UPDATE

At this point, I am about to wish I never started this project!!! Currently we have that HUGE hole in the wall. Lori's last day was on Friday. Today, Marcia, the new girl told Jim that we are going to have to bid out the job. AKA they will not pay his additional price! Which means, I that I will sit with a hole in the ground for who knows how much longer! I can not get a hold of Marcia to find out what is going on with my house. Not to mention that we are suppose to get some good storms over the next few nights! Please be praying!!!

Sunday, August 8, 2011 to Sunday, August 14, 2011

On Sunday the 8th the rain started. Ryan had asked if I thought the rain would affect the basement since we had a moat. 3 of the 4 walls are dug up and have been untouched since Tuesday, August 2, 2011. Still waiting for engineers to come out and give their professional expertise, the week came and gone. I didn't think we had anything worry about with the walls and the rain. It was about 7:10 Sunday morning. Ryan was finishing his bowl of cereal while I made my breakfast and lunch for work when we both heard a noise. To me it sounded like rocks falling into a puddle. With the windows open again, we get to hear more of what is going on outside. Ryan didn't think anything of it, but I belined for the basement. Here is what I found:

So at 7:15 Sunday morning, I called Jim Ihn and let him know the news.

About 10 minutes later this second layer of bricks fell.

This picture is a bit blurry, but you can really see the outside!

On Monday, the guys came out and added more support beams and the wall propped up.

Ryan and I believe this crack came when the guys propped up the ceiling.

On Thursday, August 11, 2011 this machine rolled up!

I took this picture from inside the house.

This thing is as big as my house!!

Thursday, the soil test was done. This was done to verify the ground under the house was solid. As of Friday, August 12, 2011, the engineers have gotten their reports in and we are waiting for Jim to come up with his report. I talked to him Friday evening and he is working on it this weekend so it can be turned in Monday. At that point, we are waiting for approval from Lori and then the work can continue. I do not fully know what is written in the bid/report, but I do know that Jim is on our side. Please continue to pray with/for us!

Basement Progress

I have not had the time to update much on the basement front, I am hoping to sit down soon and write it all out when I have a final decision explained to me. In the meantime, check out the photos at rscohan.shutterfly.com

Foundation~Day 2

Well, when it rains it pours. Today the guys got a good amount of work done. However, we have hit even more hiccups in the road. As of yesterday we found walls that were to thick to drill through. Today, we found walls that, should be holding up our house, should have crumbled years ago! There is no surprise that God is at work in this house! He has literally kept it together! Tomorrow we will be having an engineer come out and look at our foundation to find out what we need to do to reinforce it for lack of better terms. Jesus, thank you for giving me the gut to work with this company, they seem like a company that knows what they are doing!

On another page, Lori, the lady who I have been working with will be losing her job in the next week or so. She knew it was only a temporary one, so soon enough I will be dealing with a new person. I can only hope that they are as nice, generous, and understanding as she is!

Please continue to pray with us for God's guiding hand in this project! We are just beginning!

Day 1

All Quiet on the Grant Front

Sort of! I know it has been quite some time since my last post on the grant process. This past Monday, July 25th we were suppose to start. So close that the guys showed up to the house to begin, but had to leave because of the road construction on my street. I thought we were in the clearing since they were past my house, but apparently not. I was devastated! It was a great thing I had a dentist appointment to go to shortly after I watched them leave my house! I cried a bit, was frustrated a lot. When things like this happen, I take it so personally. It has been the story of my life, as soon as I express my excitement out loud, it falls through. I thought my self at a young age to "not get excited" BUT I stink at hiding my excitement!!! After being unable to get a hold of the owner of the company (he had a funeral to attend on Monday), I got a hold of him on Thursday. Between my phone conversations with Jim and the city of Waukesha. After some detective work, we are back on the calendar to start the project for this coming Monday, August 1, 2011

Anxiety

anx·i·e·ty

   [ang-zahy-i-tee] Show IPA

–noun, plural -ties.

1.

distress or uneasiness of mind caused by fear of danger or misfortune: He felt anxiety about the possible loss of his job.

2.

earnest but tense desire; eagerness: He had a keen anxiety to succeed in his work.

3.

Psychiatry . a state of apprehension and psychic tension occurring in some forms of mental disorder.

I have suffered from definition 1 and 2 over the past week and a half of the contractor debacle. As a matter of fact, I have been very nauseous about this. I kept turning it over to God to handle, but I guess I never really let go of that last tiny bit, with which Satan surely used to rope me back in. Today, I sat and talked and confessed my sin of anxiety to Him. I asked Him for forgiveness and then gave complete control to Him. Ironically, I got a phone call from Jim(the guy I want) asking more details about the latest hoop he needs to jump through. We shall see what God has in store for us!

Basement

Well it has been a few days since I have been able to say anything on this. Last night Ryan and I drew up what we would like the basement to look like. I have faxed it to 1 contractor and I have 2 appointments in the next 2 days. I am looking to set up one more. The big thing here is we are looking to put in an Egress Window, not cheap, but this would really increase the value of our home, and we can legally put a bedroom downstairs. After much debate about things down there and how we would like it laid out, we are both very happy and really excited. There is a plan to demo our chimney, a plan set forth by my dad. So him and ryan are going to work on that before we have the basement finished. So for now, aside from waiting for bids, our next step is to clean out the basement. Step 1 is to pack up the toy room toys and then start hauling things out to the garage until the basement is finished :) We are getting really excited, have I said that yet?!?

APPROVED!!

WOW what a day! Today I received a phone call from Lori from the City of Waukesha saying we have the go ahead with the project with no price cap! I am so thankful she was willing to wait and work with me. She had been very kind and paitent. At this point, I am waiting for a new work write up and will be on the job of getting more bids. Once we have all the bid in again( I can use the same companies, just the work write up is a bit differant), we will award the contracts to the lowest bidder. I am so full of praise!

Grant Process

Well, We have hit some major points this week and quickly. Monday I got an email saying that there were no comments and we were ready to proceed to the next 7 steps. Wednesday, I got an email saying that we were just waiting for the print date from the Waukesha Freeman and she forwarded me a copy of the public notice. Today, I received the final print date notice, Wednesday, February 23, 2011.  We will be praying for no comments again. Lori sent the paperwork over to the state and waiting for the final okay, so that when the 7 days of waiting are up, we can start hiring contractors! WOW, we have gotten far fast. Please continue to pray for my patience, guidance, perseverance, understanding. Please continue to pray that God's will be done with His house.

Grant Process

Well, we have made some progress! I received an email today saying that we will have our public notice on January 20, 2011. This was the next step we were waiting for. We have to wait 15 days once the notice is posted in the local paper. We are basically hoping/praying for no comments. If there is anyone that objects this proposal then we can not go further with things as planned. We will have to stop and see what we can do for the 50 % of the homes value back in 2008. Right now the renovations cost 70% of the homes value in 2008. If we get no comments then we proceed to steps 4-8 which will put us re-evaluating the proposed work and one final public notice. I am learning a lesson from God on this, His answers are not always quick and patience and perserverance are worth it. So for now, please pray that we continue to follow God's path and direction in the process

Pushy

I think that sums up how I have been with the grant process this past month. I have been pushing things when God is clearly saying "no" to make it work so we can get the job done. I have not stepped back and actually listened to God, I have had my own agenda and obviously it doesn't line up with his! Please continue to pray for my patience and listening ear. I am afraid of the money running out, but have been told not to worry. I am afraid that we are going to have to pay to bring our house up to code. I am afraid that this isn't going to happen. I have the basement all planned out and would like it in action now, but I really need to wait on God.

We are getting closer...

kinda~

About a week ago I got a call from Lori the lady in charge of the grant funds. She wanted to talk to me about the project and where we were at with things. We touched base earlier this week and she said that we should consider talking to a foundation consultant to get his opinion. Basically, we need to get the cost of renovations below $47,650. So he was out here on Wednesday and now I need to try to get someone out here to bid on his recommendation. ASAP. I told Lori that we are willing to forego some of the renovations to bring us below that mark. So hopefully I can get someone here in the next week or two.

Flood?!?

Well, as predicted, God handled things here. We had no rain on Sunday and the three days of rain that was predicted for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday is just down to Thursday now. The river is below action stage, currently at 4.83 feet deep. Thank you for your prayers.

Now for the grant update. Not many contractors I guess want to work in our area. My neighbor is having difficulties getting contractors out here and I am having an okay time getting them here. I need one more foundation contractor and then I need to get 3 general contractors out here to bid the inside projects. I didnt realize that I needed the inside bids too. Hopefully that is something my dad can at least do one bid for and maybe get that job. It sure is nice to have him working around the house here. I know I can trust the work he does. :) I guess that is all I have for now on that. I will keep you posted.

Grant Update

Last week we had a company by the name of B-dry Systems of Milwaukee come out and take a look at our property to see what needs to be done to "waterproof" our house. This gentleman said that we dont need to install an inside drain tile system. What we need to do is replace the driveway, put up gutters(which we dont want to), and regrade the one side of the house that we thought we did a good job doing. I emailed this information to Tim(our inspector that we are working with). I dont think he liked this answer and asked if I had gotten a hold of the 2nd company he had given me. Today Mc Coy Contractors came out to take a look at our property. He came up with our best solution of digging up around the foundation, installing a drain tile on the outside, back filling it with crushed stone, topping it off with a filter then top soil. This should take care of our issues. Now he said he cant gurantee that we'd have a 100% waterproof basement all the time, but this should significantly help us. If we were allowed to go this route, we would then get a new front proch(needed), a new back stoop(not really a need), and a new driveway(a DESPERATE need).

So I ask that you continue to pray for God's will to be done here because this is His house and we want to glorifiy Him with the work and the house. I will keep you updated as I know more.

Grant Update

Today we had the city inspector by(the next step in the process). Things went well, we were told we needed to pull permits for the work my dad did that we did not pull them for. So that's the bad news, the good news, if things can work according to his plan, we might have a very nice basement in our hands some day :) whooohooo to a bedroom and play area downstairs!

Please continue praying that things will follow God's plan.

Kitchen Sink

A few weeks ago Ryan and I had planned to replace the sprayer hose at the kitchen sink. On Sunday Ryan worked on installing the new hose. After hours of no progress in removing the old one he was done. He couldnt get a tool up there, tried using his fingers, which he rubbed raw. So we called my Dad on Monday morning and left him a message asking him if he knew a trick to removing them. (oh 1 important detail I left out, in trying to get a tool up there, I thought, what if you cut the hose and used and an extended socket wrench to get up there. So he cut the hose and we still got nowhere. Now with the hose cut, if you turned on the sink it would flow to the bucket under the sink.) So with no water in the kitchen on monday it made for a long day. Monday night Ryan rinsed the dishes in the bathtub and loaded the dishwasher. My dad had stopped by on Tuesday night to fix the sink. Dash and Sammie both knew the sink was broke and daddy was trying to fix the sink. She saw that my dad was working on the sink and~
Sammie: "grandpa fixing the sink?"
me: "yes"
Sammie: "cuz daddy no fix the sink"

nothing escapes that girl!

Grant

Today I faxed in the 40 pages of the application and required papers to see if we can receive some grant money. It is now time to see how God answers this prayer. Please continue praying. Thanks :)

prayer

Well since I am not on Facebook, I will post and keep track of it here. Today in the mail, I received a letter from waukesha county saying that they were given $2,095,000 in grant money to victims of the June 2008 flood. This money is on a first come first serve basis and need to be applied for. We have requested the application and we will go from there. Here are somethings we could use the money for:

• 2 new basement windows
• mortor to fill in the cracks in the lannon foundation room so we can paint it with the waterproof paint.
• more waterproof paint and stone so we can digup one side of the house and paint the outside walls, fill it back up with stone to create a "rock garden"
• replace the driveway
• possably sod the back yard?
• replace the basement stairs
• 2X4s and insulation to finish off our room in the basement

Other than the last 3 bullet points these are some MAJOR steps that we need to take to waterproof our basement and make it useable into a play area and bedroom for ourselves. These are things that we would really like to accomplish and know would improve our house value as well as our state of living here. The last three are bounes if we are able to get enough money to do them. So if you could please join us in prayer that we follow God's lead through out the process as to if we get the money to how we spend the money if we get it. We want nothing less than to Glorify God's name. We know that he has been ever present since the first inch of water in our basement. He has seen us through. We also know that he used that flood to repair a relationship in our family, he used the flood to declutter the house and open our eyes to Him as the provider, he used the flood to get us some major things for the house that he knew we could never afford(furnace, watersoftener, central air, roof, hot water heater).

Jesus, we are looking to you for guidance so our Father's name can be glorified yet again!

Scatter Brain

That is something that I have really been struggling with well, for at least 3.5 years now, but especially the past few months. I have so much on my brain/to do list/wish list that I start so many things and get "no where" it seems. Like today, we had a play date this morning with Abby, and that was great, but I had my laundry project on my mind. After they left, I began thinking of my kitchen cabinets(im repainting them this weekend), the laundry, the bathroom, Sammie's updo for Molly's wedding(not until september), the things we need from Menards for this project. So you can see I have a lot there and that's all I can think of right now. As I wonder through the house trying to figure out which project to work on, more and more come to mind. All this to say, that I didnt get much done! Oh well, the power of my brain.