Your paperwork has been approved

Monica Lee7 Comments

Our story so far: We found an old Methodist church we wanted to turn into our home in September 2017, we took possession in November, we finished demolition in January and we spent the next seven months renovating the first and second stories from top to bottom.

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Chapter 40

Tyler placed a call into the building inspector and asked him to drop by when he had a few minutes to inspect the church.

“We’re hoping to move in this week,” Tyler said.

Move. In.

We had a flushing toilet and a shower. The bedroom needed only a bed. The kitchen had a sink, a fridge and a hole for the stove. We were within a hair’s breadth of having the operational bathroom, kitchen and bedroom the building inspector told us nearly a year before that we would need before he would allow us to occupy the church.

Very early the next morning before the sun had completely risen above the horizon of the village, Tyler and I were standing in our master bedroom gazing at the ceiling where he was showing me the wonders of the high-tech rope lighting that had been tucked into the crown molding of the tray. Tyler was fiddling with the app on his phone, changing the colors like he was operating a disco ball. I spied movement out of the corner of my eye. The building inspector was standing in the doorway to the hall of history.

“Come on in,” I said. “Check out our ceiling lighting.”

He gamely observed our superfluous bedroom lighting. The last thing the building inspector cared about was our disco vibe.

I skeedaddled, leaving the foreman to show off our work and acquire a permit.

Which he did. A few minutes later, Tyler handed me a piece of paper that specified we were the proud recipients of a temporary habitational permit. All that was outstanding was listed as “life safety,” that being smoke detectors (which were installed later that afternoon) and hand rails on the stairways.

We could move in! We could move in! I carefully folded and filed our permit, smiling ear to ear.

This was the relay handoff for which we had been sprinting.

That was a Tuesday. We were allowed to sleep in the church/home, but we didn’t yet have our big, beautiful king-sized Sleep Number bed in it. With all the distractions of construction, finishing and cleaning, it would take until Saturday to move all the pieces of the bed into the chome and assemble them.

We tackled the job in relative privacy on Saturday and accomplished the task. Planning ahead, we rolled out a new rug and dressed the bed in new bedding.

With our gleaming chandeliers, the rustic feature wall and our funky night stands made out of safes, our master bedroom looked like one straight out of Pinterest.

Church Sweet Home Master Bedroom
Now doesn’t that looking inviting? We found those rustic church windows at an antique store months ago, and they’re just the right accent on that half-wall headboard. (Feel free to Pin this.)
Church Sweet Home Tray Ceiling
You’re just going to have to trust me on the tray lighting. You can’t see it in this picture, but it’s ethereal after dark.

 

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Tomorrow: First shower. Read about it here.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day

Monica Lee2 Comments

Our story so far: The finishing phase in our church conversion project was where the rubber hit the road. We encountered so many challenges, our wry son-in-law joked he was going to start a competing blog called “Everything Wrong With the Church” and reveal all our mistakes.

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The finishing detail that made me thunk my forehead with my palm came not with an element of the church, but with a piece of furniture. It was a project that spread itself over a couple of weeks and required attention from both me and Tyler.

headboard
Beat up maybe, but this abandoned headboard and footboard had potential.

The beat-up headboard and footboard we found on the side of the road in early spring? We would need a guest bed sooner rather than later, so I spent a weekend painting it. The project put me in the way of any number of contractors who required space or basement access, but it needed to be done. I ran out of paint before I finished so I used some leftover paint in a close match to finish the back (no one would ever know—unless they read the blog about Everything Wrong With the Church). When it was dry, St. Johnny and I hauled it upstairs taking care not to ding the drywall.

Via a friend, we sourced a barely-used mattress set that came with a bed frame. We counted ourselves lucky because our benefactor of the headboard and footboard did not bestow us with the frame. Tyler and I hauled it to the church, and as we were about to shove the box spring up the back stairs, we realized it wasn’t going to fit (this was a throughway designed for Sunday schoolers, not queen-sized box springs). OK, so we enlisted a few contractors to help shove it over the balcony railing the next morning.

As we set to assembling the bed frame, we realized it was designed for a headboard only. There was no way to attach the footboard. OK, so Tyler jerry-rigged a solution, spray painted it out in the yard and hauled it upstairs. Because it was jerry-rigged, it required an inordinate amount of grunting and number of screws to assemble. OK, Tyler grunted and succeeded. He and St. Johnny lugged the box spring into place …

And Tyler called me upstairs.

“Your bed doesn’t fit,” he said in summons.

“Okayyyy,” I said slowly. “Whaddya mean ‘my bed doesn’t fit’?” I had measured the headboard and knew it would be a tight fit for nightstands, but I also figured I could find a creative solution (what’s Pinterest for anyway?). I joined him at his side, looking at the bed.

“It’s not a queen headboard,” Tyler said. “It’s a king.”

headboard too big
Um, yeah. That’s not a queen size headboard and footboard. Nice paint job though.

We had plucked it from the street. Unloaded it into our rental unit. I had moved it to the church to paint, and touched every square inch of it. St. Johnny and I had moved it upstairs. I had measured it to determine what kind of nightstands would fit. Tyler built a frame on it to fit a queen mattress. And not until the mattress was in place did we realize the headboard was king sized.

Do you suppose we were a little distracted?

The queen mattress with the king headboard looked ridiculous. It was all wrong.

“Well, I guess we’ll be moving this down to the basement when we finish a bedroom down there,” I shrugged. There was no modifying it. “One of our guest beds in the basement will be a king, I guess.”

When we looked back upon all these finishing mistakes, they were small things. The oven fit perfectly. The kitchen sink worked like a dream. The chandeliers in the bedroom were beautiful. The shower drained like it should and felt like a luxury to use. So many things fell into place, even without a documented plan.

So the headboard was the wrong size. It made for a good story. Who’s to say it wasn’t meant to be?

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Tomorrow: Move-in day. See the master bedroom here.

When it rains, look for rainbows

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: Wrong wiring here, a wrong faucet there … as we finished details on the old Methodist church we were turning into a home, we had to correct mistakes that had been made earlier in the renovation.

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When it rained, it poured, as the old figure of speech goes. It applied literally, too. Another monsoon befell us, this time while we were trying to enjoy some free time over Labor Day weekend. It washed out our boating plans and our basement.

The basement was still flooding on the regular. It appeared that Tyler’s inventive drainage techniques, executed via a lot of back-breaking digging by his hired man St. Johnny, had resolved the leaks on the south and north sides of the church. But he hadn’t finished working on the east side, where huge piles of dirt we’d salvaged from the school’s parking lot still stood as monuments to Tyler’s distractions inside the church. Rain barrels and rock were invested in, and St. Johnny dug man-sized holes to accommodate them.

We crossed our fingers until the next rainfall, and then it happened. Rain poured out of the sky. Tyler peeked out the window, and the gutter on the east side of the house looked like an active fire hose, shooting water eight feet out into the yard. He braved the heavy rain to secure the elbow at the bottom of the gutter. Ugh, he’d forgotten to secure that section with a screw. He reconnected the pieces of gutter so all the water from roof was now shooting into his drainage system, not the yard. But some of the early deluge, alas, made it into the basement.

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Tomorrow: Good afternoon, good evening and good night! Chapter 39 about everything wrong with the church wraps up. Read about it here.

There are no big problems; there are just a lot of little problems

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: Little problems arose in the finishing phase of the old Methodist church renovation.

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In one of his last acts, Glimfeather our plumber determined the faucet in the powder room—the one we’d acquired for an amazing deal in a display vanity—didn’t have all its parts. During the test, water sprayed everywhere. A fail. Another vendor complaint would have to be issued. Another reason to see Glimfeather again.

open handle in shower
We can thank Joanna Gaines for this awesome design feature. But I bet she washes her hands of it. Ha!

Then I had buyer’s remorse about the trendy glass cut-out handle I’d specified so precisely for the master shower door. After it was installed, and I admired it repeatedly, I noticed it was impossible to use without leaving fingerprints. This was one of those mistakes that couldn’t be fixed with a new coat of stain or a store return. There was no going back. Windex and I would be getting real familiar.

We fired up the zone cooling system we’d invested in so we could cool only the master suite instead of the whole church. Worked great. Then we noticed cool air shooting out of the vent in the mudroom. It dawned on me that the HVAC guy, way back when he installed ductwork, saw only two-by-four walls; the back door didn’t yet exist. The mudroom—with its maple wood floors—probably looked like part of the master suite back then when in fact, it was really an entryway to the sanctuary.

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Today’s headline is a quote from Henry Ford who created the Model T car in 1908, nearly two decades after our little Methodist church was built.

Tomorrow: When it rains, it pours. Read about it here.

Be humble to see your mistakes, courageous to admit them, and wise enough to correct them

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: In the finishing phase of renovating the 126-year-old Methodist church into a home, a quarter inch—or foot—made the difference between something fitting or not. We found out the hard way missing steps meant going back to retrace them.

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The upstairs bathroom was particularly vexing.

When the lights I’d ordered months ago were delivered, I unpacked the fixtures for the vanity, and a knot formed in my stomach. What I had unpacked was beautiful, but I knew instantly the wiring—around which had been drywalled and painted—was in the wrong place. The electrician did the best he could with the direction he got—from me—but I was wrong. The wall would need to be ripped into, re-drywalled and repainted.

upstairs lighting fufu
In order to get the lighting fixtures in the right place the second time, I made templates of the mirrors to show exactly where they would hang. No more by guess or by golly. Note the exposed two-by-fours that should be behind drywall.

We had invested in a standard shower stall for that bathroom, and a standard glass door. Both had been delivered in March so the stall could be installed before we built walls around it. When You-Can-Call-Me-Al got to installing the door, he realized it was too tall. After rummaging around in an inches-deep pile of receipts, we remembered we’d purchased it at Lowe’s. Tyler made a phone call. Thank goodness, the Big Box store had a lenient return policy. I boxed the door back up, drove a half hour to Lowe’s, stood in line twenty minutes to return it, purchased a new door with Tyler’s specs and drove back to the church. You-Can-Call-Me-Al set to installing the new door, and he determined it was now the correct height but the wrong width. Back to Lowe’s. Apparently, “standard” comes in a variety of sizes.

On the last day of our plumber Glimfeather’s work, he brought two helpers and powered through a lot of plumbing details. In the last hour of his work, he announced he was nearly done; he had only to install the bathtub faucet. Where did I want it to be installed again? We surveyed the tub, and I fixed the point. I went about some other task, leaving him to his work, only to be called to the tub a few minutes later. The faucet—a beautiful one we’d coveted, ordered and paid for in April—was designed for a vanity sink, not a tub. “It’ll take forty minutes to fill your tub with that faucet,” Glimfeather said. “The water will be cold before you’re done.” Alas, the plumber’s work was not done after all. We’d have to track down the correct faucet, and he’d have to come back.

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Today’s headline is a quote from author Amine Ayad.

Tomorrow: A litany of little snafus pops up. Read about them here.

Make time for planning; wars are won in the general’s tent

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: Early on in our church conversion project, our wry son-in-law joked he was going to start a competing blog called “Everything Wrong With the Church.” This chapter is for him.

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We had been cruising along, making a lot of decisions by hook or by crook, and we had arrived at the point where our lack of design plans exacted a price. In time or money. Or both. The finishing phase was where the rubber hit the road.

The size of the refrigerator nook, for example: We measured incompletely and ended up having to re-drywall the nook so the fridge would fit.

This would never happen to a house builder who built the same five house plans over and over again. Key word: Plans. Same for a custom home builder. An architect would have determined measurements for everything before a single nail was driven. We weren’t home builders, and we were arrogant enough to believe we could do an architect’s work (we had a floor plan—what more is there?). As the saying goes, we didn’t know what we didn’t know. If we had a written plan, we still might have ended up with a crooked wall here and there, and we might still be making decisions by the seat of our pants, but we wouldn’t be redoing work. Now, in the finishing phase, a quarter inch—or foot—made the difference between something fitting or not. Missing steps meant going back to retrace them.

On top of our lack of plans, we were making the final push towards occupancy, so Tyler sometimes had a half dozen men working in the church at once. If the street in front of our house didn’t look like a construction zone before, it did now. Timing issues—this task was required before that task could be finished—were bound to arise.

img_0808
Vehicles belonging to contractors and to us lined both sides of the street in front of the church on many days during the push for occupancy.

Someone—we’re not pointing fingers here—screwed a hole in the electrical wiring behind the beverage bar. When the electricity didn’t work, we pulled out both beverage fridges and performed trouble shooting. Two hours, gone. While we had everything torn apart, Tyler added some insulation to the plumbing running up an exterior wall. Maybe in this way, a mistake prevented a future problem. This was how we had to think in order to keep frustration from outrunning hope.

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Today’s headline is a quote from author Stephen Covey.

Tomorrow: The upstairs bathroom … uff-da. Read about it here.

Everything wrong with the church

Monica Lee5 Comments

Our story so far: My husband Tyler and I bought a 126-year-old Methodist church, and we spent nine months transforming the first and second floors into our dream home. We began to see the finished results of our efforts.

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Chapter 39

Chapter 39As the months wore on, and we encountered challenges small and big, we talked about them. Constantly. We were a one-note two-man band.

Early on, our wry son-in-law joked he was going to start a competing blog called “Everything Wrong With the Church” and reveal all our mistakes we didn’t want to share with the world. Then I think he realized how little I left out when I was broadcasting our every move to the world. This chapter is for him.

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Tomorrow: Another one bites the dust. Read about it here.

Playing dress up begins at age 5 and never truly ends

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: Phase Five of finishing details had arrived at the old Methodist church we were turning into our home. Chapter 38 concludes.

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Besides installing shelving in all the various cabinets we’d installed in the church, we needed closet rods before we could start moving in.

We reused the closet rods that came with the hall closet, and Tyler hung a standard closet rod in the upstairs closet in a matter of minutes. The master walk-in closet, with nearly twenty-five feet of horizontal hanging space, required a bit more effort.

Tyler was inspired to use half-inch steel plumbing pipe for rods. It was strong, cheap and eminently customizable. I liked the industrial vibe so much, I’d chosen cabinet pulls and closet light fixtures to match. I spent one evening researching standard closet measurements in order to achieve the most efficient use of space. One morning, Tyler operated his measuring tape inside the closet and dictated measurements to me. He ordered pipe fittings online, and he called up the nearby Big Box store to have pipes cut and threaded to size.

When everything arrived, we laid it all out on the bedroom floor, a bit confused about where to begin. Which pipes were forty-two inches long and where were the forty-four-inch ones? Is this one a vertical pipe or a horizontal pipe? Which pieces do we screw together first?

After the first attempt, we realized we needed more five-way pipe fittings. Oh, and the ceiling and floor weren’t perfectly parallel, so we’d have to have some of the pipes shortened a bit (which the plumber handled for us on site with his pipe cutter-and-threader—his tool probably has a different name, but this was its function). As with all construction projects, this one also required a bit of grunting and sweating, but the stud finder and electric drill came in handy. As far as items on the Honey-Do list went, this one was pretty easy. Presto, change-o, the plumbing pipe turned into closet rod.

pipe flange
That thing used to attach the pipe to the wall is called a flange. The thing a girl learns in a construction project.
closet rods
If you think the size of this closet is extravagant, wait until you see the size of Tyler’s TV.

I had lived for two years in a camper or a tiny rental house, neither of which had more than a few feet of clothes hanging space. I had been pretty proud of myself to downsize like that. In truth, I had gotten rid of a lot of out-of-fashion and ill-fitting items, but several boxes of really nice clothes had been packed away, waiting patiently to be worn again. I was in heaven, admiring something as simple as closet rods.

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Tomorrow: Chapter 39 begins: Everything that’s wrong with the church. Read it here.

The shower: A place for deep thoughts, musical performances and cleaning up

Monica Lee3 Comments

Our story so far: After months of preamble, the vanity in the master bath of the converted Methodist church came together in a matter of about forty-eight hours with tradesmen practically crawling over each other to get work done.

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While he was there, the glass guy spent several hours installing our coveted glass shower door. The one we drooled over so many months ago when we were trying to make the numbers work. And the rainfall shower head. Oh. Oh. Oh. My brother-in-law installed a rainfall shower head in his and my sister’s home. It was divine (and theirs wasn’t even in a church), and I knew what I was missing. How I longed to stand under those water drops for an entire afternoon.

shower before
Just to remind you how far we’ve come, that corner on the right is where our master shower is now. This room had been used mostly recently in the church as an office. The window in the center of the picture is in our new bathroom, and the wall on the far left was moved to where the beam is; the window on the left is in our bedroom.
shower pre construction
Here’s that corner post-demo with two walls of the shower framed in.
shower after
And here’s the tiled shower with the fixtures and the glass walls installed.

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Tomorrow: Chapter 38 wraps up with a look at the master closet. Check it out here.

How a double-sink vanity can save a marriage

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: We crossed things off our list as we finished some details on the old Methodist church we were turning into our home.

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Glimfeather, our plumber, returned. He still was a fan of strange hours (Sundays, Friday evenings) but he didn’t linger until 2 o’clock in the morning anymore.

It was so odd for me to see a man washing his hands in one of my sinks. For months, I had no sinks. Then for weeks, I had no faucets. And for days, I feared running the water (was the drain connected yet? Did I dare find out?). When I witnessed the plumber washing his hands, I knew: The system was operational. Glory be.

The plumbing in the kitchen was nothing particularly special (unless you consider a pot filler special) though I was inordinately excited about having a garbage disposal and a dishwasher again. It was the master bath plumbing that had me singing like Carly Simon: “An-ti-ci-pa-yay-tion … is making me wait.”

Coincidentally (if coordinating multiple tradesmen is ever coincidental), the vanity in the master bath came together in a matter of about forty-eight hours. You-Can-Call-Me-Al installed the tin ceiling and flanking cabinets, Low Talker painted the tin, Glimfeather installed the faucets and the glass guy installed my elegantly arched mirrors. We weren’t quite done—primarily, we needed lights, outlet covers, towel rings and knobs like an apothecary cabinet maker—but we got mighty close. That double-sink vanity made me want to brush my teeth. I would never have to share a mirror again!

bathroom faucets
Mirror, mirror, mirror on the wall.

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Tomorrow: Do you see what I see? A shower, a shower, dancing in the water. Read about it here.