The Great Christmas Project of 2019

This past Christmas was one that I don't think our family will ever forget.  It ended up being full of hours and hours of service for a family in our ward - Hayden and Gabby Young.  Their youngest son was born just over a year ago with AMC.  He's so cute, but this is a disease that requires a lot of therapy and surgeries.  Then in July Hayden was diagnosed with a brain tumor.  It's inoperable, so they're not sure whether it's malignant or not.  He's been doing radiation, but has had multiple seizures.  All while trying to keep a new job he started right before his diagnosis.  Needless to say, it's been a rough year.  When they bought their house 2 years ago they ripped out the floor in their kitchen, ripped out a peninsula, and ripped out their baseboards thinking they would replace them.  Then they found out their baby was going to be born with AMC, and 2 years later nothing had been done.  They were still living with a plywood floor in their kitchen.  So Jake and I went over to look at things and see what we could do.  We thought we would probably just put the tile and baseboards in.  But then we started talking about how small their house was and how it wouldn't take much to replace and fix a lot of the problems with the house.  Jake also had a big remodel he was doing where they were ripping out the whole kitchen.  He thought we could probably reuse the cabinets and counter tops from that kitchen.

So things started rolling.  Way more than any of us really thought they would.  I talked to my friend Audrey, she talked to the Young's, and we decided to see how much money we could raise and what we could do.  We put together a Go Fund Me asking for $5000, hoping we might get $2000.  Between Go Fund Me and cash donations we ended up raising $14,000.  It was amazing and humbling to see people donate so much money.  But also a little overwhelming to suddenly have more than enough to do everything we'd talked about.  It became hard to know where to stop with the house, because we knew we couldn't do everything.

We decided we would replace the exterior doors, the windows, the tile in the kitchen, rip out cabinets and counter tops and replace those, replace the bathroom vanity, put laminate floor down in the exercise room, replace the base and window and door casings, add can lights in the kitchen, replace all of the light switches, and paint the whole house.  Phew.  That stresses me out just writing it down.  We also wanted to displace them for as short a time as possible, so our goal was to finish in a week.  And we did it, but not without a lot of miracles along the way.  And it was pretty awesome to be a part of those miracles. 

Audrey and I pretty much ran the job.  We put together a schedule and sent it out asking for volunteers.  We asked specific people to do the windows and doors, tile, electrical, plumbing, cabinets, and counter tops.  We knew we needed skilled laborers for those things.  And let's not forget that Jake was also coordinating a lot of this, in the middle of his normal crazy schedule.  He used his contacts to get us the windows, doors, and trim for free.  Other than the counter top guy, everyone else donated their time.  Which was pretty significant.  Obviously we had a really tight schedule.  So not only did people donate their time with labor, they worked with our schedule to get it done in time.  We started demo Monday.  Tile was laid and grouted in one day so we could come in to work Wednesday.  From Wednesday morning until the end of the day Monday we were working at their house.  I told my kids that their contribution to this project was not complaining that I was gone and helping around the house.  And they were pretty good about the craziness.

This post is so long already.  I could go on forever, but I'll try to just pick some things that stood out through the project.  The counter top was a major stresser.  The counter top from the house we were ripping out was a pretty stone counter top.  We were so excited to be able to use it, but it's not easy to get stone counter tops out without breaking them.  Jake and the young men ripped out the cabinets and counter top and part of the counter top broke.  We miraculously found a guy who could install the counter top, and he said he could make it work.  Now we just had to get it to their house without it breaking.  And it was really heavy.  We got a bunch of men to help us move it.  And miraculously (I don't use that word lightly) got it to the house in one piece.  There were lots of bumps along the way, but everything kept moving forward and somehow came together.  I see construction projects all the time.  They almost never come together when you need them to.  It's truly a miracle that we were able to finish in time.  I was over there Wednesday-Monday, all day every day.  I was exhausted.  But so many people were there working.  It was definitely not ideal working conditions.  They couldn't move everything out of their house, so all of their stuff was piled in the middle of the rooms and we worked around it.  It was pure chaos a lot of the time, and I know a lot of the people who came to help thought we would never pull it off.  Jake was in and out during the week, trying to keep his normal jobs going.  Every time he walked in we had a million questions for him.  He helped put the can lights in the kitchen.  Then on Saturday he and Zack nailed together all of the casing for the windows in the shop.  Jake's so good at what he does that they brought them over and within like 15 minutes had them all installed.  Everyone was pretty impressed.  And I got a lot of comments on how much Zack already knows about construction.  On Monday at like 1:00 we finally said we'd done as much as we could and needed to start cleaning.  With the help of a lot of people, we finished at 7:00.  Miracle!

A couple of stories, and then I'll be done.  Promise.  One lady who came to help said, "I wasn't sure what to think the first time I came to help.  But now I keep coming back because this is Christmas."  Our bishop's wife ordered bed springs for her house.  When they came they were the wrong size.  She got her money back, but was stuck with bed springs that didn't fit her bed.  Then she came over to help and saw that they didn't have bed springs and the ones she had would fit their bed.  Miracle.  Hayden and Gabby had been looking for a couch for years.  Every time they would pick one out some medical expense would come up and they wouldn't be able to get the couch.  Back in October he finally ordered and paid for a couch.  To be delivered the weekend before Christmas.  This was long before we ever thought about doing this project.  So a beautiful new couch was sitting in their nice, redone house when they came to see the finished project. 

Now that I've done something like this, and I know what it takes, I'll definitely think twice before I do anything like this again.  However, I wouldn't give up all the miracles I saw and being able to see them in their nice house for the world.  Poor Jake got pulled into a project that was way, way bigger than he ever thought it would be.  I'm grateful for his willingness to go along with it all.  And really, he was the one who got it all started.  After they'd been in the house for a few days we were talking to them and Hayden said, "It just feels so peaceful here now."  Worth it right there.

How the kitchen looked before.  Notice the plywood floors.

The start of demo.  Turns out the drop in the ceiling wasn't just drywall but thick wood they had to rip through.

We asked the guy in the white t-shirt to help with drywall.  None of us thought the drywall would be much.  We ended up having to rip out huge pieces of drywall because it was wet.  He still finished the job, coming late after work a lot of days.

Beautiful finished tile.  Done in one day.

The painting happened when and where we could.  Not in the correct order at all.  But it got done.

This little hallway was always so full of people

Notice all of the people trying to work around each other.  Electrical, painting, and floor installation all happening in the same place.

This guy was almost there as much as I was.  Awesome.

Can lights in the kitchen.  So much more light!

New floor in the exercise room

The junk pile of what we ripped out.  And look at all those trucks.  That means a lot of work was happening!

Hayden in the middle of the cabinet boxes

Operation counter top.  

Cabinet install was no small feat.  It was like a jigsaw puzzle trying to get them to fit.

An example of all of the stuff we had to try to work around.  And oh yeah, we replaced two fans.

Window install.  Jake's workers did it.

Hanging from the attic to see how the electrical looked in the bedroom.

Finished kids room

Those windows look so good!

Exercise room

Master Bedroom

Frantically finishing electrical at the very last second

Beautiful family room with the new couch

Finished kitchen.  They didn't have any cabinets or counter top before on the right

Dining Area

Young Family.  The reason for it all.  

Audrey and I.  Could never have done it without her