crack!

Cracks. 

Every house has them (or so we hear), and our Mikkie has more than a handful. Thankfully, none are "bad." Cracks in the ceiling and walls are typical of plastered homes, and most Mikkies are riddled with 5 times as many and as deep. Over the years, previous owners attempted to fill them in with paste, sand them down, and paint over them. The problem is that over time, it begins to just look like a bunch of hills on the ceiling...think St. Andrew's in Scotland. Not pretty. Not dangerous either, but not aesthetically appealing.

In walks our hero. We heard about him through a house-savvy friend who doesn't throw "get this guy" statements around too often, contacted him for an estimate, and set a Saturday appointment for the work. We expected the estimate to be anywhere from $600-1200, and therefore, we planned on waiting to get the work done. But we couldn't paint until the cracks were sealed, or we'd simply end up repainting later.

The estimate was good enough to begin the work, so Ron literally dug his knuckles into the house. 

We couldn't believe how fast, efficient, and strong he was. Here he is wetting the ceiling with water and then cutting into the plaster with a razor that would make any barber shrink away:

Like the purple? Remember this when you see the green in the yellow light...

This newly created crevice is almost an inch deep!

bathroom

Ron cut out a long strip 8 feet long and 1.5" deep:

blue room

green room

Here's another in the blue room, underneath a window:

The close-up shows how rockin' our predecessors were in their color choices. Isn't that salmon-pink just lovely?

After carving out pieces of our ceilings and walls, Ron then went around and filled in each crevice with some opaque smudge stuff. Within minutes it was smooth and dry to the touch.

After his work was completed and he showed me around, we gabbed it up for about an hour in the "master bathroom" (which is what we call our only bathroom). We think he's the neatest guy. Luckily, he let me snap this photo. You can see the dust all over his face, but even more, what a happy, joyful man he is!

Hawk is very good at identifying projects we should tackle earlier than later. He makes good decisions for the long run which at first I'm nervous about, but conclude the decision successful by the end!


AND, the total bill for 8 hours of professional repair: $350!!!!  How great is that?!

{devote} We've been reflecting on how pertinent this is to marriage. The cracks were not such that would break the foundation of the home or jeoperdize anyone's safety, but they revealed a "band-aid approach" to homecare, and thus became an eyesore and gave the impression that things were shaky. We've been very conscious lately about how the little things that we know are just surface issues in our marriage, if not respected and attended to, may give others the impression that we don't care about each other. And if we truly love each other, then it is disrespectful and dishonest to not make that clear. Rather than wait for them to become true breaches, we want to spend the first few years of marriage sealing them, securing them, and refining them... So we deep-patch our house, and we deep-patch our marriage.

Thank you so much for staying with us! Happy Wednesday (or a somber one, if you know what I mean...)

icj,

~j

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