Building Zone: Remodeling the old house

We are beginning with this post which describes the preparations made to the existing house and property before our family moved out to the village. The process of building the new house will begin in the next post.

Street side view of the front of the existing house.

Well, this is where it all began. In 2004, David was working with some of the teens and the youth leader from Krasnoyarsk Baptist Church to reach many of the villages in the surrounding areas of Krasnoyarsk. During this time, he and I were praying and asking the Lord where He would have us begin a new ministry. The Lord led David to begin praying about the village of Elita which is located approximately 30 minutes away from the city. At the same time, in order to obtain permanent residency permits, we were required to purchase either a house on a piece of property or an apartment. Apartments here at that time were much more expensive than most houses with land. We couldn't see the logic in putting that much money into an apartment, which here is really just a concrete box. The owner of a new apartment must purchase everything necessary to live in it including: electrical outlets and switches, light fixtures, toilets, kitchen cabinets, etc. So even if you rent an apartment, if the previous renter had to purchase all those things you can count of him taking it with him to his next apartment and leaving you with a concrete box!

One evening while David and the teens were witnessing and passing out Bibles in the village of Elita, he came across this great piece of land with a small house on it. This was the ideal situation for us as we needed there to be an existing house on the property in order to meet our document requirements.

Long story short, in the Spring of 2005 the documents were finalized and we were handed the keys to our little cabin near the woods.

The photo above shows the back side of our property which extends down to the trees! However, the sides are not yet marked as the back property of everyone on our street is used for planting. No fences made it easier for the tractors to plow the fields.

This is the back view of the house, greenhouse, and many barns within the fenced in area as it looked when we took ownership.

So, while we continued living in the city of Krasnoyarsk and working at the Krasnoyarsk Baptist Church, we would drive out to the village, Eilta, as often as possible in order to get the house and property ready for our family to move in. The first task was to tear down all unnecessary buildings which would hinder building a garage and house later.

The Jim Pranger family was living in Krasnoayrsk when we first purchased the house. Their son, James, was a great help to us during this time.

Once the weather started warming up we were able to put a coat of paint on this old house which had not been repainted since 1965, the year it was built.

If you could take a drive out to a Russian village you would notice the poor construction of most of them. During the time these houses were built, the materials used were taken from whatever factory or farm they could take them from. Our particular house was built of materials from the local pig farm and various other sources.

When we purchased the house there were no running water lines directly connected to the house which means that the bathroom facilities were the usual for a house in the village - an outhouse. Now the outhouses and even some bathrooms in nice restaurants are only holes in the floor with no toilet, even if they are done with nice tile they are still glorified "holes". We don't mind outhouses too terribly as long as they have a seat, so David built a seat as an "addition" to the outhouse. This addition was a huge blessing since we have little ones who get quite frightened being held over a hole!

This is the stove in the house and the only source of heat. It is located in the middle of the house which helps it warm two of the other rooms besides the kitchen (which is where we were standing when we took this picture.) We heat mostly with coal but some wood is also used.

As I mentioned before, we came out to the village as much as we could. That meant packing our lunch and eating in the house as we were working to redo the inside as well. We so enjoyed the fact that we had a little house of our own to sit by the stove in and eat together! We had to dress warm though because the house didn't have time to heat up some days since we were not living there constantly.

Beka, Timothy and Ryan enjoying lunch in the kitchen.

Below are a few "before" pictures of what the inside of the house looked like when we purchased it.

Another view of kitchen looking into what will be Rebekah's room.

The sink as it was used with the storage tank above for water and a bucket to catch the used water below.

This is the living room/our bedroom/future bathroom. Yes, all in one!

There is one more room which is more like a hallway that is off to the left if you are standing in the living/bed/bath room like in the above picture. This is where we squeezed the two boys in with their bunk beds. Good thing Daddy built them bunk beds before we moved out here!

We got busy on the inside work of stripping the old wallpaper. (The boys voted against leaving the pink flamingo wallpaper in their room.) It was definitely a challenge to get several layers off the walls since they were like the back side of peg board. It took the kids and I a while for this job to be completed.

Beka and Ryan playing/helping strip the wallpaper off in the main room.

Timothy really enjoyed sweeping all the paper to one corner.

One wall completely finished with the paint over wallpaper we had hung.

While the kids and I were working inside there was still much work to be done outside. David spent many weekends working on the major projects such as digging the septic tank, getting permits to run water lines to the house and putting in those water lines. Below are a few photos of those projects.

Digging for the septic tank.

Lowering the cement rings into the hole which will be the tank.

Men working to position the rings as they are lowered into the hole.

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Digging to run water lines to the house.

With much work accomplished, we moved into our little house in November of 2005. We were so excited to have a piece of land to call our own and looked forward to building a house more suitable for our family.

Following are a few "after" photos of our remodeling and moving in to take over the little house!