Quality - Renovation Raiders Experience

What level of quality are the Renovation Raiders rooms put together? This is a valid question and I’ve answered it a lot to family & friends because of the recent renovation through the show.

Sometime people ask questions out of curiosity, sometimes they ask questions or make comments from fear, anger or doubt. A person must use some serious inner integrity to recognize where their questions or comments are coming from. For anyone just curious from their heart, I'm happy to share ...

The Job: My experience is my truth. In my experience everyone who works on this show truly cares about the final product and they are artists at what they do. It is not “just for TV”. The production company for this particular show has integrity and my house was loved and taken care of very well during my whole experience. In our instance the surprise was for my husband. They were very detailed in asking me what my husband would like the room to look like. Their concern was never about what they wanted it to look like. The focus of the whole crew was on making my husband (and therefore me) happy with the changes that were to take place. What did we dream of? Someplace relaxing and peaceful that brought in lots of earthy/natural elements. They did such an amazing job and not only was my husband completely in shock when we came home from dinner, but so was I (and I knew that the renovation was going to occur)!

Relaxing by our new fireplace! It gets used a ton. None of the
decorative wood on the sides gets burned of course, and also - no bugs ;)

The Details: In the end were there details that my husband and I will finish ourselves? Of course! Little things that we are glad to do, because putting the finishing touches on a job that huge sealed the deal and made it even more ours! (Plus they left all the extra supplies for us in case we wanted to touch up paint, etc.). Not only did we not have to pay for anything done in our house (as advertised on the production company website), but the work the Raiders do is carefully crafted and well thought out with the homeowners in mind. It is mind blowing. 

Inspectors are on site and everything is up to – or surpasses code. How do I know this? Because on June 27th the day our show aired, a city inspector showed up at our house (she was walking around our yard approving the final inspection for a new roof we had installed), it just so happened that she was the inspector that was at our house the night the Raiders remodeled. I invited her in and she told me all about her experience watching the Renovation Raiders do their work on the night of the remodel. It was so cool to hear the story from her view point. She said Amy was a wonder woman, digging in and helping out with every aspect of the remodel. She said it was like a perfectly choreographed dance, it was the coolest thing she had seen in her whole life, and that everything they did exceeded the city's code regulations. Very cool to hear.



7 months after the remodel, the inspector posing under the new header,
which allowed our load bearing wall to be removed.

The Good Life: The remodel is more beautiful than anything we could have done ourselves and seven months later we couldn't be more happy or grateful for this Miraculous Gift!

Want to see the full episode? It's now free online HERE!

Life is beautiful: Our little buddies enjoying their new spot in front of the window.

The Original House Miracle

I've been spending lots of time contemplating Miracles. The next one that is being recalled to share involves the place I call home (seems I'm going through a "home" phase when it comes to Miracles). It's being brought to my attention that my Renovation Raiders Miracle was not the first major miracle involving my house. 

The Contemplation:
I'm realizing that since I was a little girl I always wanted a nice, clean, organized house to call home. The memory that keeps coming to me is that as a tiny little girl I would get off the school bus and walk towards our neighbors house just in case any of the children on the bus were watching. I was hoping that they would think I lived in the nice red rambler next door instead of the paint chipping, kind of falling apart house that some might consider a cabin (in need of some love and care). Of course everyone knew what house I came from, but my little tiny mind felt better just thinking that someone, anyone, on the bus might think I belonged in that one story rambler with pretty bright red paint. I guess my prayers to God about wanting a nice house started earlier than I let myself remember.

The Miracle:
My second house miracle is short... but once again involves the internet, and winning things. I see a theme starting here.

I love a local magazine called Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine. Before the economic downturn in the US companies would have contests to give away their products as promotions. One random day I was called to go to the website of my favorite local magazine (note: no angel voices this time, but back then my antenna had foggy reception).

Here's the website as you would see it today:
http://mspmag.com/Contests-And-Promotions/


Back then they were giving away a ton of free Christmas gifts (today the economy still hasn't recovered enough for companies to warrant promotions like they did back then). This particular promotion was titled, "What's on your Christmas List", basically all I had to do was go down a checklist they had set up and click on anything that I would like to win and get from Santa. Easy enough, right? So, out of a list of 25-40 things ranging from dinners to local restaurants, vacations to exotic places, and gift certificates to boutiques I chose very carefully. I didn't want to click on too many items because I thought it would take away my chances of getting what I really wanted - new Cambria counter tops for my kitchen. What are Cambria counter tops you ask? Well here's a link to view some of their fine products:

http://www.cambriausa.com/en/designs/photos-and-videos/

As you can see, they are very high quality items and I felt I would be very lucky to have such an amazing gift in my kitchen.

I forgot about the contest until a few months later when I received a phone call. Turns out the Divine wanted me to have nice kitchen counter tops! Wow. This is one lucky girl!

I could not see putting such nice new counter tops on the 1951 cabinets that were currently in the kitchen. A project started and the whole kitchen was going to get a makeover.  This too is a miracle, because there was no budget for a new kitchen but somehow things just fell into place.

The Lesson:
I can see now how wishes from when I was 8yrs. old were being put in a bank. A big God bank. When do withdrawals happen? I have no idea, but I'm seeing how Gratitude is like knowing the account number and password. That's all for now.





Oh, want to see some photos of the kitchen God gave me? .... The photos are not the best. I almost didn't get "before" photos at all, and took them after the demo started so please excuse the mess ;) however, I think you can get the idea of the transformation!

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER