God is Faithful in Fireplaces and Finances

Yesterday was a great day! I am just overwhelmed with how faithful God is with me. He has helped me through some challenging things as of lately. First of all, tiling the fireplace, I was really worried about how I was going to do it. So Kim and I have been praying, asking God to give me wisdom and the ability to do the job. Well, I am done setting the tile and it is looking really good. It was quite a process though.

It all started when I lined up the tile and a whole tile (13 inches square) wouldn’t fit up and around the fireplace. (See fig. 1) So I thought, “No big deal, I will just build up the side of the fireplace to be bigger.” That ended up being quite a feat. I had to cut the 2x4’s to the right size and then add a shim to square them up with the front of the fireplace. Then I had to figure out how to attach them to the fireplace with masonry screws. Add mortar, add backer board, add more mortar, add another layer of backer board and finally finish with a final coat of mortar to make the front surface flush. And PRESTO! I have a 13 inch wide fireplace.

Compared to that mess, cutting and laying the tile on the wall was easy. Kim helped too! I used tape to hold the tile from shifting once I had them in position. I put a wood brace up under the middle tile too. Now I just pray that as they were curing none of them slipped.

To top it all off, my day at work yesterday was great as well. I can’t go into the details as of yet but I had some tough decisions to make. Kim and I prayed about the situation and God came through again. Everything worked out better than I could have imagined. I not only have saved money doing the tile myself, I am still employed and everything is going smoothly. Could I be more thankful right now? I don’t think so.

Fig. 1

Laying Tile or SOD?

After experiencing laying tile I would have to say that I prefer SOD (of course the Sons of Dust type of SOD, not the grass covered dirt.) Yesterday I laid down the mortar for the tile in the entryway. It was kind of stressful. You are always under the pressure of time which I don’t like. I would rather take my time and do a meticulous job. With laying mortar you are under constant pressure not to lay too much of it down at a time or it will dry on the floor. But if you don’t get enough of it down you won’t finish the job before it dries in the bucket. Enough to make a man go crazy. But I did get through it.
The entry is curing as I speak and the next step is the grout. I mixed up a little too much mortar so I used it to start to fill the cracks between the bricks on the fireplace. Unfortunately, it started to ooze out of the spaces between the fake bricks. I guess I mixed it a little too thin.

After tiling I had practice with Sons of Dust. We had to take a new group photo because our last one didn’t have Wayne. It turned out looking like us so that was good. Then we played through some songs preparing for our next concert in Yakima, WA. All in all I came to the conclusion that I prefer SOD over Tile.

Tile

Well, I am about to learn how to install tile. Due to circumstances beyond my control I will no longer be paying someone to lay tile in our entry way and around our fireplace. Today we started preparing these areas for the tile. We started by spreading the concrete to fix the fireplace. Now it is level and ready for the tile to be put there but we still have to put backer board onto the brick for laying the tile there. We also cut the backer board for the entry, put mortar down and screwed the backer board to the sub-floor with the mortar under it. Now all of that needs to set. So we wait. The "We" I speak of is my Father-in-Law and my neighbor Doug. They were a tremendous help today. Kim spent part of the day at the house with us painting more molding. All in all it was a very long day of work and after finished it really seems like we didn't get that much done. Oh well.

Also I got a new toy today from Home Depot. Al and Caroline gave me a gift certificate for my birthday and I chose to get a Dremel Tool. I have wanted one for a very long time and today we needed a tool to cut the backer board because it is like concrete. So I used my new Dremel Tool with a diamond blade to cut the board to fit into the entry way. It cut the board like a knife through warm butter. Or is it a warm knife through butter. Or maybe the butter or knife don't need to be warm. You get the idea. It cut it beautifully. Well, more of the saga later. I must go eat dinner.

27 isn't old when comparing yourself to a rock

Today is my birthday. Well, actually it isn't (it is actually Aug. 8th) but thanks to the wonderful technology of the blog I can just set my date and time back to the 3rd and "Ta Da" it appears as if I wasn't really busy and remiss in my blogging duties. My birthday wasn't really that exciting this year. I got to work on my house a little bit, but as you may be able to tell by my previous entries that wasn't something out of the ordinary.

I am now 27 years old. Writing it down makes it even scarier than telling people. Do you realize that 27 is only 3 years from being 30 and that 30 is only 30 years from being 60. And I am just not ready to be 60. Okay so I may be blowing this a little out of proportion. But just last year at 26 I could still tell myself that I was in my mid 20's. But now...

On to a brighter note. I just found this neat link on the internet. It goes to Ancestry.com and they want you to buy something or other. I don't advise buying anything from them. Not because I have anything against them but I just think it is better to save your money for important things like pocket pc phones or chocolate. But for free you put your name in and you can find out it's origin. It is a neat tool. The first link is the blank form, the second is my name.

The Origin of Your Name

The origin of the name Micah Storer

I visited the Historychannel.com and checked out some of my birthday happenings on August 3rd and this is what I found out.

1492 Columbus sets sail from the Spanish port of Palos to begin his journey

1861 Last installment of Great Expectations by Charles Dickens is published

1926 Tony Bennett is born (His real name is Antonio Dominick Benedetto)

1940 Martin Sheen is born

1941 Martha Stewart is born

1941 Gasoline Rationing Begins in the Eastern US soon spreading to the rest of the country prior to the US entering World War II