Monica Lee is the author of four memoirs/autobiographical fiction books: her latest is Church Sweet Home: A Renovation to Warm the Soul. Also available: Truth, Dare, Double Dare, Promise or Repeat: On Finding the Meaning of "Like" in 1982, How to Look Hot & Feel Amazing in Your 40s: The 21-Day Age-Defying Diet, Exercise & Everything Makeover Plan and The Percussionist's Wife.
Our story so far: While the mechanicals were being installed in the old Methodist church we were turning into our home, my husband Tyler and I were buying things to outfit the house. Chapter 18 continues…
# # #
Fans were a bone of contention in our house. Tyler loved the white noise and breeze created by ceiling fans, but I preferred the still air often accused of being more like that found in, say, a coffin. But I conceded the sanctuary probably needed fans in order to move air around the twenty-foot high space.
The church came with standard functional ceiling fans, but Tyler wanted bigger ones, more along the lines of jet engine turbines. The ones he found, I loved for the design. The blades were sleek. The finish was described as “distressed koa with tea stain finish” (koa is a large Hawaiian forest tree), and it closely matched the color of the beams we planned for the ceiling.
Here’s how the box says our fan will look.
With five 62-inch blades, one fan would move 8,200 cubic feet of air per minute. Tyler bought two. (Drawing on a little tenth-grade geometry, I figured the sanctuary had a volume of 16,400 cubic feet, so both fans together would move all the air in one minute; Tyler would be in heaven.)
As for a deal, he saved $100 off retail when he located one for sale online in an open box.
Both fans arrived within days of each other and, like our other deals, they went to the rental unit to await installation.
# # #
Tomorrow: We find a pair of leaded glass windows. Read about it here.
Our story so far: The old Methodist church we were turning into a home came only with a toilet, not even a sink. To outfit the place, we planned four bathrooms, and that meant a lot of shopping for vanities.
# # #
Earlier, long before we closed on the church, Tyler got an amazing deal on a modern-looking faucet I was trying to work into my vision for the powder room vanity, but I didn’t think it was tall enough for a vessel sink, and I wasn’t sure if I would have the time and energy to repurpose another piece of furniture for an undermount sink.
I was stymied.
In the way the universe delivers what one needs exactly when one needs it, Tyler and I visited a nearby plumbing wholesaler not long after we chose a plumber to select fixtures for the master bathroom.
All it needs is lighting.
On display was a white vanity, the ensemble complete from head to toe with the countertop, brand name faucet and even the mirror. It was distinctive in its indistinctiveness; it would look dynamite against an accent wall, maybe an accent wall of reclaimed wood from a church, for instance. And it was on sale, for 70 percent off. I pulled Tyler’s tape measure out of his jacket pocket.
“It’s 37 inches wide,” I said. “Didn’t we just build the powder room to be 37 inches wide?”
Sure enough, we did.
While we were there, we bought power-flushing toilets for all three bathrooms.
Our story so far: I was stressed out about bathroom vanities for the church. When we finally chose a plumber, he needed to know where to rough in the vanity faucets, and to determine that, we needed three vanities quickly. I checked the master bathroom vanity off the list by investing in online cabinets.
# # #
We scored vanity Number Two for the upstairs bathroom at a second-hand store.
My brother-in-law had once turned a dresser into a vanity for a basement bathroom, and I loved the combination of an old piece of furniture with a sleek stone countertop. I had also once converted an ugly old dresser into a beautiful credenza with several coats of paint. I couldn’t use this idea in the master bathroom because it would have been impossible to find a eleven-foot-long piece of furniture. Likewise, the wall assigned to the upstairs bathroom vanity was eight feet long—it would take a very special piece of furniture to fill that space.
One Saturday, after spending hundreds of dollars on lumber and loading it into our truck, Tyler and I arrived for a lunch date a few minutes early, so we explored the nearby second-hand store. We couldn’t pass one without looking for something we might need for the old church, and here we found not one piece of furniture but two.
They’re a little (a lot) beat up, but I see potential.The mirrors, unattached.
The first dresser was the ideal height for a vanity with an undermount sink. Tyler confirmed it would work. It even came with a mirror. But it was only about forty inches wide. The second, taller dresser also came with a mirror; it was about thirty inches wide.
Together, they were about twenty-five inches short of the expanse we needed to fill.
But the price was right—$185 for the pair.
Maybe the wood-grain veneer on the top drawers could be saved?
Oh, they were beat up, all right. The shorter dresser has a terrible stain on the front, and the taller one was missing veneer, but I intended to paint it all anyway. Some of the intact veneer had a beautiful wood grain look I thought I might be able to preserve by painting around it. The mirrors themselves were in good condition, but the frames needed paint, too.
As I stood in front of them debating whether the work required to redeem these dressers was worth it, the proprietress sensed my interest and struck up a conversation.
“Oh, that would make a beautiful vanity,” she said, describing how she’d turned other pieces of furniture into vanities. “And they’re 75 percent off today.”
The frugal Midwesterner in me couldn’t pass up a deal that good. “Well, I could throw them away for that price,” I said.
The proprietress wrinkled her nose. “Oh, you wouldn’t want to do that.”
“I mean I can’t pass up such a good deal,” I said. “But what do you think I could put between them to fill the space? A basket maybe?”
“Hmm, let me think about that,” the proprietress said.
More chicken scratch, this time on the back of a checkbook.
I went to lunch and chewed on this dilemma. I mean, I had to figure out how to make the $46.25 deal work. I couldn’t pass this up. And then suddenly I knew: If I removed the mirror from the taller vanity, it would fit perfectly under the sloping eave on the second-story, and then I could create a little make-up space—complete with mirror and stone to match the top of the sinked vanity—between the two pieces of furniture.
I returned to the second-hand store with a less money than we paid for lunch and asked the proprietress to hold them until we could return with an empty truck. A few days later, we added the beat-up dressers to the rental unit. At some point in the near future, the HVAC guys would be done haunting the basement so I could do some painting.
This left the guest half-bath, aka the powder room. The vanity in there would be most used by guests, so the pressure was on.
# # #
Tomorrow: Vanity Number Three wasn’t as good a deal as Vanity Number Two, but it still was meant to be. Read about it here.
Our story so far: We looked for deals as we outfitted the old Methodist church we were turning into a home.
# # #
I suppose it’s called a vanity because one admires oneself in a vanity mirror. But Carly Simon might say a vanity earned its name because of its bad attitude. A vanity thinks the bathroom is all about it—it is, after all, the defining architectural design element and center of attention of a well-appointed lavatory.
I was a fan, however deadly the offense, nodding along with Al Pacino in “The Devil’s Advocate when he said “Vanity is my favorite sin.” From the lights and the mirrors to the cabinets and sinks, I couldn’t wait to find vanities for the four bathrooms in the church that sent messages like “Guests are valued here” and “This is special place.”
Special, naturally, came with a price. I coveted Robern medicine cabinets—sleek ones with built-in lighting, defoggers and stereo systems—but when I priced one in the four-figure range, the look on my face was anything but flattering.
Back to planet earth where people spend only twenty minutes in a day in front of the bathroom mirror. “Vanity can easily overtake wisdom,” musician Julian Casablancas once said. “It usually overtakes common sense.” I reminded myself that we weren’t building a house in a posh suburb or a gentrified downtown locale. We were restoring a century-old church in a small town. We could not be tempted by top-end accessories or we would never recoup our investment.
So then I got stressed out about our bathroom vanities. We needed four of them, three of them quickly. The basement vanity could be determined later, when we finished the basement (Phase, oh, Eight or so). But when we finally chose a plumber, he needed to know where to rough in the vanity faucets, and to determine that, we needed vanities.
I had a good idea of what I wanted for the master vanity, thanks to hours on Pinterest. I wanted double sinks along a 130-inch expanse (go big or go home, remember). Custom or semi-custom cabinets would probably be required in order to get matching cabinets for each sink.
Here’s a rendition of our master bath vanity. (On HGTV, you get high-end graphics to prophesy the renovation plans; on Church Sweet Home, you get chicken scratch on legal pads.)
After pricing custom cabinets (with price tags similarly deflating as luxury medicine cabinets), we decided to purchase standard-dimension cabinets online. Tyler had the skills to install them, and we could incorporate those little drawers that were of little use in the display kitchen. Positioned lower in a bathroom vanity, they could house all kinds of little hygiene odds and ends. At first, I wanted light-colored upper cabinets (to go with the drawers) and navy blue lowers, but after incorporating navy blue into my beverage bar design, we went with dark brown lowers.
After committing to new cabinets for the master bath, we sought to find ways to save money on vanities for the powder room and upstairs bathroom.
Our story so far: We were in the building and buying phase of converting an old Methodist church into a home. And picking up stuff for free.
# # #
After we sprang for the rental unit, we justified buying things when the price merited it because we could store them away from the commotion of the church.
One morning when we were on our way to breakfast, eagle-eyed Tyler spied a raft of furniture on the boulevard a block from our rental house. We drove by slowly and stopped—the beat-up headboard looked promising.
This probably looks very familiar to one of my neighbors.
The low-profile of the headboard would be perfect on the bed we planned upstairs, where the ceilings sloped. It was solid wood, not veneer. It would need paint, but the iron work added style. And it came with a footboard. And it was free!
We loaded it into the pickup, and dropped it off at the rental unit. Celebrated not with a toast, but with toast. And eggs.
# # #
Tomorrow: Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. Read about it here.
Our story so far: My husband, an expert at stalking Craig’s List for another man’s trash, found a display kitchen that would fit our space in the old Methodist church just right if we could find appliances in the right sizes and finish.
# # #
Tyler went to work without delay looking for a 36-inch-wide used range. We’d decided we wanted a new refrigerator, but we could live with a used stove. Craig’s List came through for us right away. Tyler found a “luxury” Jenn-Air six-burner convection oven in stainless steel (our finish of choice). And it was only eight years old.
As with the castle door deal, we drove ninety minutes south, this time in lightly falling snow. We arrived at an enormous house set among several blocks of bungalows. The seller told us he added a second story when he remodeled his entire house, and now he was replacing his luxury stove with a countertop cook-top and set of double ovens.
Though he looks like a car that got stripped while parked in the ghetto, our stove takes a chill while awaiting reassembly in our rental unit (a stove is a he, right?).
We removed the door, knobs and burners for transport, and the seller and two young men who looked like they’d rather be playing Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto helped us load the range into our beat-up pickup truck. We drove straight to the rental unit we’d secured a few days earlier (because our five-thousand-square-foot church wasn’t big enough, I guess), and our new appliance became the first resident—on a short-term basis, we hoped.
Stove, check.
# # #
Tomorrow: Early-morning dumpster diving yields rewards. Read about it here.
Our story so far: We scored an amazing Craig’s List deal on a display kitchen that, with a little improvisation, would fit perfectly in the church we were converting into a home.
# # #
Never used. And half price!
And we wheedled the sellers out of the stainless steel two-drawer dishwasher on display with the cabinets for half price. It was a two-drawer dishwasher designed for empty nesters; one could wash a few dishes in one drawer (which saved precious water) or a lot of dishes in both drawers. We also bought the bar stools around the island for $75 each. We were thrilled.
Comfy. And affordable!
# # #
Tomorrow: Kitchen appliance Number Two, check. Read about it here.
Our story so far: Tyler located a display model kitchen on Craig’s List that matched the style we were looking for inside the church we were turning into our home.
# # #
The Craig’s List kitchen wasn’t perfect, but it was darn close. And the price? We were buying the whole kit and caboodle for about 25 percent of the retail cost of the cabinets alone. Coincidentally, the remodeling firm had just sold a different display kitchen to another woman who was renovating a church into a home. It was a trend.
But what would we have to jerry-rig?
A few things.
We needed another six inches in width, which we could get with a bigger stove and vent. And those drawers were nonfunctional.
We’d need to find a 36-inch wide stove in order to fill the back wall of our kitchen space which was six inches wider than the display. But we already had an extra wide stove vent we could switch out with the display vent.
These glass-fronted doors could flank the stove vent, in place of the little drawers and bookshelves.
And the little drawers in the upper cabinets—supremely bad design. Even I, a 5-foot-10 woman, could not see inside the top drawers. Those would have to be replaced, but I had an idea we could reuse the little drawers in the master bath vanity. To fill the spaces next to the stove, we could use the glass-fronted doors on the hutch at the end of the island.
The tongue of our island stuck out about thirteen inches too far.
The tongue of the island was a bit too long for our space. We would need to have that shortened so it wouldn’t stick out from beneath our balcony. We decided to invest in having the countertop professionally disassembled, moved and reassembled. The countertop experts could shorten the tongue and smooth the other rough edges as part of the move.
The wine rack would have to go on the other end of the counter. (Man, that granite has a polish to it, dontcha think?)
And we’d have to flip the lower cabinets on either side of the sink so the wine rack would be on the side nearest the beverage bar.
We’d also have to invest in a new matching cabinet above the refrigerator and a few doors for the island so we could use it for storage. While we were adding, we could get coordinating cabinets for the beverage bar.
Even with the changes, we were scoring a budget-saving deal on a high quality kitchen.
# # #
Tomorrow: Kitchen appliance Number One, check. Read about it here.
Our story so far: While building inside the 126-year-old Methodist church we were renovating into a home, we were also buying—as often as possible, from Craig’s List and other discount outlets.
# # #
Tyler, the Craig’s List stalker, found a set of kitchen cabinets on sale. They appeared to be custom-painted cabinets in the perfect color of cream we had tried and failed at least once to locate.
He placed a call to the seller and found out someone had already expressed an interest. We were second in line, but if you’ve ever interacted with Craig’s List sellers, you know that could mean you’re second in line behind a serious buyer, so you’ll never hear from the seller, or it could mean you’re second in line but the seller has already told four people that, or it could mean the seller is too meek to tell you it’s already sold, or it could mean the seller is just plain cruel and they’re not really selling anything.
In any case, we wrote it off. “Another one will come up,” Tyler said. He was nothing if not confident.
Lo and behold, the seller called about a week later. “Still interested?”
“You bet. We’ll be there tomorrow.”
Tyler and I spent the next couple hours studying the ad and measuring the space where we intended to put the kitchen, down to the half inch.
We drove the next morning to the seller’s location, the showroom of a remodeling company only an hour away from the church. The kitchen had only ever been on display, never in actual use. It came complete with the kitchen sink and thousands of dollars worth of granite countertop. The ad offered the countertop for free as long as we moved it at our own risk and expense.
Our dream kitchen in the showroom.Here you can see the triple sink in the granite countertop.
The granite countertop looked brownish black in the pictures. I had my heart set on a light-colored Quartz countertop, but if we could get a dark granite countertop for free? Well, call me fickle then. I would be in love with dark granite.
When we saw it in person and ran our hands across the grayish-black countertop (even better), fantasized about washing dishes in the triple sink (or whatever one does with a triple sink), and opened and soft-closed the dovetail-jointed drawers, our hearts melted.
# # #
Tomorrow: What’s it gonna take to make this kitchen work inside the church? Read about it here.
Our story so far: We had entered the construction phase of our church conversion project.
# # #
Chapter 18
Selling something on Craig’s List can be a pain in the neck. There’s the picture taking and ad writing that take some time, but the real irritation are the looky-loos. Potential buyers who ask a bunch of arcane questions about the dimensions or color or history and after you’ve answered, they disappear into the ether. Or the ones who send text messages riddled with spelling errors at 11 p.m. or 5 a.m. Or the jerks who show up and dicker over ten bucks.
But Craig’s List is an amazing marketplace full of great deals and unique goods for buyers.
Ye olde Pace Arrow, how I miss thee
We were buyers, and Tyler was an authority. Not too many years before, Tyler turned a $500 gift into an RV we used for several years to travel the country. He bought and repaired increasingly valuable vehicles until he scored a 1983 Pace Arrow from a retiree in what was now our home state of Wisconsin. After we put thousands of miles on the 454-cubic-inch, 375-horsepower engine, he sold the old turd for a profit.
Now, when we needed nearly everything to renovate the old church, Tyler fired up his CSmart app to shop all Craig’s List listings for Milwaukee, Madison, Rockford and Chicago at the same time.
His first find was the magnificent castle doors described in Chapter 9.
His next conquest: A full kitchen.
# # #
Tomorrow: A look at our new(ish) kitchen. See it here.
Church Sweet Home 