Our story so far: An online real estate description of a church not far from my stepdaughter’s house piques our interest.

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It was Saturday, which is like a workaday Wednesday for a real estate agent, and Tyler found one willing to show us the Methodist church in an hour.

So on our way to having dinner with Tyler’s brother, we stopped by the church to have a look.

It was exactly what we were looking for.

The layout featured a 26-by-36-foot worship space with an overflow area that would be perfect for a kitchen and a main-floor master bedroom. Standing inside the serene sanctuary, bereft of typical church furnishings like pews, pulpits and altars, I could imagine a beautiful great room with a barnwood-beamed-ceiling. I knew immediately it was the right place for us. The only visual noise was the gaudy gold trim and a 12-foot-tall red velvet curtain. The potential to sparkle was there.

Upstairs of the overflow, we could have another bedroom and an office. And the wide-open full basement had 10-foot ceilings and three egresses suitable for more bedrooms and anything else we thought we needed.

The building, we found out later, had been built 126 years before, and it looked every bit as solid as a anything lovingly constructed in the 19^th century. The much newer roof was in great condition (except for the bell tower roof which the seller disclosed was “rooted,” which we took to mean was “rotted”). And the extra-large wooded lot left room for the garage of Tyler’s dreams. Even better than the high ceilings, this church was cheap. Cheap enough that we could buy it for cash and have enough money left over to fill the blank slate with features we loved.

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Tomorrow: How much cash and how much liquid courage is required to tackle a renovation project of this magnitude? Click here.