Home Sweet Home, Part 3 (Is This Really Happening?)

If you're coming from Part 2 you'll remember that I mentioned the term "builder grade." It has become a term that represents the very least you can legally put into a house as it is built. That is unfortunate as most people would pay a few thousand extra for a new house that had more than the minimum. What does a builder gain by sheathing a house with thin foam board instead of OSB? One might think it more insulated but structure is compromised. Why would you install shingles without tar paper? Not only does it void the shingle warranty but you lose that extra protection against water intrusion. What about leaving out underlayment to place on top of the sub floor? While it may not be required by code it often provides extra stiffening for the floor and levels out the surface for the flooring above. Thin concrete, poor insulation, missing house wrap, cheap windows, cheap cabinets and vanities, cheap lighting, undersized heating and cooling systems, and marginal electrical panels are some of the shortcuts taken under "builder grade."

Builder grade kitchen cabinets: not fancy but they hold your dishes

I've experienced all of the above in one house or another and they all cost money to fix. The junk had to be torn out and the better parts installed. It would have been better to pay a little more to do an upgrade of each item at the time of the build. But as one finds out when going to either buy a new house or have one built, there are no changes allowed by the builder. The plans are drawn up and approved in advance and builders don't want to waste any time as time is money. Economy level builders want a house to go up in as short a time as possible for as low a cost as possible so they can move on to the next one.

Semi-custom: up-to-date cabinets, stainless steel appliances, granite countertop

If builder grade is the bottom rung of the ladder, what is at the other end? For that answer let's go back to Ken who is building what I would call a custom home since he designed it according to what he and Kelly wanted and has contracted with a builder to bring his dream to reality. If he wants to change a few things here and there he can do that. In fact, not too long ago he mentioned online that he had a wall removed. Depending on his agreement with the builder there may be an additional charge but he is entitled to that choice. I see that he has been allowed to work on his house, as he also mentioned that he pulled his media wires throughout the walls. It is likely that Ken and Kelly were able to choose every option they wanted in the house before the build started.

In between those two options is what I would call semi-custom and that is what we experienced. When we chose the model and floor plan we had some other decisions to make. We had two choices for the kitchen area and two choices for the master bathroom. The kitchen options dealt with the island facing and an entryway into the dining room. In the bathroom you could have a tub and a smaller shower or no bathtub, a huge shower, and a monstrous double vanity. There was no extra charge for these choices. Of course, once you made those decisions your floor plan choices were over.

Setting out our choices at the Design Center

Another difference with semi-custom is the choice of finishes. While builder grade makes the choice for you in everything and custom gives the owner the choice of everything, semi-custom gives you a limited number of choices for certain areas of the house important to owners like kitchens and bathrooms. We could choose the color of the kitchen cabinets, door hardware, countertop material and color, tile, appliances, vanities, paint color, carpet color, wood flooring, extra outlets, media ports, crown molding, and exterior colors. Choosing all of those was fun for Kathy and Myric!

Two weeks after signing the contract for the house to be built, we headed to their Design Center to make all those choices. A good amount of time had been spent beforehand with the list of upgrades so we were prepared. There were some surprises with extra choices and lower prices but it took us the four hours they had planned for us. We were able to see exact colors in the showroom, along with lighting fixtures, plumbing fixtures, carpeting, flooring, and the like. By the time we were done we could start visualizing what they entire house would look like. I liked what I saw in my head.

A great back yard, large and level

Since we were the first one to buy into this new community we had our choice of lots. Well, except for the completed model and the nearly-finished house across the street. This community of sixteen lots was divided up with 1-9 on the left being designated as houses on slabs, while 10-16 on the right were designated as houses with basements. The purpose of this was to follow the original topography of the land. As we walked around the basement lots we decided against 10 and 11 as they were in the tight space of the cul-de-sac where the front property width was less than the width of the house. Jon said we'd go with #12 as it was the largest of those remaining and would have a larger back yard. Plus there was an easement strip between #12 and #11 that would give us breathing room. Lots in communities like this all come with various price premiums, from $5,000 to $25,000. Silly me, I just figured the lot came with the house. Though ours was "just" $10,000 that amount was erased with a builder credit. Many months later we still feel we picked the best one for us. Coming from a back yard filled with trees and hills and mounds, Jon and Myric had hoped for a large and flat back yard and that is exactly what they got.

Preparing the lot

By March they had brought more dirt to the property to start setting up the topography correctly. No more can builders simply do what they want. Properties and communities are required to deal with the rain that falls on the land, protect the trees nearby, keep water away from the house, and plant new trees and bushes with a specific plan. All of that has to be permitted and approved. We ran into an early stage of that policy when finishing the grading of the Lincoln church in 1999, twenty years prior. That was the first time I heard the word "retention pond" and we had to make sure all the water from our property was first routed through that retention pond. Fortunately we had an area that worked well for that purpose, between the parking lots, and it didn't cost us very much. Developers and builders often pay hundreds of thousands of dollars now to meet those requirements.

Footings formed and poured

Once the dirt was moved into place or scrapped away, the digging started for the footings. Then the forms for the foundation walls were put in place and concrete poured. Finally the back half of the basement floor was poured in place like a slab. These were rather complicated floors with deep footings built in to support the walls placed on them later, and lots and lots of reinforcement bars placed all through the concrete. For our eventual apartment, we were happy to see that they put in a heavy plastic sheeting under the concrete floor to keep out moisture.

Foundation formed and poured

All of this made for what was called a daylight basement, or what my dad called a walkout basement. Here is Georgia they call it a Georgia basement. The front half of the basement is built of concrete walls which step down to ground level in back, allowing the back half of the basement to work just like a house on slab. With the door placed out on that back wall, Kathy and I would have our separate entrance. The build was underway!

Foundation at the front steps down to the back

Basement floor is on ground level in the back yard

Even this early in the build I could see some areas where I would have liked things changed. I had even spoken to the new "builder in charge" for our home but it was clear there was nothing that could be done about it. No matter, I would still keep them honest and show up every evening on the way home from work. I took pictures and kept Jon, Myric, and Kathy informed about what was going on right then. However, it was clear to see the builder wished to get things done right and he always asked how we thought it was going whenever I saw him.

Arktander

(aka David Andreasen)

( Be sure to check out "Home Sweet Home, Part 4" which follows)

Home Sweet Home, Part 2 (The Overview)

I started this missive a couple months ago, but life was pretty busy back then, so it had to wait. Now I'm laid up for a few days with a bum foot so I figured I'd complete it.

About a month ago we moved into our new home. By "we" and "our" I mean myself, Kathy, Jonathan, Myric, and the girls. By "new" I mean built brand new from the ground up. Ken and Kelly are in the process of doing the same thing for their family and have been chronicling the highlights week by week. We've been following their progress along the way and they won't be too far behind us in making the move to their new place.

Jon and Myric's house

Our journey was certainly unexpected. We've all rehashed it numerous times and I keep hearing new tidbits I hadn't heard before. I think it started sometime last fall (2018) during times we were all together, as we talked about kids and schooling and houses and room and upgrades and projects and all those kinds of things that make up a family's life at that very moment. Jon and Myric had bought their home in 2016 and Kathy and I had bought ours a year later in 2017 and life in Georgia was settling down. We were all still adapting to the twins' entry into the world and the need for more space. Add to that the project wish list and the continued repairs of a 30-year-old house and Jon had his hands full. My projects were coming to an end after doing only those items on the list that seemed absolutely necessary. Somewhere in all of that house-related conversation the topic of making a move to a new house was broached. I think it was Kathy who dared to utter such a crazy idea, but no matter. It was uttered and the little seed was planted.

David and Kathy's house

As for myself, I wasn't completely put off by the idea. I had been through a ground-up build on our church in Lincoln and had also been through a complete gut-and-replace project on our Mayfair house so I was no stranger to the process. I had even checked out a couple communities online with Kathy. But it just felt like an unattainable and unreachable goal that most of us quickly dismissed the thought. Undeterred, Kathy changed tactics and started emailing all of us listings of homes for sale that might suit Jon and Myric's family better. My reaction usually was negative as I saw a ton of work that was needed on each of those houses. None of them was really an upgrade from what they already had as they cost more money upfront and they still needed more work which would cost even more money.

Could I just jump up on my soapbox for a quick paragraph and talk about house ownership etiquette? There is an expectation of perfection in every home by potential buyers to the point that they want you to fix dozens of little ridiculous details before they will even consider your house. On the seller side, the norm is to put up for sale a house that has not been kept up for decades but with a selling price that reflects perfection. Both of these expectations are unrealistic. There's a middle ground somewhere in there. I think being a homeowner comes with a responsibility to keep your home in good repair, both for yourself and also for your neighbors. It's part of being a homeowner. And it's also realistic to simply ignore homes with a ridiculous price when buying, and best to realize when you need to fix things up when you're selling. Okay, off the soapbox and back to the subject at hand.

This past Christmas 2018, all of us (the "we" from up above) spent Christmas in Texas with family. Along with visits to other nearby family, we went on a field trip to several new home communities. Because Bob Taylor. All the sales people knew Bob from his previous visits and welcomed us to look around. We toured a couple model homes and saw first hand what a new home build looked like. Once again, beautiful homes, but an unrealistic thought for us. I took their brochures and price lists and saved them for future reference.

As 2019 began, with that Christmas experience just weeks behind us, Kathy suggested that she and I go and check out a new home community halfway between us and the kids. She had seen this area worked on over the past year as she drove by it on her way to work and back home again. There was now a model home on site and we stopped in to take a look. Like the ones in Texas, the home was well-made and had many great features. I especially liked the solid exterior and interior construction, heavy insulation, well-made quiet windows, high ceilings, wood floors, in-wall media wiring, open concept living, trim and molding details, and the tankless water heater. It also had a good location for Jon's work as the drive would be about the same. It had been difficult finding a good pre-owned house in a good location so this was a contender. We collected all the information we could and headed home to crunch the numbers.

Model home, Brentwood

It's one thing to have an idea, another thing completely for it to be a good idea. I put the numbers together for purchase price, monthly payments, utility costs, space requirements, and an apartment for us in the basement. For this to work it would need the resources of two families and the numbers suggested it was possible. Though the idea had been floated before as just another idea, this time it could be for real. So that weekend I emailed my findings to Jon just like Kathy had done with the home listings, just not really thinking anything could ever come of it.

In true Andreasen fashion, Jon checked it out thoroughly, making up spreadsheets to validate the numbers and visiting the community to check out the houses with Myric a few days later. Across the street from the model home was a different version under construction. This was the one that got his attention and was the subject of our family roundtable discussion a few days later. Jon and Myric liked the location, the small community, the floor plan of the house, and the overall look of the house. Surprisingly, we had all stumbled upon a possible solution for a long-term living situation. We all started asking questions of each other. We found out Jon and Myric liked the "Laurelwood" model because of the room placements all throughout the house. We found out that Kathy did not want to live in a room or two of the house but have a true apartment with a separate entrance to give each family privacy. The basement option fit the bill. After having lived in a subdivision of several hundred houses with all its owners and drivers speeding by their house every day, Jon and Myric liked the idea of a small community of just sixteen houses set apart on its own. We all liked being in the same general area we had known for the past few years. Could this really be happening?

From my perspective, I felt God had opened this door to us much like he had opened the door to building the church in Lincoln. We would still have to walk through the door in faith with all that might entail for the future but I was convinced of this as a true "God thing" and not as a passing whim. I don't get those kinds of strong impressions every day and I wanted to convey that this seemed very real and we should give it serious consideration. We all agreed that Jon and I would follow up at the model home with the agent the coming Saturday.

On the third Saturday of January, just one week after Kathy and I had scouted out the place, Jon and I went in to.....well, I wasn't exactly sure what we were going to do except get more information. I had found an online ad that listed the house across the street for lower than expected so I figured we'd start there with the agent. That conversation did not go well. Let's just say that some people are not suited for certain jobs and this agent did everything wrong from the get-go. Somebody else was blamed for putting up incorrect information online and we were told we could not get that price. Nobody took responsibility for anything that was clearly their fault. That was that, I figured, and I expected that we'd head home since my numbers had been based on that lower price. But Jon saw some other things I hadn't. He said we should just build our own instead. We could choose our own lot, pick out our own finishes, and make it our own. And he had the numbers to back it up. It would cost a bit more, as it seemed that the lower-priced home with the wrong price did not take into account the cost of the basement (yes, we figured it out when they didn't), but the plan still made sense.

The Laurelwood under construction with the wrong online price

So that was the day we wrote up the contract for lot #12 with the Laurelwood floor plan and the basement addition. When we came home and the girls asked how it went, we said that we just bought a house and they were shocked. Considering how this came together in such a short time with little time to really contemplate all of it, that was understandable. If you've kept up with Kelly's updates on their home build, you've read the story of how God pointed out a piece of property to them years ago that would become their new home location. After numerous times of trying to buy it unsuccessfully, God one day simply opened the door and they walked through it. Today they are seeing that dream and promise through to its conclusion. We had just done the same thing.

Ken and Kelly's house under construction

I don't know why it took so many years for God to open that door for Ken and Kelly, or why He allowed our plan to come together in one week, or why so many of our hopes and dreams go unfulfilled over a lifetime. The best way I can answer that is that God does all things well. I have to believe that if I am to believe anything about the God of the Universe. We may not always get our way but His way is always best. And I am thankful that He allows us these moments of joy and blessing and confirms them in our hearts.

Arktander

(aka David Andreasen)

(Be sure to check out "Home Sweet Home, Part 3" which follows)

Home Sweet Home, Part 1 (The Back Story)

Considering the advanced age my kids think I am, I have not lived in that many places and have not owned that many houses. During my married life I've lived in two apartments, one mobile home, one parsonage that belonged to the church, and just four houses that we were fortunate enough to purchase. I've known some who kept buying, fixing, and selling houses over the years and moved from one to the next after each was sold. Too much moving for me. I echo the words of my wife during the past few months: "I hate moving!" These are the houses that brought me to where we are today.....house-wise anyway. Nobody really wants to see an apartment or a mobile home. Okay, maybe I'll show the mobile home since it was a purchased house-type space. We appreciated the privacy after two-and-a-half years of living in apartments. We were in it only two years so we got most all our money back in the sale of it.

Our 14x70 Mobile Home, the original Tiny House (1983)

The church parsonage in Warren was a home built in 1879. While Kathy loved the charm of that home, I could not abide the lack of insulation, the drafty old original windows, the sagging floors and doors, and the list goes on. I put a lot of work into that house, and that was before I had any experience in remodeling and renovation. Over time it turned into an old home worthy of the Warren Tour of Homes while we lived there and it was warmly received by the community. After living in it for seven years it was worth double what the church paid. Sadly, it wasn't our own personal house so we wouldn't make the profit to put into the next home.

Church parsonage in Warren (built 1879)

The first home that we personally bought was when we first moved to Lincoln. It was our first home purchase and a difficult one to find and pull off. It doesn't matter how much you watch HGTV you are never really prepared for that first one.....or any of them for that matter. What I remember most about that deal was making the 5-hour drive from Warren to Lincoln even though the bank had told us they didn't have all the paperwork for us to sign. Our devotional time with friends early that morning convinced us of God's faithfulness in providing that home. When we got to the bank at noon, they asked us why we came and we told them. Then they told us that the paperwork had just come in before we showed up. What a miracle! We had that house sided and I added a couple porches. Work inside was minimal since I still had little experience with reno but near the end of our twelve years there I put in a furnace and air conditioning system based on experience with doing that at the church.

The Ophir house, our first house in Lincoln (built 1958)

Following the conclusion of the church building project in Lincoln, Kathy decided she would like to sell this house and find another. Why, you might ask? Because she had remodeled all that I would let her and she wanted a new challenge. All I wanted was to be finished. But there we were two months after the church dedication making an offer on a wreck of a house. This might have been just like on HGTV, except there would be no crew of dozens of people to get this done in a month. I had wanted to move to the Mayfair subdivision when we first came to Lincoln but couldn't afford the prices. This house had been on the market for seven years with most people running for the hills after just opening the front door. We gutted the entire house and built it back up, moving many walls in the process. I had always wanted to build my own house like my dad did, and this was as close as I figured I could get. It was not the same house when we were done with it. The neighbors cheered. A neighbor bought our house. And then we moved again.

The Mayfair house, closest I got to building a house myself (built 1960)

The Rockford house was a foreclosure as that was just a few years after the housing crash and there were thousands of them available. There were many foreclosures in the Rockford area and I saw the effects of a housing boom gone bad. After having purchased two homes built around the end of the 1950's I had hoped for something newer. This one had been built in 2004, a year that would eventually haunt me twice. It turned out to be a home with many builder shortcuts that affected the stability and livability of the home. Over time I fixed many of them but I quickly learned about the term "builder grade." Otherwise I liked this house a lot, and it was the only house I have had with a 3-car garage.

The Rockford house, loved that 3-car garage (Built 2004)

After purging our lives of accumulated stuff during our time in Illinois, we moved to the Atlanta area. My wife and I found a home in the town of Hiram that was pretty much the smallest house we would ever buy. It was a small 2-story home but there was no basement. That left precious little space in which to store stuff so we embarked on another round of purging. We would do that several times until everything fit in the house. This house was also built in 2004. I should have seen that year and left running. Sure enough, I had some of the same issues, some of them worse. Again I fixed up what I could and made it a safer house. Kathy really loved this house. It was home to her.

The Hiram house, lawn care provided for the front yard (Built 2004)

So, if an 1879-era house is too crude and a 1958-1960-era house lacks up-to-date systems and airtight qualities and a 2004-era house shows too many shortcuts, what does one look for if building a new house? My goals were: concrete poured correctly and as thick as possible, a structure that was over-built for sturdiness, full wood sheathing on walls and roof, sealed as airtight as possible and insulated well, efficient Energy Star appliances and systems, a large tankless water heater, and upgraded features throughout the house. You may notice I am more concerned with what is below the surface. The structure of my prior houses was lacking and not something easily corrected after the fact. But build a structure correctly and you can always change out a finishing item, like vanities or lights. Since Kathy and Myric were more interested in the design elements of the house we left those things to them.

It was B.J. Neblett who wrote: “We are the sum total of our experiences. Those experiences––be they positive or negative––make us the person we are, at any given point in our lives. And, like a flowing river, those same experiences, and those yet to come, continue to influence and reshape the person we are, and the person we become. None of us are the same as we were yesterday, nor will be tomorrow.” In the narrow focus of building a home, the positive experience of building a church with its lessons learned, or the negative experiences of a home with issues and problems all contributed to this point in time where one could benefit from all of them.

Arktander
(aka David Andreasen)

( Be sure to check out "Home Sweet Home, Part 2" which follows)

What Time Is It? (Collecting What You Love)

You never know the kinds of things people will collect. Google "large collections" and you will find all sorts of items people decide to collect. One guy has over 11,000 "Do Not Disturb" signs from hotel doors. He really doesn't want to be disturbed. An older couple has collected nearly 7,000 chicken related items. Maybe they own stock in KFC. Then there's the girl who has amassed almost 3,000 rubber duckies, each one different from the last. That one quacks me up! For Kathy and I, our taste turned to Precious Moments figurines. They started producing those figurines right around the time we got married in 1980 and each one was stamped on the bottom with "Jonathan & David" which was the name of the new company. But we only got those figurines that meant something to us and represented an event or significance in our lives. I actually have about a dozen that are significant to me that are displayed in my room.

 

One of my first elephants

Those of you who know me know that I once amassed a large collection of elephants, initially against my will. In the 40 days leading up to my 40th birthday a unique elephant was delivered to me by someone in the Lincoln church. And once that initial collection was known to others in the church, the elephants kept coming. Everyone tried to outdo the others until I had an almost bizarre variety of elephant items. Stuffed elephants, beanie baby elephants, elephant notebooks, elephant pens, elephant lunch box, elephant mugs, and elephants of every sort of material filled the shelves. At one point the "collection" reached over 400 different items, a far cry away from the more prolific collectors but way more than the two I had sitting on my desk before the elephant invasion commenced.

Intertwined trunks to represent married love

When I asked why they picked elephants, I was told they saw my collection and wanted to add to it. My collection? The only elephants I had were the two small ones I bought on our honeymoon. Why did I even get those two? Because of the large quartz elephant my parents had in the living room since I was very young. That's how I eventually ended up with a large elephant collection. But along the way there were some elephants that meant a lot to me and those are the ones I still have. For instance, the pair of jade elephants from China that Jon bought me during one of his college summer trips. Or the handmade wood elephants from Africa with real ivory tusks. I'll always treasure those.

The majority of my elephant collection now fits on one shelf

I had a few watches during my teen years. The most memorable of them was the LED digital watch for my high school graduation. It was a dress gold watch, not the plastic kind that came later with Timex. It eventually gave way to a Seiko digital watch and then a great many cheap Walmart watches during the church building program. They never lasted long. There was a time we all wore watches because that's how you knew what time it was. Once the cell phone came along, it replaced the wrist watch as a time piece. The favorite parking location for a cell phone is in the pants pocket, and you'll see many pulling it out just to tell the time. When I ask different ones why they don't wear a wrist watch they look at me like I'm from an alien planet as they say, "why would I wear a watch when I already have the time on my phone?" To that I say, "why wouldn't you?" but to each their own.

Like other things that happened in my life, a series of unrelated events came together to introduce me to various kinds of watches and I started to collect them. The great thing about it was that I also got to wear my collection every day. I didn't spend much money on these watches but the collection grew to over three dozen over time. I also joined a watch group and eventually was asked to be a moderator on their online forum. I got to know numbers of the other members and also bought, sold, and traded watches with some of them. I sold the ones I could make money on and bought others that were cheaper. I narrowed the collection down to one of each kind. One with a Valjoux 7751 movement, one with the Valjoux 7750 movement, one with an ETA 2824, one with a meteorite dial and so on. One of this color, one of that color. You get the idea. Now I have less than twenty but they all have meaning for me. Then the forum shut down, I was no longer a moderator, and the collecting bug disappeared.

But in the end, this story about watches is about another momentous event as much as it is about collecting watches. It was following our son Jared's high school graduation that we asked him once again about what was next in life for him. Did he want to go to college? Did he have a life's vocation in mind? He asked if it would be alright if he just worked for maybe a year to figure out what he wanted to do. He got a job at Dominos and worked full-time making pizzas and delivering them. A year later, he was all excited as he came to me and said he knew what he wanted to do and where he wanted to go. The "what" was learning to be a jeweler. The "where" was Gem City College in Quincy, Illinois. Turns out he had seen a documentary on jewelers and it had looked interesting to him, to the point he wanted to make it his vocation. Having spent a couple years in Quincy I knew exactly where that was. He asked if I would go with him to check it out, and one sunny April day we headed out for Quincy.

 Part of a tray of 100 different original rings

We went straight to the school as we had called ahead to make an appointment for that day. Someone met us at the door and took us down the hall to show us the first big display in two huge glass cabinets. This showed some of the projects that students would learn in jewelry design, including the requirement to design and fashion 100 different rings over the course of the class. They also taught ring resizing, ring repair, metal polishing, and setting stones among the various subjects that were all part of being a jeweler. He still seemed interested, though creating all those rings gave him pause. He did not think he was very creative. And then we went on to the next big display.

Watchmaker desks lined up for watchmaking classes

I don't know about Jared, but I hadn't known that the other part of Jewelry Design was Watchmaking. I remember thinking, "now you're speaking my language!" When he walked down to that display he wanted to know what it was all about. There he got a crash course in what it took to open up and take apart a watch, clean all the parts, and then reassemble them in the proper order to rejuvenate or restore a watch. He was much more excited about this display and the school representative said that many who went through the Jewelry and Watchmaking process often started with watchmaking. The idea was that watches and jewelry were usually offered for sale in the same store and therefore the person who became a jeweler/watchmaker could be kept busy by doing repairs for both parts of the equation.

Jared signed up for the Watchmaking classes, which took just over a year, and then decided that he liked the structured process of taking apart a watch and putting it back together over the creative process of designing jewelry. He skipped the Jewelry classes and promptly got a job at Illinois Watch Company working under Craig Stone and learned a great deal about the real world of watchmaking. He went on to AWCI (American Watchmakers-Clockmakers Institute) for certification courses. After five years with Craig he found a job in Louisiana as a Rolex watchmaker. He's been to Rolex headquarters in Pennsylvania a couple times for some more training and finds great fulfillment in his career. He also works on Omega, Hamilton, Tag Heuer, and Seiko watches. He enjoys that immensely.

An Invicta Subaqua Noma IV with the Valjoux 7750 chronograph movement

We'll never know if my interest in watches made a difference in which path Jared took, but it's one of those points of convergence in a father's and son's life that will be remembered. We still talk about watches and watchmaking in great detail during some of our marathon multi-hour phone conversations (I know what you're thinking: gasp! you actually TALK on the phone?) and it's been a common interest for over ten years now. I expect it will continue to be a common point of interest for us for years to come. Well, that and cars, as we can talk hours about those as well. I guess you could also say we can just talk and talk and talk quite easily.

Arktander

(aka David Andreasen)

Digital Mayhem (Take All The Pictures You Want)

I often think back to the life-changing events of the past and what it might have been like to be a part of that history.  Johannes Gutenberg began work on his movable type printing press in 1436, and his work in printing the Bible helped change the world for future generations. Carl Benz debuted his three-wheeled gasoline vehicle in 1885 and the transportation shift from trains to cars would be transformed. Wilbur and Orville Wright ushered in the prospect of long-distance and international travel with their first airplane flights in 1903. Digital computers as we know them today appeared in the early 1940's following mechanical computer efforts over a century before. Today we can't think of life without these inventions.

1888 Benz automobile

As I pondered this thought even more, I realized that there are many of us today who have witnessed colossal changes in even shorter periods of time. Ever heard of a smartphone? All three of my sons were born before the Simon Personal Communicator was introduced by IBM in 1992. The Blackberry was the next big thing in smartphones, showing up on the scene in 1999. But the game-changer was the iPhone that took the world by storm in 2007 and hasn't let up since. I remember seeing that first iPhone and wondering who would ever buy such a thing. Today there's hardly a corner of the world that hasn't seen the smartphone being used by so many people for so many purposes.

Cameras fall into this same grouping. In 1888 George Eastman came out with the first box camera simply called the Kodak. A couple years later the Brownie was unveiled for taking "snapshots" and mass market photography was underway. When 35mm film took over in the early 1900's it allowed for multiple exposures on one roll before you had to send it for development. While there were other niche cameras that vied for consumer acceptance—including Polaroid, Disc, Instant, Disposable, and Medium Format—the 35mm cameras came to dominate the market. It was this world I found myself in as I started life as a teenager.

Yashica 35 Manual

I was given a Yashica manual 35mm camera at age thirteen by my aunt and uncle and learned to manually focus the lens while manually choosing the aperture and shutter speed. In many ways those early photos seemed more pleasing and well exposed than what you see today. Or perhaps it was that one thought they were better because of all the effort expended just to take one photo. I ran many rolls of film through it in Photography class in high school, usually the black and white variety. There we learned to get the film out of the cartridge in the dark, develop the film in the dark, and print up photo enlargements in the relative dark. And you wondered why they called it the dark room?

Canon AE-1

I used it during the first years of college, taking photos for the yearbook or photos of the couples at spring banquet. It wasn't like I was the only one at college with a camera but I was one of the few who had a 35mm and was well-versed in using it. Even back then Canon and Nikon were the cameras of choice but such were not in the budget for a college student. But I imagined that some day I might get a camera like the Canon AE-1. That was my dream.

Yashica Electro 35

That first Yashica lasted nearly ten years until my next gifted camera, the Yashica Electro 35, courtesy of my eventual father-in-law. That one had automatic exposure so all one had to do was focus. I used this one for probably another ten years, through the end of college and on into early married life. I have a photographic record of the early years of our boys and our family because of this camera. I became the family photographer much like my mother, which is why she and I are rarely in family photographs from those years. I acquired a tripod from somebody and an automatic shutter release timer from somebody else and soon I was in some of the family photos. Oh sure, I still had to arrange everybody else to fit into the frame, mark out a spot for me to stand, set the 15 second timer, run like a maniac into the aforementioned spot, and then tell everyone to smile and keep their eyes open until the shutter clicked. But at least I was now in the photo for the record. What was the record? All those photo albums where you stored all the photos, never to be seen again!

Yashica 200-AF

Around the end of the 1980's I decided to upgrade to an SLR, or Single-Lens Reflex camera. Those two early Yashicas had been viewfinder cameras, where you looked through the viewfinder off to the left of the lens and saw an approximation of what you would get on film. It was frustrating for a fine photographer like myself to frame up a photo in the viewfinder only to find someone's head chopped off when the photos came back from development. An SLR showed you exactly what you would get because you were looking straight through the lens right up until pressing the shutter. I ended up purchasing—wait for it!—a Yashica 200-AF because it was cheaper than a Canon or Nikon and there were rebates available and because I was an Andreasen. We just don't spend money needlessly. But those two letters at the end of the model name said it all. Auto Focus. Press the shutter and the lens turned and whirred as it focused in the center of the lens. Since it also set aperture and shutter speed it was a totally automatic camera. I got an extra telephoto lens, a plug-in flash, and a camera bag and I felt like a professional photographer.

Fast forward ahead a dozen or so years to 2001 and my wife and I are planning a trip to Europe to visit our friends, Ken and Marianne Barickman, who lived in Brussels, Belgium, at the time. The highlight of the trip would be a one day trip to Paris. Yes, the one in France and not the one in Illinois. I've been to the one in Illinois, just not as memorable as visiting the one in France. I would take this camera with me along with 3 rolls of 24 exposure film. By squeezing in one extra photo per roll that meant I planned on taking 75 photos during my time there. Two weeks. Brussels. Paris. Amsterdam. Bruges. Antwerp. Aachen. Nivelles. Let that sink in for just a bit. Two weeks, 75 photos. Why was I so tight-fisted with the film on the trip of a lifetime? For those who remember those days, it cost a bunch of money to make photos. If you bought the best film and got it developed at the best places it would cost you $25 or more per roll, and I had three of them. It was costing me plenty for the trip as it was and taking photos was the least of my priorities. In today's social media conscious society, such would be unthinkable. But this was a different time and taking photos was seen as more of a luxury than a necessity. Did I mention I'm an Andreasen and I'm cheap?

The Eiffel Tower in Paris, France

Photo 18 of 75

In the end I took 25 photos in Paris, meaning I took only one full roll with me to Paris and allowed myself only that one. While I did get photos of the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Arch of Triumph, and our evening dinner eating outside at a café on the Avenue des Champs-Elysees just a couple blocks from the Arc de Triomphe all lit up in the center of the city, I only got one of each. If your eyes were closed, too bad so sad. Because of the dearth of photos with which to remember that trip, it remains mostly just fond memories of a great time in another part of the world. Don't discount memories! Sometimes they are even better than the actual happenings, like Kathy's retelling of the Paris pickpocket story versus the actual event. But this is also why I told Myric to take as many photos as she could when she and Jon took a trip to Paris many years later. I think she took nearly 2,000 photos including many of the places I didn't get to see, like the Louvre. Because of her photos I was able to take another trip down memory lane back to one of the best places we ever visited.

Not long afterwards you began hearing about digital cameras being developed for consumer sales. Once again I couldn't imagine anyone actually buying one of these things. But once again I was wrong. You might say I am not an early adopter. In 2003 sales of digital cameras surpassed analog cameras and never looked back. My first digital camera was a pocket sized Canon Powershot, one that I bought for a week trip to the Big Apple and Niagara Falls with our Australian friends Craig and Missy in 2005. Being that he was truly a photographer and had awesome equipment I tried to learn from him. And I got some awesome photos on that trip.

When the iPhone came out in 2007 it was an instant success, more so for its camera and apps than for its phone capabilities. Apple really should have called it the iCamera or the iTexter. In the years since then cell phone manufacturers have seemingly spent more time improving the cameras contained in the phone than they have in improving the sound quality or reception of the phone itself. The cell phone camera has become such a deeply ingrained part of our lives that we now take thousands of photos of everything under the sun. There are now so many folks with their phone cameras at weddings that the professional photographers are constantly getting their photos ruined with the interlopers. Probably every dish ever offered for breakfast, lunch, or dinner has been photographed and placed online for all to see. And of course, there are the social media sites that allow us to share our lives with our families or perhaps everyone on the planet. 

Canon 60D DSLR

Over the course of fifty-some years, I went from a used 35mm manual camera, to an auto exposure 35mm camera, to a fully automatic 35mm camera, to numerous iterations of digital cameras which culminated in the Canon 60D, and then on to numerous cell phones with cameras of varying quality. It took 40 years but my college goal of getting a professional level Canon camera was finally realized. To say it takes amazing photos would be an understatement. It far surpasses anything I ever had previous to it. That's why I stopped upgrading. I finally found the camera that will serve me well for years to come. Sadly, most of the photos that I take today are with whatever cell phone I have with me at the moment. The DSLR is a large and heavy piece of equipment and not inconspicuous, so it's much simpler to put the cell phone in  your pocket for when you need it.

In that time period of taking photos, I have witnessed the camera that had served as a pricey and complicated tool for professionals transition into a handy and simple tool for everyone. While I still have my memories of good times gone by, I do appreciate the chance to scroll through the camera roll on my cell phone for thousands of photos of events I can appreciate anytime. At the moment I have 15,000 photos on my cell phone which include all the photos from all my previous cell phones. I have 25,000 photos from the five digital cameras I have used over the past fifteen years. And there are 75,000 photos in the Pictures folder of my desktop computer. I suppose there is some overlap in all of that but it would be safe to say I have over 100,000 digital photos that I've taken in those fifteen years. I've never counted all the photos in the photo albums or checked the negatives in the plastic sleeves but I'd imagine it would only be several thousand photos over those first thirty-fives years of film cameras. You have to be determined to hunt down one particular photo among the dozens of albums in the numerous boxes. I have made it a point to scan as many printed photos as possible since those printed photos continue to deteriorate with age. At least then they will still be available for future generations of the family.

Kids today may take it for granted, but the camera really is a marvelous tool.

Arktander

(aka David Andreasen)

Kitchens, Kitchens, and More Kitchens (Again?)

If you have the opportunity to build a new house from the ground up because you think it would be a marvelous bucket list item checked off your list, then by all means do your homework and forge ahead. I should know. I spent many years working with a group of volunteers to build a church and it was a blessing to the congregation. Just two months after the church was dedicated my dear wife had the brilliant idea to sell our completely renovated home and purchase a delightfully sad fixer-upper because I had all this building experience and she wanted a new challenge. Sadly, she caught me in a moment of weakness as I still had "build a house" on my bucket list and this was likely as close as I would get to doing that. So for the next six or seven years we toiled away in heat and cold, pulling out floors and ceilings, moving walls and windows and doors, putting all our spare time into that complete renovation. When it was all done we both agreed we would never do that again. Once was enough.

Lincoln Church Project

My father seemed to have been bitten by the building bug more times than me. Building his first small home at sixteen, it gave him the down payment for his first family home. By my count he worked on fourteen projects in his lifetime, and from what I could see he loved every minute of it. Of that list of fourteen, two of them were church projects and the rest were homes. I worked with him enough that some of that interest and desire were transferred to me, at least enough to dip my feet into the building project water. Dad was swimming out in the deep end. While I hoped to get my chance at a project or two, I never had any desire to better his record.

The Fully Renovated Mayfair House

Though dad had me putting in the electrical system of a house at fourteen years of age, I really did not get involved much in my early years. After marriage we lived in a couple apartments, then a mobile home, and then a church parsonage. Since none of those belonged to us there were no renovations allowed. I remember being told at our second apartment that we couldn't even put nails in the wall. Kathy said, "Are they insane?" and proceeded to hang up all her wall decorations with nails. When we moved out I carefully pulled out the nails and filled the holes as though the nails were never there. And yes, we got our deposit back. We did some painting and minor repairs in the parsonage but there wasn't a budget for major renovation. 

I would have to say that kitchens played a very small part in my daily life. Both of those apartment had alley kitchens where you walk into the kitchen from one end and run into a wall at the other end. Neither of them could have been over eight feet in length, with cabinets and appliances on both sides of that walkway. Everything crammed into one tiny space. The mobile home kitchen was even smaller with everything plastered against one wall and a small peninsula to guide people into it. I couldn't find even one photo of those three kitchen, hence my statement that they didn't much affect my life. Kathy, on the other hand, would probably say she's the one who spends the most time in a kitchen and therefore was greatly affected by the details of each kitchen. However, she was unable to change them in any significant way so she just did all those kitchen things in silence. That was destined to change.

Warren Kitchen (realtor.com)

We made the upgrade to an actual home when we moved to Warren, Illinos. The house was a bit run down so we did some cosmetic projects. I do remember that my wife wanted to get her hands on that kitchen, wanting to paint the dreary wood cabinets and replace the carpeted floor, maybe even get some nicer appliances. But I put the kibosh on that as neither us or the church was in a position to put much money into the house since it was the church parsonate. I liked the look of the wood and thought it a heresy to paint over it. In hindsight, anything would have been an improvement, no matter how small.

Ophir Kitchen

It was in Lincoln, Illinois, that we got the chance to purchase our own home, twelve years after we were married. I was in my mid-thirties and by this time Kathy had seen far too many HGTV home fixer-upper shows and was chomping at the bit to make this home her own. This two story house had four bedrooms, which was the main criteria for our family that time around. Every room was painted a different color. We had the house sided while I built a front porch and a side porch. We added central heat and A/C. We gutted the main bathroom and replaced everything because Kathy saw a leak and was sure the tub was going to fall into the living room. We gutted the main floor half-bath and made it cute because ... Kathy. The last thing we touched was the kitchen and it was here we disagreed. She wanted to put in an entire new kitchen and I didn't, because I'm an Andreasen and I'm cheap. So we compromised of a sort. I took out all the cabinets, rearranged them in a different layout, added a couple more to finish the new layout, and added a peninsula. This would be the first time I incorporated land masses into my kitchen renovation projects. Add a new laminate countertop, a new KitchenAid dishwasher, new sink and faucet, and new carpet and we had a new kitchen! Kathy was not amused, however, and began to plot building her dream kitchen.

Kitchen at Lincoln Church

Overlapping with some of this was the start of the church building project, which began in 1996 and concluded in the fall of 2003. It was a good thing I did more of the home projects in the early years of Lincoln before starting the church, as it would be tougher once that building project began. When it came time to plan the kitchen project of thge church, Kathy volunteered to help get that one going. She went along to the kitchen place and helped work with the plans. We called this the "Noah's Ark" kitchen because it had two of everything: two sinks, two refrigerators, two dishwashers, two ovens, and two vent hoods. The cabinets were made of hickory and had a unique look. We put it pantries, glass front cabinet doors, and crown molding. I would learn years later how she disliked builder grade cabinets, both the style and color. I did not catch on very quickly to that early tidbit of knowledge, and that would come back to haunt me in the years to come. There was also wallpaper and border to be hung on the walls, a feature that would fall out of favor within a decade. This was also something we would learn, that fads come and go but it's better to stick with the classics.

Mayfair Kitchen

When the church building was completed, we sold our completed two story house and purchased a sad little ranch on the corner of Mayfair Subdivision and so began our own spare-time project. I tried to salvage as much of the house as possible. But as time went on we saw that this would need to be a total gutting to the studs and a rebuild. Nowhere was that more evident than in the kitchen, if you could call it that. Kathy was on a euphoric high as she gleefully planned for her new kitchen. First off was moving the furnace and water heater from the kitchen to another location. Then she wanted the window moved a little to the right. Then she wanted a new door exiting to the back yard. Then she wanted a wall removed. This was going to be her dream kitchen because we'd be in this house a long time! 

If she had seen it somewhere on HGTV it found its way into our kitchen. Stained solid oak wood floors. White-washed solid maple cabinets. Different heights on the upper cabinets. Decorative crown molding at the top of the cabinets. Glass in a few doors. A tile backsplash for the first time (placed on the diagonal—grrrrrr). A baking center. Under counter lighting. A moveable island. A peninsula area for baking. Hanging pendant lights over the peninsula. Trash basket in a base cabinet. A pantry. A sink bump-out. A spice rack. A tray cabinet. A double-oven range. Wood panels surrounding the refrigerator. A wood-look laminate countertop. I'm sure I missed a few things but she had everything in there but the kitchen sink. Oh wait, she had that too, and it was a white enameled sink. But this was the first and last kitchen we would ever do, she told me. So we did it up right. She enjoyed it for few years, hosting friends and a number of Christmas parties. But this was not the last kitchen we would ever do.

Rockford Kitchen

The day we left Lincoln was the day she realized she was losing her dream kitchen forever. Either that, or it was the day she began to figure out how she could get another one. When we moved to Rockford we looked at dozens of houses but finally found one that checked off most of our boxes, and we bought it. The main criteria here was "three car garage" and this one had them. It was here I heard those dreaded words, "builder-grade kitchen," only this time she assigned a color to it. For some reason she thought it looked "orange" and she did not like the look of all the "orange" wood in the house, which included all the doors and the trim. However, this was the first time I had nice wood doors and wood trim and I liked it so I fought to keep it, because I'm an Andreasen and I'm cheap. But I felt bad for her losing her dream kitchen so I said I would give her a new kitchen. This time it was painted white cabinets, but in two colors. Creamy white on the uppers and gray on the base cabinets. HGTV of course. Glass doors again, but with burlap in the glass. Fancy door pulls of varying sizes that she just LOVED! Many of the same features as before, but the main difference being the Corian countertop and the Corian molded in sink. Same white appliances. Brazilian cherry wood floor. It was smaller but very nice. We would be in Rockford for many years and she was thrilled to have another new kitchen. And then she didn't.

Hiram Kitchen

We were there in Georgia, visiting our oldest son and his wife, when we found out we would be grandparents of twins, this with a two-year-old already. Three girls in two-and-a-half years. They would need help. We decided to move to Atlanta and pick up some of the slack. Remind me of us never moving again? But here we were, moving across the country. We found a home we could afford in Hiram, but it also had the dreaded "orange" builder-grade kitchen cabinets with the additional horror of "orange" oak floors. Did we really need to do another kitchen? Was it really necessary? Not to me it wasn't. But Kathy assured me this would be the very last kitchen we would ever need to do. I was not convinced, however, so I hedged my bet. I said I would put in another kitchen if I got to make some of the choices, and they would be based on price. I found an online supplier of kitchen cabinets and discovered the style and color of the cheapest cabinets, which happened to be white painted Shaker-style cabinets. Cheapest appliances were stainless steel and I found the bargain brand and models. She said over her dead body since stainless steel showed fingerprints. I introduced her to Smudge Proof Stainless Steel and death was averted. Believe it or not, we found an inexpensive granite we both liked and it was cheaper than laminate. I always wanted to have granite. We put down tile on the floor since we were on a concrete slab and it was the cheapest option, plus we'd had so many leaks onto the wood floors in the past that we wanted the protection of tile. We got cheap cabinet handles at IKEA. Plain subway tile at Menards. She wanted a barn door and I built it myself from an old door. This was the least money we ever spent on a new kitchen and yet it was as nice as any before it. It's a good thing because we would be in this house forever, right? She was never going to move again, right? Well, not quite. Sometimes life has a way of changing when you least expect it.

I think the new kitchen will be off to the left!

Kathy and I not only felt the need to downsize when we came to Hiram, but increasingly began to think of doing so for the future. We had started downsizing even more so that our kids wouldn't have to deal with so much of our stuff after we were gone. Yes, that may seem somewhat morbid, but it's a reality we all have to deal with. Or at least our kids will have to deal with it. So me, and Kathy, and Jonathan, and Myric came up with a plan to sell both our homes and move into one large house enough for all of us. This would address some of their space needs with three girls, and give us a landing place that we hoped would keep us in one place for years to come. But, of course, it means we would be doing another kitchen when we finished off the basement as the place for us to live. 

So there's another project that awaits. According to my calculations, this will be the seventh overall project to this point. That's just half of my dad's totals, but still more than I expected there to be. Will this one really be our last? We know better than to voice that question ever again!

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New Kitchen in the Basement Apartment

Edit: Though this blog was originally posted a couple of months before closing on the new house and nine months before finishing the basement, I wanted to add in the new kitchen photo here so you could see it and compare it to those kitchens that precede it. It was most similar to the kitchen we had just left and was planned in much the same way as that one. The main difference was the addition of a large island (there's those pesky land masses again) as a place where the three little girls could gather and sit when visiting with grandma. This time she found a new material to use for the countertop, a quartzite that grabbed her attention. "Because she could" if you recall her mantra. She has had Laminate, Corian, Granite, and now Quartzite as her choice for a counter she could live with. Some of the other options were either not the best material for a kitchen counter or were very high maintenance materials. More details of this build are in the "Starting All Over Again" series on the new home build. We finished this kitchen in March of 2020 just as COVID was becoming a household name. 

Arktander

(aka David Andreasen)