Our Unforgettable Journey - Grammie Eve

I’ve been mentally writing about this for the past 8 months, but haven’t gotten it on paper until now. (Actually I spent 3 hours writing it last night only to have my 6 year old accidently delete it… so here I am again, sharing our hearts about my grandma.)  Shortly after Zeke was born, I took all seven children to visit Great Grammie Eve. She was living at the assisted living facility in Holyrood and had recently recovered from a case of pneumonia. I had planned a rather lengthy visit, so the kids brought their Bibles to read to her and some school work to pass some time. Grandma was 103 and not the most communicative person anymore.  The visit went well, but the Lord used it as the beginning of a blessed journey that our family will never forget.

Grammie had progressed to the point of being beyond the level of care that the assisted living facility was licensed to provide. She had probably been past that “point” for some time. But none-the-less, plans had been made to move Grammie into a nursing home in April. As we sat in our family room the evening of our visit, the Spirit brought to our minds several scriptures concerning caring for the widows, honoring your father and mother, laying down your life, self sacrifice, storing up treasures where moths and rust cannot destroy, and loving your neighbor, etc… He also brought up Haggai 2:9 – “The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, says the LORD of hosts.  And in this place I will give peace, declares the LORD of hosts.” We prayed and continue to pray this verse throughout the building/remodeling process and for our (now finished) home. Our desire was/is that it be a gospel outpost and would be used to glorify His name through the raising of our kids, serving others, Bible studies, home groups, and whatever else He would place in our path.  It became quite clear that the LORD desired us to bring Grammie into our home to care for her.

We prayed for wisdom and discernment, but God didn’t really leave any room for doubt in our minds as to what He desired us to do. Our decision was easy to make. I sat on the couch and started writing out notes about the logistics of conforming our home into something more user friendly for Grammie. I looked around and I could imagine Grammie napping in her chair in our family room. I thought about what our office would look like with her bed in it. I did some internet research on products that would make our bathroom suitable for her. I also tried to think about every possible scenario that might come up. I made a list of pros and cons that would affect our family: what would we gain, what would we have to give up?  (Every “con” was a direct result of selfishness.) The verse from Haggai continued to fuel our preparations. What would glorify God more: a picture-perfect office and bathroom that look like they came right out of a magazine or a rearranged office with a hospital bed and a bathroom with a stool riser, transfer bench in the tub, and denture container sitting on the sink? After all, we value life and so does God. It doesn’t matter if that life is “pre-born” or 103 years old. If you are pro-life, you also must be pro-elderly.  At any age, we are still created in the image of God and He values life, whether or not that life is (by man’s definition) a productive member of society or not.

Move-in day!

On March 31, 2014, Grammie Eve became a permanent member of our household and took her place as our 8^th and oldest “child”.  Not every family can say that they have a 103 year age span between their oldest and youngest children!  Just like when you add a new baby to a family, there were a couple of weeks where we felt like we were juggling and spinning plates at the same time. Our family got a crash course on hearing aids, wheel chairs, dentures, depends, hospital beds, transfer benches, walkers, etc… But we soon figured out our new normal of having Grammie around.  We adapted to the routine of providing for the needs of an “adult-sized toddler”. We learned that we rarely could do spur-of-the-moment things without finding a “Grammie-sitter”.  But, in a way, it was kind of nice to be forced to simplify things, stay home, and really integrate her into our family.

She loved hearing the kids play their piano, having the toddler give her toys (which she sometimes didn’t give back), and listening to the kids read their Bibles and books.  She was a part of our school day too. This year we are studying modern history and the kids were always calculating how old Grammie was when: the Titantic sank, WWI happened, the Lusitania sank, the stock market crashed, WWII occurred, etc… She was a walking history lesson! We just wished that she could have told us stories!

Grammie had her days where she was very interactive, and those where she wasn’t interactive at all. Sometimes she stood up, clapped, and told the kids to play their piano more.  Other times she just slept through her personal concert. When she was interactive, the kids enjoyed getting her to write and draw, fold clothes, and play with play-doh (though she kept trying to eat it).  We looked at books, photos, did pedicures, she watched us clean house, and she got lots and lots of baby holding time.  She and Zeke took many naps together.

She was a part of our daily family worship. We prayed for her and we prayed with her.  On my Sundays to stay home with her, we watched many sermons by Joe Morecraft.  I would sit her right in front of the ipad screen and crank up the volume to make sure she could hear. When we tucked her in bed, we said the Lord’s Prayer together and many times she said it right along with us. I would tell her I loved her each night as I tucked her in. Sometimes she said “Uh huh”, other times she said, “I love you too.”

As the weather warmed up she enjoyed seeing and smelling the fresh lilacs, irises, and wild flowers. We brought in the new chicks for her to hold (though I seriously thought she was going to pull one’s head off)! She held the kittens, saw the alpacas, and watched our tomato seedlings grow into strong, vibrant plants. We spent many evenings on the screened in porch watching the kids play. She watched me process and can dozens and dozens of quarts and pints of garden produce.

We came to appreciate that she was far more than just a “shell”.  Her personality would definitely shine through when she was feeling spry. She would tell the kids to get their shoes and socks on, and zip up their coats… typical things that Grandma would be concerned about. If the kids weren’t around, she missed them. I’m sure she came to appreciate the inherent noise level in a home with 7 kids… or maybe she thought that being hard of hearing was really a blessing!

A week before she passed, she had several really good days where she was chatty, getting around well, observant, and interactive. One morning I had been putting clothes in the dryer and I stopped by her bed to say good morning.  She grabbed my hands and said that they were cold.  She cupped her hands around mine and rubbed them, then she put my fingers to her mouth to blow on them to warm them up. (Just like any mom would do.)  Later that morning she said to me, “When are they coming to get me? I’m ready to go!”  I told her that we weren’t going anywhere that day. She asked me the question again.

We’ve been told that often people will rally right before their time is finished. That seemed to be the case with Grammie.  The next day she was a “rag doll”. She didn’t seem to know what was going on, she was weak, and not very interactive. The next few days continued on the same path where she became less and less responsive. She wasn’t sick at all, but just coasting through the last days that the good Lord had ordained for her. She died so peacefully while Keilah and I were holding her hand and caressing her head, telling her that we loved her and praying for her. In retrospect, I wonder if she had a much deeper meaning in asking me, “When are they coming to get me? I’m ready.”

When we took Grammie in, we did it in order to be a blessing to her. We knew it would help teach our children about true love, self sacrifice, honoring the elderly, and valuing life.  Although we knew she would be a blessing to us too, we had no idea how much of an impact she would have on our family.  She gave us far more than we gave her. What we would give to still have our “oldest child” with us again: to have an opportunity to serve her longer; to serve her better.  But we are so thankful that the Lord gave us the time He did. We are grieving, but are comforted by 1 Thes. 4:13: “But we do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about those who are asleep, that you may not grieve as others do who have no hope.”  We have hope.

We now sit in our home where 8 months ago we imagined what it would “look” like to move Grammie in with us.  Her chair is gone, her bed is gone, her wheel chair and walker are gone, her bathroom supplies are gone. And now we get to figure out what our “new” normal looks like since (as Keilah puts it), “Grammie Eve has gone to glory, and is clothed in white with a crown, worshiping Jesus.”

Linoleum Floor Cloth - my weekend project!

As we keep plugging away at remodeling the house, my mind is already in the "decorating" mode... and it has been for about the last year. Too bad you can't decorate before the dry wall is done or the plumbing is roughed in....  But one thing I have been thinking about is our eating area of our kitchen... where our table will sit. I personally prefer that a table be "grounded" visually with a rug underneath it. I think that the rug defines the area, beckons a person to it, and protects the floor from the chairs scooting in and out. The problem with a traditional area rug under a table is spills! (With a lot of littles around this house, our floor takes a beating daily)!  So the solution to my dilemma seemed to come with the idea of a floor cloth. It gives the best of both worlds: visually grounds the table, protects the floor, and is easy to clean!

I had several options, the first being to make one or buy one. Um, that was easy, I'm way too cheap frugal to purchase a ready made cloth. My next option was whether to make it out of canvas or linoleum. I really pondered this one awhile. But in the end, it seemed that linoleum would be easier/stiffer to work with than canvas. So that is the route I went. Then came the dilemma of designing it. I knew the color scheme I wanted to use, but I had no idea what design I wanted to paint. I searched the web and looked at dozens of floor cloths to get inspiration for my project. After getting a general picture in my mind, I got out my graph paper and drew it to scale experimenting with my color scheme. After I had an acceptable design, I was ready to get started.

I purchased a 6 x 9 remnant of linoleum at Lowes for just under $30. It had a 6x6 inch tile design on the front side of it which I wasn't crazy about showing through my rug, so I chose to paint the back of it instead. That being said, as I laid out my design, I could ever-so-slightly see the grid which really helped a lot when taping off.  I also will say that I MEASURED NOTHING on this rug (because I couldn't find any ruler, yardstick, or tapemeasure even after hunting high and low!). It was all "eye-balled". I didn't want it to be too perfect because I knew that I would have paint bleeding under the places I had taped off anyway (maybe other people have good luck with crisp, clean taped off lines.... I don't...). So if I started out with the mindset that "this will not be a perfect design", it would keep me from being too upset when it didn't turn out exactly as I had planned.

So here is what I did to create my floor cloth: First, I unrolled it and let it flatten out for awhile. After that I used a primer and gave it one coat. All of the paints I used were left over from our house remodeling project, and they were all latex based. I had planned on giving it 2 coats of primer, but I didn't have enough left for 2 coats... so 1 coat had to do.

After the primer dried, I painted the base coat. I chose the color of my kitchen walls for the background. I let it dry and then painted a second coat. This was the easy part because there was no taping off involved!

While I was letting that dry, I took a break and took a picture of a "too cute" 8 month old....

Now came the harder part... taping off and laying out the design. I decided to paint a boarder around 6 squares. I wanted each of the kids to have a square palette to paint their own picture in. I rummaged through our porch looking for something squarish to use as a template for taping off so that they would be somewhat even since I didn't have a measuring devise (note that I FOUND a tape measure AFTER I was done with the rug.....). In the corner I found some paper targets... 1 foot square each! And they were adhesive! So I was able to stick them right on the rug with out taping. After I positioned and stuck them on, I taped off a 1 inch-ish border around each one and sponge painted it sage green. At the same time, I taped off a border around the edge of the rug. I wanted one wide stripe and one narrow stripe, with a stripe of the background color in between them.

Note the "blue" electrical" tape... wouldn't you know that I ran out of painters tape when I had only 5 feet of area left to tape! (I found the frog tape that I KNEW I had... after the rug was done... and it was in the box of supplies that I looked through THREE times when I was frantically searching for it)!  But, FYI, electrical tape (with a couple of pieces of duct tape to hold the ends in place actually worked fairly well)!

After the taping off was complete, I rolled my red border around the rug. I did 3 coats of red, letting it dry between coats.

After removing the "targets" and the tape, here is what the rug looked like. I thought that the squares needed to "pop" a bit in their background color before the kids did their thing. So I painted each square with 2 coats of a bit darker tan.

Now it was ready for the kids to do their thing. This is the part that took much effort on my part... let-the-kids-paint-what-they-want-in-the-style-they-want-knowing-that-it-would-not-look-perfect... Why is that so hard???????  OK, I compromised... I helped Kyli (2) and Kaser (8 months) on their squares. But the others did their own thing... with the exception of Kenan (4) who painted his square with Daddy.

OK, this picture is upside down... but Kenan and Kyli did footprint butterflies and Kenan also did handprint tulips. That was interesting because he didn't want to make a hand print. He wanted to make a fist!

After the kids finished their masterpieces, I wanted to write Psalm 128 down the middle of the rug. Here is a tip: If you want to freehand anything on a rug, wall, etc... use CHALK before painting the design. It works better than pencil and it wipes off easily (unlike a pencil which needs erased). So I took chalk and wrote out the Psalm making sure that it fit somewhat evenly. Once I had it done in chalk, I decided that I liked the "light" color for the words rather than a "dark" color that I had envisioned. So I got a cream color and painted right over my chalk marks.  So there you have it: My weekend project. All that needs done now is 3 coats of a water based polyurethane which I did not have last weekend. So sometime in the next couple of days I will be finishing it up. What a fun, easy project!!!!!  Once it is completely done, I will update the post with a picture of it without the drop clothes!!!

Countertops: Cubic Zircon or Diamond?????

I love to cook. I love to bake. And it is a good thing, because I spend a large part of every day cooking for our family. So in gutting, redoing, and adding on to an old farmhouse that will eventually be our home, I have put many hours of research and thought into the kitchen layout. I have to admit, at first I didn't know if it was even possible for the existing kitchen to transform into something that would be functional for our family. I was pretty skeptical. But it really has been fun seeing it all come together. But then came the decision of what to use for countertops. At one time I thought it would be neat to someday have concrete slab countertops. But I have never met anyone who had them or anyone who knew anything about them... so I basically dismissed that notion. Granite or marble was completely out of the question because I'm too frugal to even consider it. So we decided that we would do laminate even though I wasn't exactly thrilled about that option. However, not knowing any better, I chose and bought my sink: a beautiful, large, double basin apron front farmhouse sink.... which also happened to be an undermount sink. I didn't know this was a problem. My contractor said something like, "I'm gonna have to think about this one...". Come to find out... I guess you can't use an undermount sink with laminate countertops because of the potential of getting water into the laminate seams and thus ruining the countertop.  But my position is always: where there is a will, there is a way! So that got me looking back into countertop options. I began to wonder about concrete again, so I did a google search about concrete countertops in Salina, Kansas.  The search introduced me to a "new" product which became the answer to my countertop problems.  The product is iCOAT. It is NOT a concrete slab. Rather, it is done by skimming a thin coat of a special concrete over an existing countertop (you can do it right over laminate). After the concrete is troweled on, then it is colored to whatever you want! It can take on the look of granite, marble, concrete, metallic paint.... whatever. Then, it is sealed with a 2 part epoxy that is heat resistant up to 500 degrees and never needs maintenance! It sounded too good to be true, so I called the guy who does it and I got to see some sample boards and even visit a client of his to see the finished product. We loved what we saw and decided that it was what we wanted to do.  The other cool thing about it is the price: $35ish/sq. foot.... labor included!  So for the price of good laminate, you get a product that is even better... with the high end look of granite, marble, quartz, or solid surface! Kind of like buying the cubic zircon, but letting everyone else think that it is a diamond!

Being a researcher, I looked for reviews of the product.... but I could not find any. So I had to go on the guy's word and the testimony of his clients who had their countertops done 3 years ago. This is a great option if you want to give your kitchen a facelift without tearing out your countertops.... it goes right on the top of the existing laminate. And unlike concrete slabs or granite, you don't have to reinforce your cabinets to hold the weight of it.  In our case, there were no existing countertops to coat with the concrete. So we had countertops built out of MDF and then had them coated.

So what are the drawbacks of this product? So far, the only drawback is the "curing out" time of the epoxy. Once the epoxy is put on, you can't touch it for 24 hours. After that initial time, you can touch it, but can't put anything on them for an extended amount of time for 2 weeks. In other words, you can wash dishes and set them briefly on the countertop, but you wouldn't want to let them set there overnight. After that 2 weeks, you can use them as you normally would. (I probably will give it a month before I set a crock pot on them for overnight oatmeal).


I'm posting the before and after pictures of my kitchen (which is still a work in progress). Please note that the pictures do NOT do it justice!!!!

These first 3 photos are the "BEFORE" pictures which show the MDF countertop.







Note my undermount sink which led me to search out other countertop options!!! I actually could have mounted the sink higher so that it was either level with the countertop, or even raised above it some... but since finding out about the iCOAT, I was able to leave it as an undermount. (Note that the 5 gallon bucket in the second picture is not a permanent fixture in my kitchen...!)

 



This is the butler's pantry. It used to be a bathroom. The upper cabinet was sitting in an upstairs bedroom in the house. I love reusing and re-purposing old stuff!!!










And these are the after photos. Again, they do NOT do it justice at all!

The glare is from the kitchen lights.

 The other cool thing about iCOAT is that you can get your perfect, custom color! I'm sure that if we had gone with granite, we wouldn't have gotten this perfect of a color/design!








 

The epoxy is very shiny... like glass. But you can buff it down if you want.

 Is it the "real" thing? Or not???? You would never be able to tell! The other great thing is that it really has a lot of "depth" to it. Who would have thought that it is only about 1/8ish inch thick? It looks like you can look into it forever!!!!!

So if you are wanting to update your kitchen or are in the market for countertops, I would HIGHLY recommend James from Blueline Construction in Salina, Kansas. He did a great job and was awesome to work with! His email is: james@bluelinesalina.com and his phone number is 785-643-0799.