A day in the life of an inexpert rehabber

March 7, 2018March 8, 2018 Monica Lee3 Comments

Our story so far: We built walls and hired a plumber as we made progress renovating a 126-year-old Methodist church into our home.

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Chapter 17

How does a member of the construction crew who doesn’t know anything about construction contribute during a renovation project of this magnitude?

Three ways: Odd jobs, errands and laundry.

Laundry probably doesn’t need much explanation. The clothes we wore were often dusty and sweaty by the end of a day, and someone had to wash them. That someone was me.

As for an odd job, I was uniquely suited to measure for the faux beam order Tyler wanted to place. Uniquely suited because I still had my own, natural-born knees and was light enough to climb the scaffolding in the great room.

scaffolding high — The scaffolding looked a lot more appealing from the bottom, I’m not gonna lie.

Fifteen feet off the ground I realized I’d forgotten the tape measure. I was seated on the platform, sweating and nauseated, and now I had to put my hands in the air to catch a moving tape measure.

I did not catch it. Tyler had good enough aim to land it on the platform. But I still had to measure for the beams. Above. My. Head.

Let’ just say we got the measurements down to the foot, not the inch. And I got back on the ground in one piece.

Odd jobs also included communications. Print this quote. Find this business card. Track down this phone number. Respond to the salesman working up a quote about his proposed shower base color.

Also, opening mail. Nearly every day, some guy from FedEx, UPS or USPS stopped by with a package, which would have to be opened to determine the contents and then, if required urgently, delivered to the church. And someone had to crush cardboard boxes (or they’d never all fit in the recycling bin).

One day, the guy from Brown left an enormous box on our front step. By the time I got the door open, Brown was already in his truck.

“Hey, the box is open!”

“You can accept or reject. What do you want to do?”

“Um, I’m pretty sure these are one-of-a-kind leaded glass windows. They’re fragile.”

“Accept or reject? The box opened when I picked it up.”

“Did you drop it?”

“Accept or reject, that’s all I can do.”

“I guess I’ll have to see when I open them.”

Brown drove off.

Disgusted, I carefully dragged the enormous package into the rental house, and called Tyler to inform him.

“Well, open them to find out if they’re broken.”

damaged leaded glass — The box was labeled fragile but it should have been labeled “one-of-a-kind leaded glass windows inside–do not drop, ram, tip or stack haphazardly.” We paid $118 for shipping what was essentially decorative trash when we received it.

Twenty minutes and five layers of cardboard, plastic, foam, bubble wrap and tape later, I still couldn’t get a good enough look at the windows Tyler had found on Craig’s List to determine if they were broken. (Two days later, Tyler dove deeper and determined they were. One of a kind and broken.)

And errands. I got very good at errands. If I could work Starbucks into the route, I did it. Drop off another load of scrap metal? Yes. Find a glass retailer who could do replacement glass for the light fixtures? Sure, I’ll bring him the light fixtures to see if he could do it. Need some tile samples for the shower? Home Depot, here I come.

Meanwhile, Tyler was calling the HVAC guys to get an ETA (again), building walls for the refrigerator and the pot filler behind the stove, directing St. Johnny to pick up the yard, burning brush and checking over the plumber’s work.

We made a good team.

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Chapter 18: We weren’t only building. We were buying, too. Read it here.

Sawing wood is what she was intended for

March 6, 2018March 7, 2018 Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: We were deep into the construction phase of converting a 126-year-old church into our dream home.

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By now, Tyler had finished constructing the walls on the main floor and upstairs. We were ready to think about the second floor ceiling.

Unlike the main floor’s drywalled ceiling decorated with beams, we chose something with a bit more farmhouse flavor for the upstairs, which would house a bathroom, bedroom and my office: Pickled, planked plywood.

We’d seen Tyler’s cousin’s husband turn plain old plywood into beautiful planked flooring when we were camped in their yard (was that only last year?), and we thought we could copy the idea on our ceiling.

Pickling and installing the ceiling was a multi-step process that began with a good day’s work ripping boards on the table saw. Tyler chose to do this with me on an otherwise quiet Saturday.

The table saw is not my favorite piece of equipment since it carried with it the threat of cutting off one’s digits. But the boards were too big for Tyler to cut straight without help, so the foreman tagged me as his crew.

I caught on quickly when to push, when to pull and when to catch newly sawn pieces of lumber, but let me tell you, 20 pieces of plywood is a lot of 5.75-inch planks. And a half a bagel for breakfast wasn’t enough to fuel the manual labor. We took a couple of water breaks, but by the end, my self-talk sounded like this (if you could have heard it over the whine of the saw):

“Think about sawing, not about lunch. Don’t let Tyler’s fingers get cut. Seventeen planks to go. Who left the front door open? Concentrate on the saw. Tyler, be careful. Don’t slip in the sawdust. Don’t pull too fast. Watch Tyler’s fingers. Sixteen planks to go. Do I want tacos or a bratwurst for lunch? Don’t think about lunch. Step over the pile of sawdust. Watch Tyler’s fingers. Is that fifteen or fourteen? Keep the plank straight. Don’t push too hard. Watch Tyler’s fingers.”

Finally, the stacks of plywood were piles of planks.

ceiling planks — Stacks of planks. With the table saw looming in the shadows.

We still had days of sanding and painting and nailing ahead of us before we’d have a finished ceiling, but Step One was complete and so were Tyler’s hands.

Time for lunch.

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Today’s headline comes from Mark Twain: “Write without pay until someone offers pay. If nobody offers within three years, the candidate may look upon this as a sign that sawing wood is what he was intended for.”

Tomorrow: Chapter 17 opens with a day in the life of an inexpert renovator. Read about it here.

Shall we dance?

March 5, 2018November 25, 2018 Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: We stood knee-deep in mechanicals at the old Methodist church we were turning into a home. I nicknamed our plumber Glimfeather because he was a night owl who was impressively productive after dark. But he made frequent appearances during the day, too.

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One day when I happened by the church on the way to the post office, I witnessed the strange dance plumbers and HVAC guys must do often on custom projects.

Because the structure in which he was working was a 126-year-old church, Glimfeather was having to figure out how to vent the kitchen sink drain; it had something to do with drain clogs (or preventing them, I didn’t understand the details). The sink was situated in the middle of our kitchen island in the middle of our sanctuary (Tyler took issue with my choice of the word “middle” as the sink was closer to one side than the other of the sanctuary, but suffice it to say, it was not on the edge of it). This meant it was draining and venting into the middle of our basement, and Glimfeather needed to figure where to run the pipes while avoiding the beams which supported, well, pretty much the entire structure.

Meanwhile, the HVAC guy was replacing the ductwork, much of which ran along the ceiling of the basement. His work, which included more modern, streamlined ducts than had been in the church originally (or, at least since it was heated with gas forced air), required all new routing to accommodate the new rooms we constructed.

But the kitchen sink drain threatened to muck it all up.

where plumber and hvac danced — Where the plumber and the HVAC guy danced: You can see how the drain pipe intersects with the path of the duct.

So Tyler, Glimfeather and the HVAC guy problem-solved out loud, tossing out several alternatives that each created their own problems. Tyler was adamant about maintaining the sanctity of his beams while Glimfeather was ruffled about the angle of his pipes. The HVAC guy mostly nodded and shrugged.

I literally bit my tongue because A) I knew nothing about sink vents or drains, B) I knew nothing about cold-air returns and C) no one was looking at me for direction; they were looking at Tyler. All I could think about was how stupid I had been to dream about a sink in the middle of the kitchen island and how badly I didn’t want to lose this brilliant concept. And also? I didn’t want such low ceilings in the basement that I felt claustrophobic.

Finally, the HVAC guy suggested maybe his fabricator could create a custom piece of ductwork to accommodate the drain.

Key word: Custom.

Custom, if you didn’t already know, means expensive in the renovation world. As you may recall, the new standard ductwork throughout the church was not in the Tequila Budget let alone custom ductwork.

But anything is possible if you’re willing to pay for it.

In retrospect, I was surprised the dance didn’t culminate in this sooner.

Of course, Tyler who sensed my agitation by the way I was pacing the basement silent but brooding, OK’ed the custom ductwork.

My kitchen design and basement airiness were saved.

For about the hundredth time, I was glad Tyler knew what he was doing and was able to linger at the church so he could referee these negotiations.

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Tomorrow: Is a table saw scarier when you’re hungry? Read about it here.

The best ideas come in the dead of night

March 4, 2018March 5, 2018 Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: My husband Tyler and I bought a 126-year-old Methodist church to turn into our dream home.

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We had endured weeks of dirt, dust and debris during the demolition phase of the project, and when we began building walls, I realized we had weeks of sawdust ahead of us, but I believed we were done with the dirtiest of dust.

Until the plumber started work.

Following months of cat herding, Tyler collected bids from no fewer than six plumbers. When Plumber Number Six presented his hand-written bid with the flourish of enthusiasm for our project, it seemed our search was over. “I like him,” Tyler said to me as the potential plumber left the room to check on some detail or another. “You?”

I smiled and nodded. This prospect spoke with reassuring authority, asked questions that indicated he had a lot of experience, and his hand-written quote signaled we weren’t going to be paying for a lot of marketing. We wanted a well-plumbed house, not unsubstantiated flash.

Tyler closed the deal.

“You’re hired.”

As if to underscore the serendipity of our choice, Tyler’s hired man St. Johnny pointed out the plumber wore a burly cross necklace. Seemed like he would fit right in.

Plumber Number Six got to work almost immediately, and we learned quickly he was the night owl to Tyler’s morning lark. Tyler never met a 5:30 a.m. he didn’t like, but Glimfeather earned his nickname by proving he was most productive under bright construction spotlights at 10 p.m. (or, frequently, even later).

Glimfeather was the talking owl who helped the protagonists find a kidnapped prince in The Silver Chair, one of C.S. Lewis’s books in the Chronicles of Narnia. Like our plumber, Glimfeather was wise, spirited and most alert after dark. Exploring the progress the plumber made in the church the morning after his late-night work was often a little like Christmas morning.

Glimfeather’s first project was to jackhammer the basement floor and reroute the sewer pipe in the basement to accommodate our new bathrooms.

[On the left, the back entry to the basement when we purchased the church. On the right, the back entry after demo and the plumber’s excavation.]

Not only did the project create piles of concrete debris, the excavation of dirt was a little off-putting. I didn’t like thinking about the proximity of dirt beneath our foundation, but with holes in the floor, there was no denying it. And that sewer pipe that was supposedly in such good shape? We had a “Houston, we’ve got a problem” moment when Glimfeather pointed out the top of the pipe was so rusty it was disintegrating. So even the portion of pipe that wasn’t being moved had to be replaced.

At the same time, February forgot it was still winter for a few days, and a foot of snow melted under rainy skies. This time, instead of water coming in the front of the basement (where we had the gutters replaced), it seeped into the back in the furnace room. Muddy water everywhere. St. Johnny spent an entire day filling and emptying the shop vac over and over. And we moved the precious castle doors, which had found a temporary home on the floor of the basement, to higher ground.

Eventually the rain stopped, and a few nights later Glimfeather sealed the dirt and new sewer beneath new concrete, and he began constructing the maze of pipes that produce the modern luxury of running water.

no dirt in basement — The back entry of the church after the new concrete was poured.

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Today’s headline is a partial quote from Josh Fox, American film director, playwright, environmental activist and night owl. The full quote from a 2013 interview in the Daily Intelligencer: “I’m a night owl, and luckily my profession supports that. The best ideas come to me in the dead of night. My friends know I’m up, so they can call at three in the morning. Just don’t call me at, like, eight.” After doing it once, Tyler avoided calling Glimfeather at eight, too.

Tomorrow: How a plumber dances with an HVAC guy. Read about it here.

Two walls forward, one wall back

March 3, 2018March 4, 2018 Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: Blood and sweat marked the walls we constructed for bathrooms on the main floor of the old Methodist church we were turning into a house.

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At four o’clock in the afternoon, we’d finished with the powder room and water closet walls and decided to call it a day. (Working in the church after sunset was not our style—it got dark. And we got hungry.) Before putting all the tools away, Tyler turned the laser level to the opposite wall to guide construction of the wall dividing the master bedroom from the master bath.

He gasped.

I looked where he was looking, and I gasped, too. I looked back at him, standing on the ladder, his hand on the laser level.

“How did that happen?” I asked.

No response.

The red line of the laser level clearly defined the bottom of the false ceiling. And it cut through the top window trim of the bedroom windows. At least three inches short of where it should have been to allow for full window trim and crown molding in the master bedroom.

We spent all day building the walls perfectly level. But too short.

I’m not gonna lie. Expletives were spoken in ways they should not have been in a church.

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Tomorrow: A new character enters the story. Who-hoo-hooo? Read about him here.

A ruddy drop of manly blood

March 2, 2018March 3, 2018 Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: Day Two of wall construction in the 126-year-old church was one of blood, sweat and tears.

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At one point, we had to reattach a top plate on a wall, which meant yanking out the nails to do it over again.

“Hold that there,” Tyler directed.

So I held the piece of wood at one end while he pounded out the board at the other end with a big hammer.

Bang!

The board came off, and his end—complete with two angry nails sticking out of it—came down.

On his head.

“Blasted, Monica! I told you to hold it!”

Only he didn’t say “blasted.” And he still had the hammer in his hand. His eyes told me he wanted to use it on something other than lumber.

He was holding his forehead, and blood was running down his cheek. The nails in the board had grazed his head.

“Oh my god, are you OK?”

I understood from his grumble that he was. But he was bleeding like a Halloween decoration; that’s how it is with a head wound.

We had no Band-Aids at the church, so I held a paper towel to his forehead. “Use direct pressure to stop bleeding,” echoed in my head. I held the paper towel better than the piece of wood because eventually, the scratch clotted, and we got back to work.

But not without a little blood on the top plate of the powder room wall.

You’re wondering about the tears, I’ll wager.

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Today’s headline is a line from a Ralph Waldo Emerson’s poem not about marriage, but titled “Friendship.”

Tomorrow: Why we cried. Read about it here.

Simple wall construction turns into odyssey of blood, sweat and tears

March 2, 2018March 2, 2018 Monica Lee5 Comments

Our story so far: As we progressed through the mechanicals phase of our church conversion project, we learned it was tricky to build walls between 126-year-old floors and ceilings that may or may not be level.

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The day began with a family crisis and progressed to a business crisis, but eventually we put out the fires and made our way to the church. Our goal was to construct the walls for the powder room, the water closet in the master bath and the wall behind the vanity in the master bath, all in the overflow area behind the kitchen so the plumber could begin roughing in plumbing.

Unlike the walls for the master bedroom closet which were supporting walls built to the ceiling, the walls on the day’s to-do list would have a false ceiling to accommodate the HVAC ducting and the plumbing from the second-floor bathroom. If your eyes are glazing over with the details, let me emphasize this important point: All the walls we were building were to be as tall as the false ceiling.

We began by haggling about room sizes and laying down two-by-fours on the floor to outline the walls. Just as Tyler was about to measure the studs and build vertically, he decided he needed a new tool: A laser level.

We couldn’t just measure down from the actual ceiling or up from the floor because each was crooked or uneven in their own unique ways. If we wanted a level false ceiling, we needed this crucial tool Tyler didn’t already possess.

OK, it was lunch time. Let’s go get lunch and drop by Home Depot. And spend more money. On another tool.

This was a battle I wasn’t going to win.

So we dined at a Chicago hot dog joint and dropped another couple hundred at Home Depot. Driving back to the church in the pickup truck, Tyler asked me to open the laser level box (with the Fort Knox unbreakable plastic clamshell, a feat in it itself) and read the instructions.

This was not poetry or a steamy novel. This was the instructions on how to set up and use a laser level.

All I remember is this one thing: “Looking into the laser light will cause blindness.”

Before returning to the work site, Tyler dropped me off at the rental house to check on the dog, throw the washed sheets in the dryer and run some quick paperwork. He returned to the church to set up the laser level.

When I arrived at the church twenty minutes later, the laser level was screwed to the wall, red laser lines marking the bottom of our false ceiling.

We got back to work exchanging nouns for tools and constructing studded walls.

Not infrequently that afternoon, my sweaty Romeo (thank you, Erin Napier for this “Home Town” description) would bend over to nail a stud into the bottom plate and sprinkle a few drops of perspiration on the floor.

That was the sweat in this story.

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Tomorrow: Part II of building walls: Blood. Read about it here.

Sunshine in my pockets

February 28, 2018March 1, 2018 Monica Lee2 Comments

Our story so far: Building walls in the old Methodist church we were turning into a home required a three-dimensional perspective.

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Tyler and his hired man St. Johnny also installed the first of five pocket doors in our house design.

I had been assigned to pick up the pocket door frame kits earlier in the week. Standing in line at the pro desk to pay for them, a builder behind me who looked like he had earned his experience remarked, “I hate installing pocket doors. They’re a pain.”

Maybe he installed pocket doors into already existing walls, because Tyler made it look easy to build one into a wide open space.

But Day Two of wall construction was one of blood, sweat and tears.

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Tomorrow: Part I: Sweat. And a new tool. Oh joy. Read about it here.

Straight, perpendicular and level … or pay the consequences

February 27, 2018February 28, 2018 Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: Purchase of the 126-year-old Methodist church to turn into a home: Check. Interior demolition: Check. Building begins: Check.

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Here’s what I didn’t understand about walls until I helped build some: They’re three dimensional.

This should be self-evident, but it wasn’t, at least to me. A wall should be perpendicular to the floor, perpendicular to other walls and level. If you don’t get things perfectly square, you’ll end up with a fun house maze.

I imagine this feat requires skill when one builds a house from scratch, but it’s a real trick when you’re building walls between 126-year-old floors and ceilings that may or may not be level.

Tyler took great pains to jack up the second floor to level, but “level” did not mean it was even. Every wall stud was a different length.

I helped build the closet walls on the main floor by performing a role as human tool holder. “Hand me the square.” “I need the level.” “Give me the power nailer.” (Let’s be honest, Tyler usually dispensed with pleasantries and placed orders with nouns only: “Nailer.” “Level.” “Hammer.”). Sometimes, I was promoted to two-by-four transport specialist or measurement expert (by expert, I don’t mean that I was responsible for measuring the length of the stud, but I did climb the ladder and hold the zero end of the tape measure securely to the ceiling).

In this manner, we (i.e., Tyler) built the walls to our walk-in closet which, conveniently also were supporting walls to the second floor.

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Tomorrow: Pocket doors. Uffda. Read about it here.

Beams of dreams

February 26, 2018February 27, 2018 Monica Lee2 Comments

Our story so far: The drywallers were making quick, satisfying progress on the ceiling of the sanctuary of the Methodist church we were turning into our home.

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Along with the Sheetrock panels, the drywallers erected on the sanctuary ceiling the two-by-sixes to which our faux beams would be attached.

faux beam extreme closeup — In this extreme close-up of our faux beam, you can see the wood grain and the foam interior.

Tyler had decided to have a look at rigid polyurethane foam beams—lighter and more durable than actual wood beams and more affordable, they were advertised as being “virtually indistinguishable from real wood.” But seeing was believing. Ordering a couple of one-foot samples of the faux beams, like choosing any finishing details in a house, was an odyssey. We ordered them online, of course (because that was Tyler’s mall of choice), where the array of options was dazzling.

L beam or U beam?

Rough sawn or hand hewn (or any of eight other textures)?

How wide? How high? How long? Do you need endcaps?

What color? We knew we wanted “brown” but we could choose from among eleven shades of brown. We finally settled on samples of pecan and antique cherry.

faux beam faroff — The antique cherry sample beam is on the left, pecan on the right.

faux beam closeup — This close-up shows how the faux beam attaches to the two-by-six on the ceiling.

A couple of weeks later, our sample beams arrived, and Tyler stuck them on the two-by-sixes on the ceiling of the sanctuary (from the safety of the choir loft).

Remarkable. They were virtually indistinguishable from real wood beams. And they were as light as cappuccino foam, which would make them easier to install.

The beams would add just the distinction we wanted in the centerpiece of our great room: Our cathedral ceilings.

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Tomorrow: Wall of fame. Or possibly shame. Read it here.

Church Sweet Home

A blog about transformation & sanctuary

Author: Monica Lee

A day in the life of an inexpert rehabber

Sawing wood is what she was intended for

Shall we dance?

The best ideas come in the dead of night

Two walls forward, one wall back

A ruddy drop of manly blood

Simple wall construction turns into odyssey of blood, sweat and tears

Sunshine in my pockets

Straight, perpendicular and level … or pay the consequences

Beams of dreams