Last weekend, the closer it got to Monday, I knew it wasn’t going to be a normal week.

First of all, it was a week with no appointments outside the house. Lately it seems that every week has something: one of my writing groups meetings, a doctor appointment, something. No, wait, I did have one appointment. Monday night was supposed to be a dinner meeting for Life Group teachers at church. But the weekend forecasts for Monday said the day would start out icy. Sunday evening I was pretty sure it would be cancelled. Sure enough, it was. So a week with no appointments.

But I knew it would be a busy week, because, after much delay, contractors were scheduled to be at our house. One contractor was to replace our gutters. The other was to do remediation work on places on the house that have water damage. The house is about 38 years old. We’ve lived here for 22 of those years. We have done nothing much to it.

Last October we had a contractor replace the flooring and railings of our upper deck. That revealed some damage to the doors to the deck, more on the doorframes. We got to looking around and saw damage at another place, inside the house wall adjacent the deck. I also knew that some damage had occurred on the other side of the house, in a void space off the master bathroom.

I called out a mold detection specialist. He found a little mold, and a little moisture where there shouldn’t be any, but not any big problems. Still, it was enough things found that he recommended we get a remediation contractor to address three areas.

First, I checked with my homeowner’s insurance company. They sent a man out and he assessed it. A couple of days later I got the answer: long-term damage, not an insurable loss. Whatever this cost, I was going to have to pay for it myself. Off to find a contractor.

I had a little trouble finding a contractor who could do the work. One came by and assessed it, but I didn’t hear from him for another week. I finally reached out to him. He said he didn’t think he would be able to fit me in with his workload. I resisted saying, “It would have been nice if you’d called me a few days ago.”

Meanwhile, the guttering contractor was having trouble with his equipment. After many calls and texts to him, he pushed the schedule for his work out into January.

I found another remediation contractor, who came out to assess. I actually liked him better than the first. He saw things the first hadn’t, and was able to explain things to me in a way I understood. I told him he had the job. But it was now just a week or two before Christmas. He told me he should be able to start mid-January.

Let me fast forward through Christmas, our week-long trip to Lake Jackson, Texas, and two modest snow storms in the midst of a week of single digit temperatures. The guttering man gave me a date, had to move it a little due to weather. Now he is scheduled to be here Tuesday the 24th (I’m writing this on the 23rd).

Meanwhile, the remediation arrived here Monday the 22nd, a little late in the day due to morning icing. The three-man crew got to work on the damage area in the living room. The removed the build-in bookcase, removed obviously damaged sheetrock, and built a containment area. The next day they did the same in the master bathroom. In both cases, it appears they found the source of the water, and have a plan to stop it plus repair the areas. One will be fairly easy, the other difficult.

I’m not happy about the money I’m spending. But when a house approaches four decades old, I suppose you have to expect to spend some money to keep it in good repair. Yes, I hate to spend the money, but am happy to finally have answers and a good start on corrective measures. A good part of this is the plumber (who needs to repair one area), and a roofing inspector (to check out two areas) have been coordinated by the remediation contractor.

But the week has also been not normal was because of the writing I got done. On Monday the 22nd, I began work on Part 8 of my Bible study, A Walk Through Holy Week. My co-teacher and me will begin teaching this on Feb 4, and I wanted to get ahead of this. Each chapter is divided into seven sections. On a normal day for previous volumes, I have been completing an average of 1 1/2 sections per day.

But Monday, I wrote three sections in just my normal amount of writing time. Tuesday I completed another three sections. This is an amazing production. They need editing, of course, but that is a great start—even as I got the contractor started, occasionally interacted with him, and listened to his sawing and other activities. At the end of Tuesday, I was amazed at the progress. That will allow me to finish the chapter on Wednesday as well as get back to publishing the first volume in the series.

It’s now Tuesday evening, and I’m writing this for Friday posting. Hopefully I’ll find time to edit this before then to fill in what happened on Wednesday and Thursday. But even without that, I can confidently say it has not been a normal week.

And I guess that’s a good thing.

Update, Thursday evening: Work inside on the damaged areas has taken place every day. Our master bathroom is closed off from us, the counter removed, some of the cabinetry removed, and more holes cut in the diagonal wall. The good news is that the water damage appears mostly confined to the dead air space behind the diagonal wall. The floorboards there are rotted and will need to be replaced. They don’t yet know about the framing—some of the bottom framing may need to be replaced. But the lateral extent of the water damage is contained, and that’s a good thing.

So things are progressing, a little slowly perhaps, but progressing. I hope the plumber comes tomorrow to check out the leak source. The repair man is supposed to be here Monday to review everything and give an estimate for all the putting-it-back-together costs.

Is it money well-spent? Darned if I know. No, I suppose I do know it’s well spent. When we sell our house in our future downsizing, we will have an easier time of it.