Building

What's been happening in Yeongwol

I started to peel off my gloves. As I had expected, they clung to my fingers and I had to slow down and tug them off one finger at a time. My kitchen work was done and I was eager to get to the building site to work with other people. I changed into work pants and shirt, grabbed safety glasses and earplugs in case I would need them, and walked over to the building just thirty meters away.

This summer, the first floor of an old pension building in Yeongwol Community was transformed into a beautiful four-bedroom apartment with a kitchenette and living room. Pre-renovation, we made the best of the space for storage, furniture in one room, guests in the next, and in the largest room, a pingpong table. (That, along with prehistoric paddles, was courtesy of the previous property owners.) The furniture was fine but the guests complained of an overpowering smell of mold. When we began demolition, we could see why. Behind a coat of pink paint, were layers of moldy wallpaper and equally tired sheetrock. Flimsy wooden framing (also rotting here and there) came down too. Fortunately, the artificial wood floor was useable so we removed the interlocking pieces and set them aside.

Here, I have to admit that my involvement was significantly less than others on the crew as I was occupied cooking lunch every day and providing drinks and snacks to keep the full-time builders going. I certainly did none of the brain work necessary to renovate a house from start to finish. This little essay skips over hours of work and head ache. It entirely disregards the Tower of Babel moments when the builders found their efforts frustrated by a language barrier that even google translate can’t help out with. It’s shockingly cursory, but you might be bored by more.

I will share my perspective. Besides general work site tidying and trash removal, I enjoyed learning how to frame a wall with 2x4s, how to measure in metric (that’s hard for Americans) and tell the guy at the saw what length to cut, how to use a laser level, and more. My favorite part was drilling holes and running conduit and wires. My worst part was stuffing the walls with fiberglass insulation —no one likes combining long sleeves, gloves, earplugs, safety glasses, mask, and hot, muggy weather. Fast forward through sheetrocking, plastering, sanding, painting, re-flooring, putting in trim —painstakingly varnished on site (I escaped that job)—door frames, doors, hanging the ceiling (putting in ceiling tiles is fun) and installing lights. The old kitchen cupboards were re-installed and some bits of trim artistically utilized to hide their age. I moved onto bleaching and scrubbing moldy windows as a house isn’t done until it’s clean.

Forty days after the beginning of the project, on a steamy sunny morning, Yeongwol community gathered, festively dressed for a ribbon-cutting ceremony. We sang a song about the man who built on sand and the one who built on rock, we thanked God for His protection and blessings, and we named the building “House of Peace”. The ribbon was cut amid cheers, and we entered. Old, middle-aged, and young, all appreciating hours’ worth of work. Instead of dust, whining saws, and paint fumes, the smell of coffee and freshly baked brownies, a kaleidoscope of bright colored clothing, and exclamations of “oooh, did you see this?” or “ah, look at that!”, filled the air.

I’ve lived in Korea for two years, first in Taebaek for six months and then in Yeongwol the rest of the time. For us who have finally found a property in Korea where we can live together as an embassy for God’s Kingdom together, the birth of a new apartment is more than just successful project-completion. It is a new home for one family now and many others in the future. It’s the first page of a new and unwritten book, bound with love.

Viewing pictures from start to finish.