Broken things are a part of life. In a tough economy, I am always looking for the chance to take something that seems like there is no use for it and make it useful. From a young, age my parents instilled in me a passion to take something broken and make it better or restore it. My first car reminded me of the Flintstones because it had a hole in the floorboard that could almost allow you to run along with the car as you drove down the road. This was great for air conditioning but very bad on rainy days in Florida. This was one of my first restoration projects. With the help of my father’s guidance, sheet metal, pop-rivets, body putty, much zinc oxide paint and many power tools, we had the floorboard fixed. I have completed many other projects over the years and I feel it is time to share some of these lesson I learned with those who might not have had the person to guide them through a project or wished they had a manual to guide them.
You might ask from what experience do you have to guide me on a project? After being in the military and then being married to a military man I found the need at times to fix things without the help of my husband. There is a joke in the military that if they wanted you to have a family they would have issued you one. The military is a bit more sensitive than that, yet the times when your spouse is assigned on a temporary duty is not always convenient. So hurricanes come, dishwashers break, disposals get jammed and washing machine motors break – all on a tight budget and not always with lots a people around to help. So you do what you have to to get by. You learn and use what you have to get the job done.
I have also since lost my husband to cancer and have taken on the task of moving to a new state, buying a foreclosure house, and restoring it in a year with some help. I will be sharing stories from that as well as new projects as they come along. I am working on a concept of a new program called the Nehemiah House Project. It will be a program to provide temporary shared affordable housing that will give people a chance for a fresh start or a new beginning in their life. The residents will be a part of a training program that is designed to help them discover their life purpose and to give them the tools to get there.
So I invite you to join me in this adventure of home projects of all kinds and to help transform communities and lives, one house at a time and one life at a time. Transforming houses and people from rubble to restore!
Elizabeth Zinn 