Our story so far: Activity began to accelerate, as evidenced by the volume of building materials accumulating inside the old Methodist church.

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Two days after the nail delivery, a Mack truck with a hydraulic fork lift on the back arrived in front of the church and left behind two enormous piles of lumber on our sidewalk. In a biting 20 mph wind, Tyler’s hired man St. Johnny and I carried in 113 two-by-fours of various lengths, 30 two-by-sixes, 10 two-by-eights, 30 two-by-tens, 20 sheets of plywood and five LVLs (that would be laminated veneer lumber typically used for headers, for those of you who don’t handle industrial deliveries of lumber every day).

Oh joy.

Fortunately, it wasn’t snowing or raining.

All that lumber was evidence that we were now building things instead of tearing things down. This reality buoyed Tyler’s spirits considerably. He and his hired man St. Johnny had toiled for many weeks in relative isolation while they had demoed the interior of the church. Now Tyler could watch real progress as skilled workers made the church look better rather than looking worse.

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Tomorrow: Get your head out of the rain gutter. Read it here.

Our story so far: After demolishing the interior of most of the old Methodist church we hoped to turn into a home, my husband Tyler wondered how to safely tear down the 20-foot ceiling of the sanctuary.

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After much backing and forthing, which included negotiating with two different rental companies for motorized “man lifters,” stalking the sellers of used scaffolding on Craig’s List, briefly contemplating temporarily building out the loft floor across the entire sanctuary and me volunteering to climb scaffolding and use a hammer, Tyler met with a local drywaller.

We intended to drywall the ceiling of the sanctuary, and we also intended to hire out that role.

Fortunately, the drywaller was willing to work with us. Not only was he willing to demo the ceiling, he was willing to rent us his scaffolding so our electrician could run wiring and Reroofer could install the faux wood beams on the sanctuary ceiling. All within budget. Score!

After all those weeks of hand wringing about demoing the ceiling, in an hour our three drywallers had assembled scaffolding to reach to the ceiling and climbed aboard. They climbed up and down like children on a jungle gym. Down came the false ceiling on the balcony side of the sanctuary, the trimmed-out beams (thoughtfully constructed by some church woodworker, but just not the style we were going for—we saved the pieces for reuse), the fiberboard paneling and the ceiling tiles of the angels.

So simple.

By the end of the day, the demo phase of the church renovation was officially complete. Our ceiling had never looked so clean and pristine.

Tyler and I admired it from the safety of the floor.

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Tomorrow: Nailed it! Read the story here.

Our story so far: Reroofer, the guru who helped us fix the roof of the church belfry, showed up to help Tyler install a new header in the space where we intend to build a balcony into the sanctuary.

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Coincidentally, we had another visitor: A bat, circling the ceiling of the sanctuary.

Um, where did he come from?

We went nine weeks without a sighting of anything alive in the church beyond a few spiders. Reroofer repaired the belfry with much noise and commotion. No bats then.

But now, a bat appeared out of nowhere.

Somehow, the bat got into the basement (if you know anything about the flight of bats, you know this is possible, but difficult to describe, what with all the squeezing tight of your eyes and the screaming). St. Johnny and I chased him around for a few minutes, randomly waving brooms in the air and shooing him out of window wells a couple of times, but he refused to find the exit. Suddenly, he flew into the furnace room.

The dark, duct-filled furnace room with a million nooks and crannies where black bats could hide.

“Are you going in there?” St. Johnny asked me.

It was clear St. Johnny wasn’t going in there.

I peeked inside only long enough to determine the bat wasn’t flying around and wasn’t in the window wells, and slammed shut the door. St. Johnny helped me secure it, and I returned upstairs to where Tyler and his helper, Reroofer, were conferring about the header.

“We trapped it,” I said breathlessly.

“Great,” Tyler said, barely looking up from the architect’s drawings. He was focusing on the bigger picture.

Then I spotted the holes in the floor of the sanctuary. The holes led to the furnace room.

Fortunately, we were surrounded by scrap wood in all shapes and sizes. I gingerly slid a couple of boards over the holes.

“Well,” I said, dusting off my hands. “I guess he’s the HVAC guys’ problem now.”

I quickly developed three suppositions to comfort me.

One, out of sight, out of mind. The bat was in the furnace room, and I wasn’t.

Two, a bat, which navigates the night with echolocation, is a guide through the darkness. No one wants a bat in their house, but maybe he was a sign. A good sign. A symbol that we were on the right track.

And three, the bat was in our furnace room. He was not in our belfry.

Then the bat disappeared as mysteriously as he had appeared. Days later, the HVAC guys tore apart the furnace room to prepare for the new ducting, but the bat was gone.

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Tomorrow: Tyler and Reroofer proceed with installing a new header on the main floor of the church. Read it here.

Our story so far: We crossed a number of items off the “proceed with caution” list as we demolished the interior of the old Methodist church we were planning to turn into a home.

# # #

Early on, Tyler suspected the opening between the sanctuary and the overflow area might need shoring up. The archway looked as if it bowed a bit, and not in a quaint or historical way. Further evidence that something was awry: The second floor wasn’t level.

Tyler had installed headers in the past so this discovery didn’t alarm him but I, trained by HGTV remodeling shows, saw dollar signs. Many an open-floor plan had been scuttled by expensive header requirements.

Initially, we believed we could figure out how to design the interior of the church by ourselves. Before we’d closed, we played around with various layouts using freehand drawings and software programs. And we figured people like plumbers and building inspectors would prevent us from doing anything stupid like installing a toilet too close to a vanity or building a hallway too narrow.

But Tyler knew a lot about construction, including what he didn’t know, so he elected to hire an architect with structural engineering knowledge to help him determine precisely where the structural issues were and how to resolve them. We also needed to know how to safely construct the balcony, which hung off this same opening. (When the architect paid us a visit, he also climbed up into the belfry to give it the once over and prescribed new pilings.) After much measuring and calculations and consultation, the architect recommended a new header and a bunch of other technical stuff I didn’t understand. But Tyler did, and we got the design plans to help him carry it out.

After Tyler ordered the specified header, I figured out why they’re costly: It’s not the header itself, it’s the engineering required to prescribe it.

In any case, the header arrived in three parts along with a thousand other pieces of lumber (you think I’m kidding).

Reroofer, the guru who repaired our belfry roof, agreed to help Tyler install the new header. As Reroofer walked into the sanctuary one Friday afternoon, all smiles because he was going to help build something, I think, or maybe he was just happy that day, he pointed up and asked, “What is that?”

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Tomorrow: “That” could be a sign. Read about it here.