Our story so far: After nine months of elbow grease, days with the satisfaction of finishing a task at the old Methodist church we were turning into our home were becoming more frequent.

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Ah, yes, the laundry room. Oh, how I missed a nice clean laundry room I could call my own. When we lived in the RV, I used a different laundry room at every campground, some fresher smelling than others. Then when we lived in the rental house, I used the dank, scary cellar laundry room with an exterior entrance to do the laundry. I was tired of other people’s laundry rooms, tired of collecting quarters and tired of lugging bulging baskets of clothing from place to place.

My new laundry room was inside my walk-in closet. Talk about convenient—no hauling clean or dirty clothes anywhere but across the room. It would be so convenient even Tyler would be able to throw in a load of laundry once in a while!

Looking back through the mental file, we realized neither of us had ever purchased a brand new washer or dryer. We always inherited them in the houses we purchased, or we splurged on used models because as far as appliances go, washers and dryers were usually repairable. But with the laundry in the master closet, we wanted the appliances to look as good as they functioned, so we had determined we would splurge on new matching ones for the “chome.”

Shortly after assembling the cabinets, Tyler and I went shopping one day while we waited for the sanctuary floor to dry. We weren’t shopping specifically for appliances, but we had laundry on our minds, and we found a floor model dryer on sale for a price we couldn’t pass up. It had a big pink sign: “Display Blowout!” Plus, we could get an 11 percent rebate! So we invested in the matching washer, too. On top of everything else, we could save an $80 delivery fee if we hauled them ourselves. We tasked the painter with doing the closet first, persuaded the electrician to drop by with a GFI outlet, and a few days later, I fetched the washer and dryer.

As usual, we experienced a tiny hiccup during installation that required an emergency trip to the hardware store (actually, I made the first emergency trip and Tyler ran the second, ultimately successful errand for parts) but in no time, we had an operational laundry room. It was the first, fully functional room in the house.

Never before had it felt so satisfying to wash a load of clothes.

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Tomorrow: Chapter 34 opens. You might have noticed I never posted a picture of the finished sanctuary floor. Learn why here.