple times over the years, and that was good but always complicated and different. Being able to worship in your own language and ways that are familiar to you are important. Being here we knew we’d eventually need to find a church that felt like “us”, whoever we were now. A church that met us where we were at and we felt like we fit after almost twenty years of being changed in so many ways from our time in Haiti. Honestly, we figured this would be one of the biggest challenges with getting settled here.

One weekend we chatted and talked about what we missed. What we needed. Chris told me to go online and see what I could find, then we’d just make a list and start visiting places and see what felt best for us. I Googled, and one of the first to pop up was Union Chapel. It was really close to where we lived, which was important, because we wanted to be able to plug in and not worry about driving across town. I started going through their website and connected with their statement of faith, along with a lot of other things. We decided to make that our first visit the next day. We walked in and were greeted by various people. People took time to learn our names. After the service we went to meet the lead pastor. We asked if we could get together for coffee. He scheduled us for two days later and also started introducing us to people. We met for coffee that week and felt welcomed and that we connected. We went back.

That was in February. We didn’t stop going. People kept learning our names. People invited us over for meals. We connected with a home group of people who have kids the same age as our kids, and we’ve found people we love being with. One of the things we love about our church is that it doesn’t have a bulletin full of programs for people from the church. Instead, if they’re doing something, it’s with the intention of building community OR to work towards church health and asking how we can be loving those around us in our local community. They try to encourage an outward focus, to care about the things God cares about, not using the church to serve ourselves. They’ve hosted groups to address social justice issues, spiritual and emotional health, and are starting one for people who are struggling with how they feel about faith and church in general. They have church family meetings every quarter to keep everyone in the know about things going on. This past Sunday we had a chilli cook-off and potluck meal just because it’s fun and it’s a chance for everyone to get together and enjoy each other’s company over a meal. Two weeks ago a family in our home group suddenly lost their son and we’ve witnessed the church rally around them in a way that has been beautiful. I’ve felt so free to just be and process through life in this community. Just this past Sunday our pastor spoke on grief and lament. While his voice caught several times through his message I sat there with tears streaming down my face because someone was talking about holding space for both grief and the beautiful things in life, because they can and do co-exist.

I didn’t expect to find our church the first time out of the gate, but it looks like we did, and I’m so incredibly grateful. It’s been a safe place to land and feel seen and loved. So often as I’ve sat in services I’ve thought of so many of my friends that are struggling with their relationship with the Church and God, while I hear our pastor humbly and directly speak to those things in a way that I’ve never heard, and I wish I could gather those people together and just sit with them in that space. Not because I think our pastor is amazing and needing to be lifted up. Rather because he’s so humble and sweetly awkward and human, and I feel like he approaches things in a way that is so healing. He directly acknowledges where the Church as failed in so many of these areas, something that is so desperately needed from the pulpit, then has this way of working through a passage of scripture in a way that brings more context and understanding of the heart of God. So many times since we started attending I’ve sat in a service and felt like my heart was being glued back together just a little bit more.

Our kids are attending public school for the first time in their lives. They transferred in back in January, and adjusted way better than we thought they would initially. There have been rough patches, and the novelty has definitely worn off, but they’re both doing well despite all the adjustments. It’s crazy to think that Olivia is old enough to get her learners permit, and Alex is basically looking me in the eyes. I don’t feel ready for this but I don’t have a choice in the matter, so I’m trying to embrace it.

There are many things we miss from our life in Haiti, and we talk about those things regularly. Life here is just very different. We spent a lot of time together as a family in Haiti, so having the kids in school all day and having to be intentional about making time for each other. I’m grateful for the childhood our kids had, where they could run outside all day, and in Alex’s case, do it with minimal clothing :) They had so many amazing experiences that they wouldn’t have had living in North America. I know just from conversations over the past year together that they see that and miss it, but also like certain things about living here.

Haiti will always be part of us. For Chris and I it was where we met, where we built our life as a couple, where we started our family, and where we built one of the most important things either of us will probably ever do with our skills. We miss the days of freely moving around the country and know that while we left last year, life had already been very different for several years. We miss the adventure and knowing we were doing something that mattered deeply. We miss the life we had 4-5 years ago and the Haiti that existed then. It was a special season. But we also know those days are gone, and in some way that makes things a bit easier now.

As we make our way here I know the grief will become less. We did a week of debriefing back at the end of February with Chris’ brother and sister-in-law, who work in missionary care. Normally it’s not recommended that you counsel or debrief family, but in our case it was a big gift. Matt had served on our Board for a while, and they both knew our story. We didn’t have to unpack any of that with them, and we could all lean into the hard things together. During the week I remember Matt saying that grief never leaves us, it just changes shape and becomes less prominent. It’s always there, but it takes up less space over time, and we find room for other things. I know it’ll take years, but we’re already seeing glimpses here and there. I know we’ll be okay, and I also know it’s okay to have days that are hard, or moments that suck the air out of my lungs. I’m learning to let them come, feel them, take a deep breath and look forward.

~Leslie

Adventures in Renovating

I feel like I kind of left everyone hanging after my house tour a couple weeks ago. I had hoped to be able to squeeze in an update sooner, but the reality is that we’ve been going full force on renovations and updates, while also trying to balance work and family stuff. It’s been a lot! But, I decided to try and eek a post in this morning and see where I get to with that :)

We closed on the house on July 21st, and then went away for the weekend. Not the “normal” way of doing things I guess, but we’ve already established that our family is far from normal. We got back from a lovely weekend away at Mount Hood where I literally did nothing more than sit on a deck overlooking forest and a stream for two days while I wrote and read. It was fabulous and much needed after a hard season of transition, and before we jumped into a really busy time.

The day after we got back Olivia and I went over to the new house and spent time looking at paint chips that I had already gathered in advance. We needed to pick out colors for the cabinets in the kitchen and bathroom.

Chris and I had already decided the whole house was going to get a good coat of Behr’s Whipped Cream, which we used in the rental we’re living in right now. If you know us from our Haiti days, you know we like a white wall ;) It might seem boring or sterile to some, but we have reasons. First, we like and need things to be bright. Chris struggled with depression in college and since then has always been aware of how light affects him. Having a bright space helps his mood, and mine. We both actually really LOVE color, but we love mixing it with a white base. In Haiti we had off-white walls and terra cotta colored tile on the floors, and it was such a great neutral for being able to add whatever art or color that we wanted. I learned that setting a good base allows me more room for creativity in other places, like using mosaic tiles on a wall. So, we’re going with that mindset in this house too. We love the Whipped Cream because it’s a really neutral, very slightly, off-white that is bright, clean, but not sterile or glaring.

Olivia and I bought most of the paint. That afternoon Chris came over to the house and started working on the yard. None of that stuff would actually get us closer to moving in, which he realized the next day, but it helped him clear the slate and feel like something had gotten done. And, it opened up the yard and made it feel cleaner. So it was really a win in that sense.

We also had Joe come by. Joe is a family friend and the handy man that takes care of all the maintenance on Chris’ family’s rental units. He’s is one of those people who knows a lot of things about a lot of things, and can probably figure out how to do whatever it is you need done. We walked through the house with him and told him the high priority items that needed to get done before we moved in, and what things we wanted to do long-term, including the rental unit in the garage. Here’s the great thing about Joe – he took all of it in, then said, “Sure, we can do all that.” And he’s right. He knows how to do all the contracting type things that need to get done, so between the three of us we’re pretty confident we can handle most of the work ourselves, which saves us a lot of money and time in the long-run. We can work on our own schedule and not have to wait for openings in a contractor’s schedule, which is a huge thing.

The next day we all went to work. I did another (of many) Home Depot run to get more supplies, including picking up our new exterior doors. The doors that were on the house were original, but they were in really bad shape and were very flimsy feeling compared to what you’d get now. We knew they needed to be changed out, and it was a great choice to do it right away. One big part of this was opening up the front door opening from a 32″ doorway to a 36″ one so we could more easily move furniture in and out. We learned that lesson the hard way when we moved into our house in Camp Marie. After almost a year of construction, moving day came, and we realized when we couldn’t get our fridge in the house that none of us had actually measured the width of the security doors we bought. The guys had to bash the doorway out, take out the door, move the fridge in, and then temporarily reinstall the door until we could find a wider door to replace it. Lesson learned!

When we were doing a walk through with a contractor during the inspection phase, we were only on the inside of the door when we were talking about what would be involved in opening it up more. After we signed the papers we were at the house, standing outside with the screen door open and I realized the screen door was wider than the front door, and that in order to install the screen door someone had already widened the opening. When Joe came over we measured it and it was already 36″, so swapping out the door would be less work than what we initially expected :) That doesn’t mean it was easy, because it’s an old house, but it was easier.

Chris and I got to work on all of the prep that needs to happen before paint. Joe has a paint sprayer, so we knew that once the prep work was done, the painting itself would move quickly, but man, I hate painting prep work! It’s literally days of filling and patching, then sanding. It’s taping things off and removing all the bits and pieces. Can we talk about ceiling hooks?!? I’m not exaggerating when I say this house had more ceiling hooks than I’ve ever seen in a house before. Don’t believe me? I saved them in a baggie so I could show you :)

As I was prepping what will be our bedroom, I went in the closet to see what needed to be done in there. I’ll be honest, this space was one that I was not happy with and feeling frustrated with as I was trying to figure out what to do with it. We’ve had walk-in closets in the past three houses we’ve lived in, and love having open shelves for our clothes rather than dressers. The closet wasn’t super small, but there was a doorway over it, which really limited access and what you could do in it. When I went inside I realized that the house had just given us another gift. That door-way/wall was just 2×4’s and a sheet of drywall. It had been added after the house had been built when someone decided they didn’t want the closet to be open to the room. I called Chris in to look at it and he asked if I wanted it taken down, then got to work with a sledge hammer :)

There’s still the side wall defining the space, but now it’s open all the way up to the ceiling and we can easily put in built-in shelves and a small hanging space, maximizing what’s there. If we need more room we can rotate seasonal things to the closet across the hall in our office. Taking the wall down made the room feel so much more open because your eye goes all the way up to the ceiling, which sits at 8’4″. We’ll probably hang a curtain over it at some point, but it’ll be floor to ceiling so it’ll visually make the room feel taller.

The day before I started painting Joe finished the front door. When he had the old door out we decided to make space to add in the same size trim that’s around the windows, which meant moving the porch light over, so he did all the work for that at the same time, and updated the wiring for the porch light. This meant cutting away at the siding and exposing the studs in the wall. This was good because we didn’t know what type of insulation was in the walls. Joe found about a foot and a half of balled up newspaper, and then spray in insulation on top of that, which matched what is up in the attic. As he took out newspapers to replace them with some pink insulation later, we were given a bit of history. I opened up one ball and it was a perfectly preserved few sheets from a 1947 paper. The adds are amazing, so I’m going to flatten some of them down and frame them to hang in the house after we move in.

He also found a handful of marbles and a small chunk of coal. Right on the other side of the wall there was a patch in the plaster. We figure that at some point in the early days of the house someone accidentally knocked a hole in the wall, and a kid dropped a handful of marbles in there and couldn’t get them back because they dropped below the newspaper. I need to find a fun jar to put them in so we can keep them on display.

After days of feeling like we were spinning our wheels with prep work, on Thursday I was able to get painting and got all of the first floor finished, except the places in the kitchen that I needed to do with a brush and roller because of cabinets. It always amazes me how much of a difference paint can make, even in places where you think that it’s not too bad. Most of the upstairs was painted with a taupish-cream color, and it wasn’t terrible, but when the white started going up we realized how dingy it looked.

During prep Chris took down the fluorescent lights that were in the living room and kitchen. I can understand the kitchen, but the living room? When I bought paint I picked up some replacements, but when I showed them to Chris I was surprised to be told they were ugly and that we should make them all match, and also swap out the light fixture in the dining room, LOL. Chris is usually the one that’s the most budget conscious, so I assumed he’d want to save as much money as possible and not change something out just because it wasn’t our favorite looks wise. I told him how surprised I was by his strong opinions about certain things that I had expected to be opposite, and he told me it was because this is our own house and we should do things right from the beginning. It’s been fun to talk about certain decisions and see how much we align, but also where we want to put our own stamp on things.

The two bedrooms already had larger “boob” lights which actually work in the house because of the age, so he wanted those for the other rooms. I know, I know. Boob lights have a bad reputation. But, I think it’s important to remember that they actually got their start in the early to mid-1900’s when things moved from chandelier and hanging lights in most rooms, to having flush mount lights, so for our house it works. I decided that I would go with something that looked more aged rather than shiny, and got an oil rubbed bronze finish on them. We have a really cool hall light fixture with oil rubbed bronze on it, so now as you look through the main floor it all flows well. Here’s a picture of the living room with paint, new door, and the new light fixture…

After the upstairs got painted we finished prepping the basement. I feel like this is where a bigger transformation happened because it was so dark down there. I don’t actually have pictures of it yet because I basically sprayed, then we cleaned up and went home for dinner, and I’ve been busy working on things upstairs for the past week. I do have a picture of what I looked like after it was done though :)

I also sprayed the back entry way. Earlier in the week Chris took out all of the weird cabinets that had been installed. The one that was up on a shelf behind the back door ended up being an old radio or TV cabinet, but there were no shelves in it. We couldn’t really figure out what it was there for until Chris took it out and found years worth of dog food dust. We put all the pieces together and realized that they had used it to store dog food up high where the dog couldn’t get it. Seeing the damage on the doors and trim through the house from the dog, it all made sense, but was a funny solution.

Mid-week, while Chris was prepping stuff downstairs, he found a small puddle on the laundry/soap room floor, but didn’t think much of it and just mopped it up. The next day, as we were closing up the house and turning off all the lights before leaving, I found a bigger puddle on the floor down there and called him down. We got out flashlights and started investigating, because all the sewer lines are on the other side of the wall. He shone his light through the hole where the washer lines hook up to the water pipes and was looking right at duct tape wrapped around the main sewer pipe, and it was wet. We’d found the leak, and the really crappy patch job that we figure lasted exactly 3 weeks – long enough for the house to go through inspection when no one was using the bathroom.

We wondered how we and the inspector had missed it, but when we looked from the side of the pipes where you come into the room, when you shine a light on that area it just looked black, like the pipes, because of the shadows. On the other side, where Alex’s room is, there was a new piece of drywall and this little metal door. When we had opened that door earlier in the week we just quickly looked at it and said, “That’s where you get easier access to the main lines,” and went on our way. When we opened the door again we realized it was exactly where the leak was and was there to give access to the patch. Chris pulled the tape off and we thought that it was just leaking from one of the joints, because it was where the PVC connected with the rubber seal that was going to the main pipe that exited the house. The next day when Joe looked at it to fix it we heard loud words come from the basement. When we asked what was going on he said, “The pipe isn’t leaking because it’s cracked or the glue is broken, it’s leaking because it was clogged and someone sawed through it, cleaned the clog, then taped it up!” So, rather than going to buy $20 worth of plumbing parts and fixing it the right way, they taped it up. Joe went and bought $20 worth of parts and fixed it the right way and we no longer having a leaking sewer pipe.

Last week we actually didn’t do any work on Tuesday or Wednesday because Chris and I both had a lot going on with work and appointments. Later in the week we got back at it, and had a really productive couple of days, as did Joe.

One of the things we needed to do downstairs was swap out some windows. All five downstairs windows/openingns are about 15×30″. Eventually we’re going to put in two egress windows in the kids rooms, per code. Alex’s room actually didn’t have a window – it only had the old metal door that covered the coal shoot. That was priority #1. When I went to buy the window Home Depot was having a sale, so we decided to buy 3 of the same windows at the same time, knowing that we’d eventually be installing them all. Joe spent a couple days putting in Alex’s window and got that done on Saturday evening. He’ll move on to the laundry room and Olivia’s room and replace those next. When it comes time to do the egress windows, the window that was put in Alex’s room will come out and be put in the laundry room to replace the other small window in there while Alex’s room gets the actual egress window.

On Thursday I worked to get a coat of Kilz on all the upstairs doors and trim as a primer. We’d had issues with some of the old wood work bleeding through in areas where the overspray was happening, so we knew that before we did any of the door and trim paint we needed to put down a stain blocker primer. On Friday Chris went to work painting the first coat of door and trim paint and I worked on painting all the window frames and sills in the living room, bathroom, and two bedrooms. We were trying to tackle the paint projects and get them all done so we could pull up carpet. The carpet made the house smell like dirty dog and sweat, so we knew the sooner we got it up the better, but we also knew there are wood floors underneath, so getting it up would mean we’d then have to be careful and protect the floors while we painted. If we got all the painting done first the old carpet could act as a drop cloth. It was a good thing we did it this way, because the day I was spraying upstairs someone, and by someone I mean me, spilled about a half gallon of white paint on the floor… I was so thankful the carpet was still down!

I got all the trim work done, and by late afternoon we were at a point where all the painting in the living room had been done, so we pulled up the carpet.

Now, I need to confess… I had pulled up a corner of the carpets in each room the first day I went to the house, to see what we were dealing with. When I pulled up the heat register in the living room and got a piece of carpet to pull back all I could hear in my brain was a big ol’ “Whomp, whomp…” There was linoleum between the carpet and the wood floors. I almost cried. I tried to pull up an edge there and it wouldn’t budge. I had visions of tar holding all of it down. I decided to try another corner because I wanted to prepare myself for the coming weeks. I yanked up the corner and found the linoleum and managed to get a corner in my pliers and pulled.

That linoleum ripped right up and I saw beautiful, bare wood underneath! I went and checked the hall and found wood under the carpet, and found the same in the office. When I checked our bedroom I found more linoleum :( This was when the closet was still in, so I couldn’t easily find a corner to pull up and had no idea if it was glued down.

I should mention (should I??) that when Chris took the big heat return out of the living room floor to pull up the carpet he saw pet hair, so he reached down and started pulling it out. Thankfully he was wearing gloves and a mask, because he pulled out a Shitzu sized ball of fur. I wish I was exaggerating but I am not. There was also an incredible amount of dirt and dust on the floor. I’m guessing some of it was just the carpet backing slowly disintegrating, but that a large part of it was from shoes being worn in the house. I’m good with never having carpet in my house again and just using area rugs after seeing that.

When we started pulling up the linoleum it came up in giant sheets, only ripping where they had stapled or nailed it down to the floor. There was a paper layer between that and the wood floors. The floors have a few spots that need a bit of TLC, but for the most part they’re in amazing condition. We even found some fun pencil markings on them.

Saturday we spent most of the day at the house. Chris spent almost two hours pulling staples and nails out of the floor while I worked on getting the second coat of door and trim paint done. In the middle of the night my brain was running because of seeing the floors and having a better idea of what we were dealing with.

I think it’s important to pause for a second here. In the past couple of weeks I’ve learned more about the history of our neighborhood, which deserves it’s own post, because it’s pretty cool. Learning about that helped me better understand the way our house was built, along with something that Chris’ Mum had shared with us a few days ago. Up until a certain time, around the 50’s I think, all the houses built in this area were required by building code to have some kind of wood sub-flooring under whatever other flooring was put down. So what was most typical is that hardwoods were put down as the sub-floor and then other things went on top. This was important, as my middle of the night brain figured out, because it meant that the wood floors we uncovered were our sub-flooring, and all of the studs that divided rooms were on top.

Our floors are fir, because it was readily available in abundance here in the Pacific Northwest. When I write my post about the history of our neighborhood I’ll share some of why this is interesting. For now though, I just want to share that I was excited about this, because fir is beautiful flooring. After it’s sanded it’s a lovely light wood color, but over time as it’s exposed to UV rays it darkens to a reddish brown. I prefer a darker floor over a light pine color, so finding this was exciting because it means we don’t need to stain the floors, just clear coat them, and then let them age over time.

Back when I went through the house tour I mentioned that we were going to be doing things in phases, right? And that phase one meant we were going to do what we needed to in order to get move in ready, then tackle other projects later on. Things like taking down walls and stuff like that…

On Saturday morning Chris and I were talking and he had realized the same thing that I had about the studs being on top of the floors. While we had planned to take down the arched doorway between the living room and dining room later, Chris pointed out that it made more sense to take it down now, and make all the mess now, rather than later. I was excited about this revelation, because he was right and I had already thought the same thing, but was trying to go slow.

And then he said it probably made sense to take down the wall behind the front door to open up the closet space there, since we were making a mess anyway. I forgot to mention that the week before Joe had closed it up on the bathroom side for us, and we had just decided to leave the rest until a later date, knowing what was back there and that we could open it whenever we were ready.

As a refresher, this is what it looked like…

It was very closed off. From the paneling wall to the doorway between the living room and kitchen was only 7 feet wide. It would be a tight squeeze to get our table and chairs in there, and actually sit in there comfortably.

Taking down old plaster walls is messy, so it absolutely made sense to do it all in one fell swoop, rather than doing it later and trying to figure out how to live with it. So now we have a much bigger opening to the kitchen/dining area and a big space for coats!

Chris and I didn’t go to the house on Sunday and instead went to church, home group, and spent time with the kids. They’ve been hanging out with Grandma a lot in the past couple weeks which we’re very thankful for. We were both exhausted from several days of a lot of work, so the day off was much needed.

When I went back yesterday Joe had done a TON more work to finish off the openings and prep them for new drywall. He had moved a couple electrical boxes over from where they’d been in the wall section of the dining room that we took out, and had cleaned up the opening for the coat closet more. Yesterday while we were there he finished up the demo and cleaning out the areas. I suspect when I get there today I’m going to see some drywall up :)

Joe and I will work on getting it all refinished this week, and painted, but it’s SO much better! It was a crazy amount of work, and felt like a big step back in some ways because we were tearing things out rather than finishing them off, but I just kept reminding Chris that we’d thank ourselves later. And we will. I think we already do.

Yesterday I worked on finishing bathroom wall touch ups and cleaned up the light that hangs over the sink. Today I think I’m going to start working on bathroom and kitchen cabinets. Chris will keep working on floors and getting all that pulled up. He got our bedroom done yesterday, so it’s the office and hallway that remain.

It’s been a ton of work, but we’re making progress! I can’t wait to share pictures after we get moved in because it’s going to be a huge transformation in a very short period of time. Stay tuned!

~Leslie

House Tour!

It’s fun to see how excited everyone was to read Part 2 of the story :) I missed that part of writing on the blog. Okay, who’s ready for a house tour? Let’s just dive right in.

Some details to know… These are all listing pictures, except the pool in the garage. Those are mine from one of our walk-throughs. I figured the lighting would be better and you get a bit more of a wide angle on the listing photos than from what I would take with my phone. That said, remember these are listing photos, so sometimes rooms are a bit distorted and it can be hard to get a feel for space. The house is about 1800 square feet. The front yard is a decent size, and the back yard has quite a bit of space too.

I want to mention something else so you have a better understanding of how we’re approaching this. Years ago I was reading the Young House Love blog, and they talked about their “phased approach” to home renovations. They were on their third house at the time, and had many years of DIY projects under their belts. They said that they have a three “phase” process.

Phase 1 projects are those simple, cosmetic changes that you can make right away that are fairly simple. They’re typically things like a fresh coat of paint, changing out lighting, etc. Nothing invasive, but things that freshen up a space right away to make it more yours while you decide what you want to do down the road. They always encourage that you live in a space for a while to see how it actually works for you. How does it function? How does it feel? After a while of living with things you might move onto Phase 2 for a room, which would be making some more significant changes. It might be something like redoing the floors, or adding built ins. Something that really improves the space but isn’t a full on gut job and start over. Most home projects would move into Phase 2 and that would be good. But then there’s Phase 3. These are the big renovations/changes. Things like redoing a kitchen or bathroom. They always encourage this AFTER you’ve lived in a space for a year or two and really hone in on what you want/need. Use the time to really see what doesn’t work and make decisions about what you truly want in there. Budget and plan.

Using a phased approach means you can do small things to make a space more livable for you or your family now, and get a better feel for what you want down the road. It’s easy to go into a house and see all the immediate changes you’d like to make, but you can waste a lot of money by just jumping in. If you live with it for a while you might realize that you like the layout of the kitchen, but want/need new cabinets. Or you decide that rather than pulling out an old built in you actually like the character it brings, so you decide to make it a feature. This approach also means you can budget better and take things in smaller bites over time.

This is the approach we’re going to take with the house. There are things we’ll do right away before we move in, like painting inside. There are other projects that will happen over time, which would be more of a Phase 2 approach. Then, there will be Phase 3 things where we know that eventually we need/want to do a bigger update, but we want to live with it and budget and do it down the road. As I go through the pictures I’ll tell you what things we have in mind for now, and what will be for down the road.

Here she is (yes, I’ve decided the house is a she)…

You can see that the front yard is actually a decent size. Along with the driveway, the asphalt in front of the trellis is actually parking as well. Most of the houses along the street have this extra space that’s actually off the street, which is really nice. We have a cute mail box and that trellis gave me heart eyes. That “tree” is actually a lilac that has been trimmed and shaped, and then there are a couple roses. I love all of those types of plants/shrubs, but we’re planning to take them all out. Before you yell at me, hear me out. First off, that lilac is what’s growing into the sewer pipes, so it needs to be taken out for that reason. The other thing is that these are all planted in a row, right down the middle of the yard. What I would like to do is put in flower beds on either side of the trellis, and we want to have open grass between that and the house so it looks more like a yard and isn’t so chopped up.

Here’s a better view of the front of the house from the driveway. The plants in front of the porch are calla lilies, which I plan on keeping. I want to plant more things in there and fill it in more. The planters on the porch are rotted and falling apart, so they’ll need to go. We’ll save the soil in them to use in other pots or planters. To the left of that are a couple small beds with random shrubs and things growing that we’re planning on taking out. We want to open up the front yard and make room for the things we really want to have there. It would also be a pain to mow because you’d be going around all these little flower beds. In the front corner of the yard is a good sized fruit tree. We think it’s an asian pear based on what the fruit looks like right now, but need to do some research. There are some raised garden beds that we’ll keep for a bit just to use to transplant things into from where we’re living right now until we can decide how we want to do the yard.

I don’t love the railings, but that’s a down the road conversation. The porch is actually cracked and settling, but not bad enough that it needs to be replaced right away. That’s something that we can live with for some years before we decide to do anything. We love the front windows. They let in a lot of light and are what give the house character. If you drive through the neighborhood you can tell which houses have which floor plans based on the windows, which is kind of fun.

The garage is detached and made from blocks, so it’s solid, which is good. We will eventually paint both the house and garage, but again, that’s a down the road project for another year.

This is the living room, standing right in the corner where those front windows are. This will be one of the areas that will have immediate changes made. We don’t love the arches in the doorways because they make things feel more closed off, and they aren’t original to the house. There were changes made, probably in the 60s by looking at materials and decor, and you can actually see the seams in the drywall where they were put in. We’d like to square them off and trim them out, and potentially widen the opening if we can. That we need to feel out as we go.

The carpet will be pulled up to reveal the hardwoods, and we’re hoping that they’ll be in decent condition so we can refinish them and keep them. Not only because we love hardwood floors, but also because it’s less expensive than having to lay new flooring. There’s an exposed corner in one of the bedrooms that looks pretty good, so we’re hoping that’s an indication of how the rest of the floor looks. The whole house is going to get a fresh coat of paint inside, in a nice creamy white that we’ve been loving in our current house. From there we can decide where we want to add color and how.

That dark paneled wall is the dining area. I’ll talk more about that when I show you pictures of the kitchen.

Here’s the view from the dining area looking at the front door. The door needs to be replaced, and that’ll be one of the first things we do. These are original doors and are just wood with no insulation in them, so we’ll be changing them out for something more energy efficient. This doorway is also only a 32″ opening, so we want to change that and put in a 36″ opening so it’s easier to move things in and out.

That light fixture is a whole vibe that we’re not loving. There are two more in the kitchen. All of them are going to go.

The wall with the coat hooks is interesting. The corner where the wall indents to the right, is actually the chimney running up from the basement. On the other side, behind the door, is a closet in what is now the bathroom. When the house was built it was a third bedroom, but was renovated to become the bathroom. They kept the closet in there and just used it for storage. At some point down the road I would love to reverse the closet so it opens into the living room side and expose the chimney. Maybe do some fun things with that. Having the closet open on the living room side would make space for shoes and hanging coats just inside the door, which would be way more functional.

If you go down the hallway to the left of the dining room/kitchen opening, the first thing you come to is the main bathroom. From looking at other houses in the neighborhood and old listing photos, this would have originally been a third bedroom, with the main bathroom across the hall between the kitchen and the primary bedroom. Somewhere along the way whoever owned this house way back, probably in the 60s/70s, decided they wanted a bigger kitchen and moved the bathroom here, and actually put in a half bath on the other side of the toilet wall for the second bedroom. We think, based on the grab bars on the walls, that it was for an elderly person so they had an accessible bathroom.

Anyway! As you can see, this bathroom needs a refresh. Like the kitchen cabinets, the bathroom vanity is solid, so for now we’ll sand and repaint with something that will vibe with that blue faux marble laminate counter top :) Walls and built ins will get painted white. There’s a bit of work to do around the bathtub as a Phase 1 project just to make sure it’s all water tight, etc. And, you can see the closet I mentioned. We don’t need a closet in the bathroom, so it makes sense to eventually close that in and open it from the other side where we do need and want space for hanging coats and putting shoes. And that light fixture? I’m actually kind of digging it for right now in the “work with it” phase. I feel like bathrooms are a place where you can have a bit of fun and add some character, so that’s the plan here. Stay tuned for that :)

Moving down the hall right next to the bathroom is the secondary bedroom, which will be our office.

I know the first inclination in any house is to make the room with the bathroom the primary bedroom, but this room just isn’t big enough for our bed or any of our furniture. We all shared one bathroom in our Haiti house, so having to share the main bathroom isn’t a big deal, especially because we do have this second bathroom. If the main one is occupied, someone can still come in here if needed.

This picture is taken from the corner of the second closet, not the doorway. Yes, second closet. When they did the bathroom renovation and added the half bath, they converted the extra space between the main bathroom and this room into a second closet. At some point I would like to do a Phase 3 project and actually take out the half bath, close up that wall again, and redo the main bathroom by moving the toilet under the window, swapping the bathtub/shower unit for a free standing tub, and putting in a walk in shower where the toilet/half-bath space is. That would be several years down the road though.

Here’s the room from the bathroom corner…

Here’s where you get the first peek at the hardwood floors. We honestly can’t figure out why the carpet is on an angle there, but I’m sure it made sense at one point :) Like the rest of the upper floor, the carpets are all coming out in here, and it’ll get fresh paint. We love that these windows let in a lot of light. I’ll be taking those shelves in that little nook down, and that’ll be the corner where my desk goes, because it’s a corner desk and that just makes the most sense. Chris’ desk will go somewhere else in the room, yet to be decided :)

You might be wondering how we’re planning on sharing an office even though we work for different organizations right now. That’s a great question! What we’ve been realizing is that Chris’ new job is actually doing a lot of the same type of work that I’ve been doing, and continue to do for CWH. In Haiti he was more in charge of operations, so we each had our own realms of expertise. Now I’m in a position where I can offer him a lot of ideas and guidance on the admin stuff, and he needs someone to bounce that off of. By sharing an office space we can chat through the day while still doing our own things. I also think it’ll help him stay more connected with CWH even though he’s not in a direct role of responsibility (he’s still on the Board of Directors). When we do have things that need other space, like phone calls or Zoom meetings, one of us can just go work in the kitchen or something like that.

Primary bedroom…

This is one of those listing photos that doesn’t do a room justice. It looks small, but that wall is actually big enough for a king sized bed and nightstands on either side. The window straight ahead looks out over the back yard and back patio area. You can see a covering over the patio area, but as I mentioned in the last post, that was taken down for the appraisal to get done, so this room has more light coming in now. Here it is from another angle…

I feel like this picture gives you a better feel for space. This is standing in front of the window. The door is to the left of the closet, just out of frame. This room is across the hall from the secondary bedroom/office. There’s a linen closet at the end of the hall between the two bedrooms, which is why the closet spaces are placed where they are. We have to figure out what we want to do in the closet. We’re big fans of closets with built in shelves for clothes storage, because it’s so much easier to look at a shelf and see your clothes, pull out what you want, and go on your way than it is to pull stuff out of a drawer and keep it all organized. I actually hate dressers, if I’m honest, LOL. Neither of us has a lot of hanging stuff, so we might just put mostly shelves in this closet and hang stuff in the other closet, or something like that. Or maybe we’ll open up the closet opening so it’s easier to access the whole thing. I don’t know :) Something will happen in there!

Okay, back down the hall to the kitchen!

This is the dining area/back stairs looking from the kitchen. It gives a better idea of the size of the dining area, which isn’t huge. I think our table and chairs will fit just fine, it might just be a case of pushing the table back when we’re not eating. The fridge is also not where it should be in the photos, which actually opens up the space more. Ideally we would like to take out that paneled wall between the dining area and the back stairs at some point and put some kind or railing or half wall up closer to the actual stairs to open it up more. That would be a Phase 3 type project though because it means taking down walls, which has the give a mouse a cookie effect.

Here’s the kitchen. This is one of those parts of the house that will have several phases :) The cabinets are actually really solid, so for now we’re going to clean, sand, and repaint. New knobs, and we have a white cast iron sink and faucet that we got for free that I’d like to swap out since it’s just sitting there. That drawer missing a front can be repaired, too. The front is actually sitting inside the drawer and just needs to be reattached, which is easy. You can see where the fridge is supposed to be. When we finished signing papers we went over to the house and I gave the fridge a good shove, only to find lots of dust and dirt, along with different colors of linoleum under it, LOL. The floors need to have something done as a Phase 1, and I’m looking at options for that. I’m honestly considering pulling up the linoleum and painting then sealing the sub floor, but we’ll see about that. The two big windows let in a lot of light, which is nice.

This is the back stairwell and door. It’s an interesting space :) We think that at some point this may have just been a mud room that wasn’t heated, back when the basement would have strictly been used as a cellar and place to store coal for the furnace. Since then the basement was finished to the state it is now, and this space was turned into more of a utility room. That little white cabinet is attached to something, which needs more investigation. On the wall above it is a little shelf that’s about 4×10″ and would have been where the phone sat. It’s these fun quirks of old houses that I love.

As I mentioned, eventually we’d like to do a lot of something back here, but for Phase 1 we’ll be taking out that brown cabinet and shelf to make space for coat hooks and some kind of shoe storage. On the little wall to the right of the stairs I want to take the little cabinet and shelf out and put in shelves that go all the way across so we can use it as a pantry area right off the kitchen.

The lower part of the stairway that goes to the basement is, um… quirky. It’s one of those things that comes with an old house. It’s steep and you kind of have to duck sideways if you’re tall. We want to live with it for a while to see how it is in the every day, and may or may not change the stairwell at some point down the road. We’ll see.

This is the room at the bottom of the stairs. You can see how the stairs are and that header beam that you have to duck around when you come down. I LOVE that little shelf built in and want to clean it up and the fill it with treasures and curiosities :) This room is basically the room that you go through to get to the other rooms. It’s a good size. The TV we were given and currently use is rather large, lol, and instead of getting a new one to fit the living room space upstairs we’re planning on putting it down here, along with one of the couches from the set we have. With the kids getting older, and with the available space, we thought it would be nice to have a hang out space downstairs. The video games and watching of shows can happen down here, and we can still have a cozy living room upstairs to hang out in. Right now our current house is an open kitchen/dining/living room set up and while I love that in many ways, I don’t love that someone playing video games monopolizes the entire space.

This and the other rooms down here will all get a fresh coat of paint, and I think we’re planning on painting the floors as well so they’re all one color. Eventually we’ll put some kind of flooring through the space, maybe a waterproof vinyl planking or something like that.

You’ll see in all the rooms down here that the foundation was poured, with a block wall put on top of that, so we have a ledge around the perimeter of each room. It’s actually kind of cool and will add some personality to the rooms as we finish them.

Here’s that same room looking from the bottom of the stairs. The door to the left will be Alex’s room, the door straight ahead will be Olivia’s room, and the opening next to that to the left goes into the laundry room and what will be my soaping room :) Like I said, there’s a decent amount of space down here and I think we can make it a cozy hang out room.

This will be Alex’s room, and is the basement room that needs the most finishing. For a reference point, the window opens to the driveway side of the house. The ceiling needs closing in after we run some more electrical for sockets on the walls, we need to put in an egress window, and then finish the cement walls with drywall and flooring. Also either building in a closet or adding some kind of wardrobe that we do or don’t build in.

Between this space and the laundry room are all the utilities, like furnace, hot water tank, and sewer and laundry hookups. The house doesn’t have central air and has a gas furnace that’s about 20 years old. We’re going to use it for the next year and just see how things are, but are thinking that down the road we’ll put in a heat pump system. This would mean we can take out the furnace, and look at going to an on-demand hot water system. Doing that would open up the whole utility space, and since it’s right where the sewer lines go out, we have the possibility of putting in another bathroom with a shower down here. We’d just need to use a grinder system with a pump to push things to the sewer lines because they sit about 2 feet up off the floor. That’s not a big deal. It’s just nice to know we can put another bathroom in down here for the kids.

This will be Olivia’s room. The window straight ahead will be the one we change to an egress window and will end up being quite a bit bigger because Washington code specifies an almost 6 ft square opening, so a window that’s 2×3′ is what we’re thinking, which will bring in a lot more light. That window faces the side yard. The window to the right faces the back patio area, which is cement, so it’ll just get changed out for a newer window of the same size. As with Alex’s room we’ll do something for flooring, and finish the cement walls, and some kind of closet or wardrobe unit.

This is the laundry room. When I walked in I knew immediately what this would be used for, aside from laundry :)

I’ve had quite a few people ask if I planned on getting back into soap making since we’ve gotten here, and the answer has always been, “Yes, but right now I just don’t have the space.” Our current house is great, but it lacks the space for me to cure shelves and shelves of soap for 4-6 weeks at a time like I could in Haiti. Yes, there are spaces where I could squeeze things in, but I also have to consider that the bars are all fragranced, which can be a lot when they’re in a space that everyone is in. In Haiti, the storage room I used wasn’t a high traffic area, and even with the door open as it was most of the time, we didn’t really smell things outside of that. I also need to get to materials and supplies easily, which can be really bulky.

On top of all that, life has just been a lot since we got here, and I didn’t have the headspace to figure things out over recent months. Now that we seem to be moving into a different phase I’ve had more space to think about things and decide how I want to do it. I know I want to set things up as an actual home-based business, which meant waiting on certain immigration things so I could properly register. In recent weeks I’ve gotten my Employment Authorization, which meant I was able to finally get a Social Security number. Now I can move forward with all of that registration stuff and be able to claim any income I make in the future without issue.

When I walked into this room in the basement it felt like one of those sweet, “Here you go, let me give you more than you wanted or expected” moments from God. I would have been content making soap in the kitchen and just having space downstairs to cure bars, and kind of do what I did in Haiti, but this was so much more than that. Let’s look at it from the other side so you see what I mean…

I walked in and saw the utility sink, and then saw all the built in shelves on the foundation walls. When I lived in Haiti we had a storage room upstairs with shelves that we installed that I used for curing my soap, and I knew that wherever we ended up, that would be something I would need to add to a space, whether it was a free-standing shelving unit that we bought, or I built in shelves somewhere. When I saw that this room not only had the sink, but shelves already built in at exactly the perfect depth and heights for curing soap and storing supplies I got really excited.

Like the other rooms, this room will get a fresh coat of paint in a creamy white, so it’ll be fresh and bright. We’ll be pulling down that stick on wall covering first. Chris actually already pulled the piece of carpet off the window when we were at the house after signing all the papers. The glass has been replaced with plywood, but we can either get new glass cut, or leave it as is for now until we replace all the basement windows. The floors will get painted and I’ll probably paint the sink cabinet too, just to protect it from water damage. The washer and dryer will get installed to the right of the sink as well.

For my soaping space I’ll built a work table, probably something with some storage on the bottom, and it’ll sit more in the middle of the room. We currently have shelves in our garage that will move with us. One set of the them can be separated and set side by side, and have a really high weight rating, so I’m thinking about using those to make a counter like space along the interior wall that I can use to store all of my oils. The containers are often heavy, and the counter space would mean that I could get some 5 gallon buckets and put spigots on them, then have my oil and lye water mixtures all done up and ready to go. I’d just need to pour some off and weigh them out. The wash sink is deep enough that I can mix up my lye water solution right in the bucket in the sink too, which will be amazing.

The whole time I was making soap in Haiti I would love what I was doing, but also feel frustrated that I didn’t have a means to ship outside of Haiti to all the people we were connected with that wanted my soap. I loved the times where we traveled so I could actually do that. And in all honesty, I would dream about one day being able to run Mozaik Soap from the US, but just knew it wasn’t something that would happen in the near future. I would follow other soapers online and watch them pack orders and wish I could do that in the way I wanted to. I loved being able to do what I could for our expat community, and loved the feedback I got from people about what I made.

The fact that I now get to do the things I’ve dreamed about is kind of blowing my mind. And not just an “I’ll make soap in my kitchen” type of thing. God brought us to a house that has the space for me to have a soaping studio! Space to do all the things I’ve been dreaming about and wanting to do for years. And while I’ve really missed making soap for the past year, the time has been good for me to think and dream, while knowing that I now have access to all the supplies and materials and tools that were so hard to get in Haiti. I’m SO excited!!! I will definitely be sharing about getting the whole process up and running with you, so look forward to that.

And I just want to say, I love that not only do I get to still be doing the work I’m good at for Clean Water for Haiti while I help empower Alexandre and our team there (who are doing an AMAZING job, btw), I also get to fully develop what has become a crafty love for me, and know that I get to make something beautiful and useful that people love and enjoy. My plan is to continue to donate a percentage of sales to CWH to promote and support the work we’re doing there. I figure soap and water just go really well together :)

Phew! That was a bit of a diversion, but I know you guys will be excited about this for me, so I wanted to share.

Okay, you’ve seen the inside of the house, now let’s move outside.

This is the back patio area. The back door at the bottom of the stairs is just left and out of the frame of the photo, and the garage is to the right. Basically if you were parking in front of the garage you would go left and walk right into this space.

The covering has been taken down, but I didn’t get a picture when we were at the house (I’m writing this the day after closing), so I’ll need to share that later on. All that’s left are the posts that were holding the roof up, which will be taken down. They need to be removed with an angle grinder so we don’t break the concrete pad. We’re not really sure what that ivy arch is all about. It’s metal posts with the ivy growing over it. We’ll be taking that out and the chain link fencing at the end of the patio. The previous owners had a dog so there’s fencing up in parts of the yard that we don’t need, so it’ll come down.

This is the back yard looking straight from the patio. This whole neighborhood has a lot of big trees, which are nice in many ways, but can also be problematic in others. In our yard they don’t let in any light, and the ones growing right next to the house are hanging limbs on the roof and have the potential to cause issues with the foundation. We’re planning on taking out most of the big trees at some point down the road. Chris was actually talking to our neighbor and they’re planning to do the same, as is the neighbor behind them. And before anyone yells at me, we LOVE trees. Most of these are incredibly tall and VERY hard to manage. We will absolutely plant more trees in their absence, but they’ll be things like fruit trees or trees that are easier to prune and manage over time. And we won’t plant them right next to the house. The neighborhood was built in the 40’s so most of these trees were probably seedlings at the time or came along shortly after, and just kept getting bigger through the years. They’re beautiful, but just need to be removed for safety reasons.

We would like to get grass going back here, and plant things we really enjoy. When we looked at the property I thought, “This place literally has all the things we want. The only thing missing is a little green house…” A few days later we were visiting some friends who have a little green house made from old windows. This is my favorite kind of green house and what I would want if I was to build one. I’d said nothing about my green house thoughts to Chris. While we were there it was like he saw the green house for the first time, and he loved it. On the way home he said he would love to have one like that, big enough to have a table and chairs in with some room to grow some tropical plants. I got really excited and told him that I had been thinking the same thing and just hadn’t said anything. I would of course want it to be big enough to have a potting bench and space to start seeds, and grow things like lettuce through the winter. The climate here doesn’t get crazy cold, so being able to grow things through the winter would be really fun.

In the right side of the photo you can see the side of the garage, and behind that is the little shed I mentioned in my last post. Here’s the little shed up close…

They’ve obviously cleaned it out, but left most of the shelves in there, which was really nice. They even left the little grey drawer screwed to the wall with all the bits and bobs in them :) It’ll be a great tinkering or project space, along with having storage room.

Here’s the backyard looking towards the house from by the little shed. You can see how close to the house those big cedars are, and that the lower branches are actually sitting on the roof. On the other side of the fence is the neighbor’s garage, and the limbs are touching that too. In both cases it means potential roof issues, and foundation issues. That side of the yard is south facing and where all the sun comes from, so having the big trees means the entire backyard is in shade all day. I like shade, but I also like grass and flowers and trees. We’re going to take out the yucca plants because they aren’t our thing. The fire pit will stay where it is for now, but will most likely get moved down the road and redone once we have a better idea what we want out here.

And now, the part I know you’ve all been waiting for… the garage!

The garage is technically wide enough for two cars, though the door is really only wide enough for one. With the climate here we don’t need to park all our vehicles inside. The priority is Chris’ VW van because it’s so old and not, well, weather tight :) With the van parked in here there’ll still be LOTS of room for other things. To the left of this picture there are built in storage shelves that are big enough to hold plastic totes and larger items. To the right of the parking space in the garage there’s also a workbench area that could also be used for storage if needed. That giant lathe is now gone and behind the peg board is a big window.

Now, that doorway goes to the pool room…

When I said this was a whole thing I wasn’t kidding around. It’s a whole thing. To the left of the photo is more space with a cabinet to hold pool supplies and another big 4×5′ window. Here’s the other end of the room…

Now, the big question we keep getting is, “Why don’t you just keep the pool?!?”

Well, because we don’t want to. :) If we wanted a pool it would be outside in the yard. We really just don’t want the maintenance and upkeep of a pool, and this space is perfect for putting in a rental unit. The dividing wall between the garage part and the pool section is just drywall, and on the garage side there’s actually about 5 feet between the wall and parking space that is currently taken up by all the pool pumps and heaters and pipes. There’s a natural gas heater, the actual pump system, and the endless pump that makes it possible to lap swim.

We’re planning to square off the room by removing the interior doorway between the garage and pool room, and may even push the wall back further into the garage section after all the pumps and equipment are removed. That would leave space for a nice sized studio or one bedroom apartment. After we move in we want to direct a lot of energy in here to get the unit set up and ready to rent so we can start bringing in that rental income.

Initially we’re most likely going to look for a longer-term tenant, but are also considering doing a short-term rental unit, like an AirBnb. We need to do more research on that though, because the city is currently in the process of changing it’s short-term rental laws. Right now the only legal short term rentals are BnB’s and the rules around those are interesting. But, there are over 250 “illegal” short-term rentals, as in they aren’t permitted. In this part of town there are only a few hotels close to or in downtown Vancouver. Everything else is east of I-5, which makes it a bit of a trek to get to the downtown area, which is the part of town tourists will really want to be in. A lot of short-term rentals are in the downtown area and north because that’s where people want to be.

We’re in that area, and just minutes from downtown. If the city chooses to make permitting short-term rentals easier, and there’s a market for it (this is where the research comes in) to the point where we could make the equivalent or more income as we would with a regular long-term lease (a year or more), we’d love to go that route. One of the things we loved about running the mission, before COVID and the security issues increased, was hosting guests. We met all kinds of people from all over the place, and our lives are richer for it. We love practicing hospitality, and having a space that we could block out for when friends and family wanted to visit would also be really nice. I’ll keep you posted as this all develops.

Ooff, that was a LONG post :) But now you’ve had the full tour and can get a feel for what we’re starting with. Like I said in my last post, the house is “tired” and needs a refresh, but it has really good bones. Everything is solid. I know that pulling up the carpet and refinishing the floors, putting a fresh coat of paint on all the walls, and painting the kitchen and bathroom cabinets will already do a ton. Add in our own furniture and decor stuff and it’ll look like a totally different house.

Let the fun begin!

~Leslie