Paying the Price: The Greenhouse Story

Several years ago our family talked and planned about building some type of greenhouse, and finally concluded that the best idea was to enclose a porch area in front of our family room, making a combination mudroom/greenhouse. We talked to a friend who worked in the county building inspections department, describing in vague, general terms our idea of putting up walls and a short roof extension to enclose this porch area. We had no final idea at the time of our plans, and our friend thought we probably didn’t need a permit for what we described. Just in case, he attempted to fax to me at my work a copy of the building code to examine for myself, but the fax didn’t come through successfully, and I didn’t follow up on it. We began work with the help of a contractor friend in February, 1997, pouring a concrete stem wall on top of the existing concrete patio. Work progressed very slowly, and the framing was not complete until the end of summer. We had two rooms, a concrete utility sink we set up to extend plumbing to someday, and as our rainy winter weather set in, we finally managed to get the walls and roof up. We put in two skylights and some RV vents in the roof, again with the help of our contractor friend, and finally got felt on so it was more or less waterproof.

During the last couple months of working on the project, I began to get uneasy in my mind about the legal aspects of this. We were planning to get electricity put in, and I knew that I would need a permit for that. I also knew that the original project had grown considerably, and I began to feel that a building permit might be required for this size of a project. The Lord began to talk to me about it—in my personal devotions, in sermons, and even in some of my evening visits with my children. I prayed until I saw that I needed to be sure that I was in obedience to the governing authorities. I could not find anything about following the requirements of the local building authority which would require me to disobey God. This certainly qualified as “Render[ing] to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s.”* (Mark 12:17) I committed my way to the Lord, willing to do whatever it took to be clear before Him, and called the county. I described the work, and asked if a permit were required for such a thing. The answer was a certain “yes,” and then it began to get interesting. I felt that I needed to turn myself in for violating the code and accept the consequences. I made several attempts, via phone and then in person, bringing a picture of the nearly complete project. Each person there showed no curiosity about what I had done, only making sure that I wasn’t working on building anything right then without a permit. My picture was handed back to me, barely glanced at. I was instructed to submit my building plans to a plans examiner, who would show me whether I needed any adjustments. It became evident that everyone I was encountering was trying to avoid getting me in trouble, and I found it to continue to be true throughout the entire process that they wanted to help me. So I submitted, as plans, the actual layout of what I had done, and there were four significant items not meeting code, including the foundation itself. The Lord began to show me that this was going to be a large spiritual lesson for me, in paying whatever price necessary to be right with the Lord, and in getting a taste of how much this could cost some people.

The first inspection wasn’t due for six months, so I had time to wait for fair weather to begin the demolition work. There is something that breaks inside a man (I believe the word for it is “pride”) when he has to destroy something he has labored a great deal over, and perhaps for some, the first project of any type has a sentimental attachment as well. There seemed to be quite a bit of snapping going on inside of me as I took apart the structure, salvaging what I could to reuse. At the same time I found inside myself a great sense of God’s approval.

The foundation needed to be much more substantial than I had realized. I needed to dig down over three times the depth of the original concrete slab, and the practical experience of going through the labor and time necessary to build a foundation meeting standard brought home to me the extreme importance of building my spiritual foundation “according to code” more than almost anything else could.

The plumbing was much more involved than I had realized as well, and I hired a plumber for that portion of the project. Once the “under the slab” plumbing work was complete, we did our concrete work in two stages. The first was for the foundation, and the second for the stemwall. The stemwall we designed higher than the original, based on our experiences with the first. In both “pours” we encountered unexpected challenges which we eventually overcame. The framing work went fairly quickly, and I built it with more care and accuracy the second time, using better materials as well. We also found from our earlier experience that it was better to have a single room instead of two. It was February, 1999, before I was completing my roof, and the following summer before we completed all our trim work.

The completed structure cost several thousand more dollars than originally planned, but it was better built, better suited to our purposes, and my conscience was clear. It was worth the price in time, money and humility for a clear conscience alone. It is always worth the price for a clear conscience, whether you have to completely tear out what you’ve “built” into your life or not. When we submit ourselves to the Lord, He supplies the grace for whatever trials and tribulations we must go through to obey Him. I’m grateful for the Lord’s goodness to me, and for the lessons in humility, patience and obedience that the Lord taught me with our greenhouse.

In His service,
A brother in Christ