Our story so far: We took steps to be careful as we demoed the interior of the old Methodist church, including hiring a structural engineer to look at the building’s support system and prescribe a fix.

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In the space of about eight hours over two days, Tyler and his help, Reroofer, got the header constructed and put in place, and they reconstructed the choir loft wall (I helped by renting a couple of heavy-duty adjustable floor jack posts and transporting them to the church—I’m handy like that). When they jacked up the floor, the wood gave a great creak and wail, but it cooperated. The second floor was suddenly a lot more level and the opening where the kitchen would be constructed was no longer saggy.

With that task completed, I could put to bed my nightmares of bathing in the upstairs tub—me in my birthday suit relaxing among a cloud of bubbles and a hundred gallons of water—and falling through the ceiling. We were structurally sound now. But we still had to demolish the 20-foot sanctuary ceiling without killing our project foreman.

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Tomorrow: Chapter 15 concludes with a solution to the sanctuary ceiling problem. Read it here.