the ski and boat man

It is officially summer and Father's Day is upon us. If you think you need to provide your kids with some amazing, Grizwold-quality vacation experience they will never forget, then you should read this:

When I was a kid we didn't do the fancy, destination vacation. We never flew in a plane and I didn't see the ocean until I was 21. When our family went on vacation we packed up the station wagon and went into the country.

We went on "float trips," as we call them in Missouri, where you camp outside of tiny towns and avoid encounters with snakes and spiders as you canoe down the river with your feet propped up on a cooler. And about three weekends a year we went to Pomme De Terre Lake, where my grandparents owned a trailer home and boat dock and where my dad stored his boat: a 1967 Mark Twain, which he bought new from a boat show that year.

What made summer and vacation amazing to me as a kid wasn't ticking off the boxes of the wonders of the world, it was getting away with the ones I loved and spending those long, slow, hot days outside on the water. The truth is that my dad didn't spend one day teaching me how to ski. He spent countless days over the course of a summer or two, throwing me into the lake and circling around me in the boat, with rope in tow, until long after I had broken down into a sobbing mess of failure. The reason I thought so highly of the "Ski and Boat Man" wasn't because of this rosy experience of learning to ski, it was because of his patient, persistent devotion; the price he paid to invest in me, a little girl. His little girl.

The reason my dad was like a super hero to me wasn't because he provided for his family or served his country, though he did...

...it wasn't even because he loved me, though he did.

The reason my dad is my hero is because I knew he loved me. It wasn't about how he felt about me, it was about how he showed me that I was his priority. It's because he took me outside and spent time with me. Time through excitement and past amazing to the point of boredom. Because, let's be honest, love doesn't usually happen as much in the grand gestures as it does in the mundane.

"My dad chose to share that time because he loves me."

Last year when Dad gave me his boat he told me to be careful. "A boat is a hole in the earth, surrounded by water, into which you put all of your money," he said with a smile. That's what he said but I know that's not what he believed.

Dad believed that a boat is a hole in the earth, surrounded by water, into which you put your loved ones...

your memories...

your heart.

Happy Father's Day, Ski and Boat Man.

my offering

It has been a long time since I have posted and I don't know if that is because this has been one of the hardest years of my life, or what. I believe in the beauty of vulnerability and yet I am cautious to become too indulgent when I am feeling very deeply. Especially in internet musings.

I heard something very wise in passing on a radio interview once:

The internet doesn't really do secrets.

That phrase follows me around like a guardian angel (most of the time) and for that I am thankful. 

Still, this tiny corner of the internet I call Church House Hymns is a sanctuary for me and it is where I go to become my truest self. I've been away for what feels like too long. Part of me has felt that because we pushed the pause button on the progress of our actual Church House, there was nothing to see here. But that is a lie. Maybe it is only in looking back that I can see that but the truth is this Church House is like every authentic church: it is not the building but the believers within that makes it what it is.

So let me tell you something about this believer and this blog: try as I might I cannot just talk about my house and how it's going. I'm talking about my heart here. Most days I struggle to write because of the dark voices whispering subtly into my ear like the boys I used to date who didn't want to know too much. But every now and then I get brave enough to share. I wonder sometimes if I do it for you or for me or what and, quite frankly, I still don't know. But it is at least a little bit for me and because I am more afraid of betraying myself and my maker than I am of the voices. 

I was talking with a friend the other day and these words came out of my mouth and until that instant I didn't realize how I felt:

 I feel like I have something more unique to offer the world than to just be a bookkeeper for our tiny business.*

So let's call this my offering. For whatever it's worth. Which, as it turns out, is not so much for you to decide as it is for me to discover. 

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened.

Matthew 7:7-8

*Not that there is anything wrong with being a bookkeeper! If that is your God-given offering then you inspire me and I want to learn from you!

the sound of my house being worked on

This morning my husband quietly got out of bed early and left me to sleep. An hour or so later I awoke to the sound of the hammer drill. If you don't know what that is, it is basically a hammer infused into a drill and it sounds like a combination of the two. Only louder.

Nathan then walks into the room and softly comes alongside me and says, "do you hear the sound of your house being worked on, Mrs. Thum?"  And as he leaves the room he asks, "do you want some eggs?"

Note: this was not a typical morning.

This morning's first encounter is something I would classify as romance. It's that out-of-the-ordinary gesture of love that takes me by surprise and makes my heart sing. And at this stage of life, the sound of a hammer drill is the perfect accompanist for my singing heart.

I've heard women say lately that living through a renovation has been among the more difficult things in life for them. I usually swoon when they say such things, for alas, someone gets me. Because I'm pretty sure my husband would be perfectly content living in a cardboard box full of dirty laundry, as long as it had a garage full of greasy tools and hardware.

In about a week we will have been caretakers of this church house for three years and it has, for the most part, felt like a difficult three years. So difficult, in fact, that Nathan and I started seeing a counselor. That's right, our renovation actually drove us into therapy.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining and I am definitely not ashamed. I am so thankful that I married a man who appreciates counseling as a healthy part of life and wanted it as much as I did (read: single ladies, seek this quality in a mate). I will tell anyone who will listen that we go to counseling because I hope it will encourage them to do it, too. I believe that going to counseling doesn't mean we have a bad marriage or one that is in trouble, it actually means that we have a good and healthy one. And I believe that absolutely everybody has stuff to unpack.

Fast-forward from the stressful, frustrating, divisive place that we found ourselves in as a result of living in a construction zone. Scroll through the weeks our counselor described as detox, in which things got worse before they got better. Pause on this morning, where I wanted to wake up grumpy and offended from a conversation my husband and I had last night about insurance, of all things, but couldn't in light of his sudden romance.

This morning all I could do was smile and feel utter gratitude and happiness, and I couldn't help but wonder if I was feeling that simply because things were so hard for a while. Would I take the hammer drill, sweat and sore muscles for granted if they were just expected? If I were so privileged that construction workers were always traipsing through the house and bathrooms were being efficiently constructed in less than 6 months, would I forget to stop and realize that it is happening because my husband loves me? Because I can't think of anything that feels more like love than a gladly given sacrifice.

video blog 6: a preview

We have been working on our made-from-scratch upstairs bathroom for about 2 months now. When people ask about it, we just say, "slow and steady wins the race." Some things we can knock out so fast, but most things take a lot longer than we thought. There have been times when the project seems so big we have to stop altogether, take a deep breath and a break.

When I was younger-- in high school and college--  I used to cut hair for people because I kind of liked it and I was pretty good at it, but one thing I would always make sure I told the person is that "I am not a professional." I could do a good job and I worked for free but it would take three or four times longer than if they had just gone to a salon. Building this bathroom is just like that. It is taking seemingly forever to finish what we started but our labor is free and as we look around at the progress we are making we cannot help but see how beautiful it will become.

Lately we have had to "bite the bullet," as we say around here and spend our money on the fixtures that will make the most impact when it is all said and done. Faucets, lights, tiles, oh my! We have saved so much money doing labor ourselves but when we thought about cutting corners and buying cheap fixtures, we had to draw the line. I have heard it said that "hardware is the jewelry of your home." As cheesy as that sounds, it is kind of true. Our shower faucets were just delivered and I swear I lit up when I saw them. It was almost better than jewelry. Almost.

video blog 5: a day in the life of green thum, inc.

It is mid-April and we are getting slammed with what I hear is more snow than we've had all winter. But when you live in the ice box of the nation, you don't really take snow days.

video blog 4: custom shower

Building a custom shower can seem really intimidating (it did to me!) but it is actually relatively inexpensive and simple. Our shower will be seven feet (84 in.) by about three-and-a-half feet (40 in.), which is huge, and it will have a heated floor, which is extravagant. We were already heating the entire upstairs so the cost of building that into the shower was almost nothing. With the cost of lumber, the rubber pan liner, pre-pitch (a $30 splurge since we wanted the pitch to be correct and even) and concrete this shower has run approximately $175. I priced ready-made acrylic pans, that only spanned about 5 feet, at anywhere from $175- $600 and in the end they still look cheap.

I would say that my biggest piece of advice for anyone taking on this project would be to watch a ton of YouTube videos. I honestly don't know how people did DIY home projects before YouTube...

video blog 3: rules of Thum

Yesterday Nate and I finally agreed on a stone for our bathroom vanity. We learned a lot through the process and I have developed a few rules of Thum that I would offer up as advice and that I will take with me the next time we are in the market for a stone counter surface.

Rule #1: be nice. This works any time you are shopping for anything and especially something that requires a service to be performed (like stone fabrication). We stopped into one fabricator to ask about price and to look at remnant slabs and we got to talking with this guy, Xavier. Nathan is always getting to talking with people and I think that is one of the greatest things about him. Anyway, at one point Xavier opened up about the fact that if you walk into his store and you are cold or demanding then you get one price, but if you are nice then you get another price. He quoted us the nice guy price and it was really competitive. Sales people and fabricators want to work with and help out the nice guy and I can't blame them. If you are a jerk then there just might be a hidden surcharge.

Tips for being nice:

• Take your time and make small talk.
• Ask questions about the person's personal life or their profession. "How long have you been doing this?" or "Is that a picture of your dog? What breed is he/she?"
• Everybody likes to be the expert about something so if you make them the expert then they will feel good. And they are the expert on stones. 
• Ask, "How's your day going?" Then ask follow-up questions.
• People are inclined to like you if they think you like them. So smile and act like you like them. Better yet, find something you can genuinely appreciate about the person and they will feel appreciated.

Rule #2: location, location, location. We found that the price for a stone slab or remnant was much cheaper in a location where there was a high concentration of suppliers. When we checked at showrooms that were further away from "granite row," where the competition was stiff, the price was much higher. Like hundreds of dollars.

Rule #3: you pay for pretty showrooms. Whenever we walked into a place that had a sexy showroom with samples, showcases and beautiful salespeople galore, the price of the stone product was higher. We could usually tell when we walked into a building if we would be able to afford their stones. These rules are not hard and fast, by any means. For example, Xavier's showroom was beautiful and they had a great logo but they offered one of the best prices we found on fabrication (granted, that was the nice guy price). 

Rule #4: money talks, cash walks. This is the primary content of today's video blog and the point is this: there is the price of a product and then there is the price of a product if you pay in cash today. Always let the person in charge know that you want to deal in in cash up front. If they give you a price and you feel like they could go lower because of your comparison shopping or because of the vibe you are getting, it doesn't hurt to ask, "Would you take $X in cash?" Nathan and I find that, most of the time, they say yes. Or they give you a price that meets in the middle. Even at big-box stores we have found this to be true.