By Roberta Miller

Last fall we realized that the staff was growing out of its office facilities and that we needed more rooms for adult classes and small groups. So the decision was made to convert the little house on the church’s property into office space. This will give the staff room to work and the present offices can be used for adult classrooms.

That didn’t sound like too big of a project to me so I told my husband Ray about it. Now Ray has had more experience with these kind of things than I have, so he knew it might include a bit more work than I was imagining. But after praying about it, we decided we could spearhead this project with him overseeing the construction and me overseeing the organizing and coordinating. Boy was I about to learn a lot about construction projects!

Now, after several months and with the help of a whole gang of volunteers, we are getting close to the end of this little adventure. What a ride! I think I’ll write a book about it. Here’s where I’ll start:

Things I have learned at the construction site:

• Everything takes two trips to the home center. Either you buy too much and have to take the extra back or you don’t buy enough and have to go back to get more.
• A lot of the time it will look like nothing is happening but something is.
• Nails and screws cost more than you would expect.
• Every piece of the project takes a different, special nail or screw.
• Even organized, careful people are not exempt from the rule that construction projects will take more time and money than expected.
• Building projects takes a lot of cleaning up time.
• Just because they can do it in a half hour on TV doesn’t mean you can do it in a week in real time.
• Doing projects with your spouse can be a tricky business, what with all that communication and compromise.

But we are almost done now. We are hopeful that we can hold the Open House for the new office by the end of June. We’ll announce it in the Sunday bulletin and the website when it is set. Hope you come and see our little project.