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it’s a story a long time in the making.
17 years ago, we bought our texas house. it’s a 4-bedroom, ranch-style house, built in 1970. located in old town lewisville…mixed race…mixed economics…young and old. nothing real fancy, but to us, it looked and felt like “home” from the moment we saw it.
the selling point of the house, though, was the 600 sq. ft. family room. it was a room addition built in 1990…and it’s just a big ol’ room. when our boys lived at home, it was an indoor stadium for basketball, football, catcher’s drills with tennis balls, nerf gun wars, and wrestling matches. it also did extra duty for a full slate of mid-week bible studies, young life meetings, high school sunday school, football team dinners, and any and all kinds of large group gatherings and parties.
over the years, it has taken a beating…inside and out. landscaping issues from horrible drainage in our back yard have resulted in ugly water damage. squirrel buddies. a mammoth bee hive in the attic that required a sawzall to take out a hunk of roof and soffit. snowmageddon during the 2010 superbowl week in dallas, saturated the roof and caved in the ceiling.
and badly weathered and damaged siding.
so after all these years in the great state, i’ve decided it’s time for the mother of all personal home diy projects. i’m residing the room addition.
nothing is ever as easy as it looks…or as we anticipate. apparent small jobs have turned into complicated projects. uncovering one problem has exposed other problems. simple fixes have resulted in wholesale changes. such is life for a tim-the-toolman wannabe.
but here’s the big one: when i pulled off the siding, it exposed what was underneath. and it wasn’t pretty. nor was it up to code. nor was it remotely smart. whoever built the room didn’t install wall sheathing or a paper weather barrier underneath the exterior siding. what they used, instead, was interior drywall. bad stability. bad insulation. bad weather barrier. bad construction company.
we’re pretty fortunate that the whole thing didn’t blow down in one of our famous texas blasters.
enough of my whining. i’m fixing it. slowly but surely. all of it. but don’t let the real lesson pass by you.
the exterior always covers up the interior. on a house. in our lives. you can make things looks really good on the outside, while the inside is built with faulty plans, inferior materials, shoddy workmanship, and questionable motives.
if somebody peeled away the “siding” of your life, what would they find underneath? a good foundation? properly constructed walls and compartments for work and relationships and worship? solid insulation to ward off the elements and provide protection and security for the center of your life?
maybe it’s time to go deeper than just the surface things.
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