Our story so far: The layers of flooring and gunk covering the original wood floors at the old Methodist church were beginning to feel as if they would never end. During the official demo phase we peeled back the old carpeting and padding. We then removed carpet staples and nails covering every square foot of the sanctuary.

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Then there were pieces of tin.

Tyler found dozens of dinky pieces of tin nailed all over the sanctuary floor. Someone had meticulously cut the tin to size, nailed each corner and added nails every two inches when the piece was bigger. He took to removing them, and discovered they covered little divots and other dings in the hardwood. But like the nails and staples, they had to go.

In the back corner of the room, he found a much larger hunk of tin. When he peeled it up, he discovered a time capsule of sorts: Several copies of what appeared to be religious newspapers for young people—Dew Drops and Young People’s Weekly—filled with serialized stories and articles of advice. He was amazed to see they dated to the 1920s.

He developed the back story to this strange find: A teen-age boy—maybe the minister’s son—was tasked with covering the dings in the floor before it was covered with something (tile? carpet?). When he got to the place where there was once perhaps the wood stove smokestack, he stashed a pile of Sunday school newspapers for posterity with the unspoken message, “I was here.”

At this point, we were finally down to the mastic-covered wood, and sanding commenced.

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Tomorrow: It snowed the first day we sanded the floors. That’s how long we’ve been at it. Read about it here.

Our story so far: We juggled enough projects at the old Methodist church as summer inched on that something different occurred in a steady rhythm every day.

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We’d found plenty for You-Can-Call-Me-Al to do, too, as he was equally skilled using a tile saw and any number of wood saws.

One day, I stood on the balcony pickling the last of the planks for the upstairs ceiling. I wore headphones, listening to National Public Radio, while quietly rolling diluted white paint on wood.

Tyler worked in the master bedroom with a table saw and a nail gun, assembling the bead board on the closet wall.

You-Can-Call-Me-Al played the radio at a volume that didn’t quite overwhelm the sound of his tile saw when he modified one of the stones for the fireplace. He was finally making progress on our twenty-foot fireplace after a couple of false starts with unacceptable mortar. The stone guy suggested a type he’d used for an outdoor fire pit, but when we tried it, the stone would still come off twenty-four hours later. This might have been okay for a three-foot-high fire pit, but we eventually learned (from a Home Depot guy, to his credit) that we needed mortar for a vertical application. Because when laying stone twenty-feet off the ground, you do not want it to fall off, lest you kill someone. Still, You-Can-Call-Me-Al built only about three or four vertical feet of fireplace a day so it would dry level.

This was the sort of meditative work I enjoyed. Roll, roll, roll of the paint. Pithy NPR observation about the history of Chinese food. Whirr, whirr of a saw. Pop, pop, pop of a nail gun. The swoosh of mortar on the back of a hunk of stone. Whomp, whomp, as You-Can-Call-Me-Al occasionally used a rubber mallet to coax a piece into place. Then more of the same. The only way of determining the passage of time was the eventual grumble of my stomach, calling me to lunch.

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Tomorrow: Chapter 32 opens with thoughts about travel. Read about them here.

Our story so far: I laid out the tiles in dry format for my tile rug to be set in the hardwood between my stove and the sink in my future kitchen at the old Methodist church.

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My tile rug prompted You-Can-Call-Me-Al to poke around the subfloor where it would eventually be tiled between the stove and sink. He determined that the 126-year-old subfloor wasn’t up to the task of supporting the tiles which could mean they would flex when someone walked on them and then crack. This meant I had to make another trip to Home Depot, No. 4 just for that week.

I was now what you’d call a regular at the local Home Depot, the nearest Big Box home improvement store. Before this project, I would have told you Big Box clerks were flunkies who weren’t well informed, but that’s not true: The clerks at this particular Home Depot were awesome. The cashiers always tracked down someone to help me load whatever I bought (which I’ve repeatedly mentioned was invariably heavy). One of the flooring guys once saved me after seeing only my behind sticking out of a pallet of tile on the floor. The paint mixer and I were on a first name basis. But it was the guys in the lumber department who I really appreciated. Tyler would give me a list of wood and/or screws to buy, and they would help me find it and usually load it onto a cart.

On this trip, Tyler told me to buy three-quarter-inch plywood with a cement board underlayment. The helpful clerks in the lumber department (I had two this day!) told me it didn’t exist. I had long since given up on trying to translate, so I called Tyler and handed my phone to one of the clerks. Turns out, I needed two things: Half-inch plywood and quarter-inch cement board.

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Tomorrow: The work gets harder. Read about it here.

Our story so far: We were seven months into renovating the old Methodist church into our home.

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Chapter 31

We juggled enough projects as summer inched on that something different occurred in a steady rhythm every day.

 

The carpet guy measured the balcony. The railings guy measured the balcony, too. The glass guy measured for our shower door. Because the quartz guys finally installed the curbs on the shower! And while the glass guy was there, he measured for new screens for the entryway windows and new glass for the sanctuary windows. Trim Guy measured for trim. A couple different painters eyed the walls to prepare estimates.

To help all these contractors find our place, we installed temporary house numbers on the church. Do churches ever have house numbers? Maybe the church sign was evidence enough of a worshiping congregation, but as residents we needed something more definitive. I wanted to build the permanent sign, but my idea required using a saw, and Tyler said he had more important things to do than cut circles of wood, so I found what I wanted on Etsy, thanks to Zach and Sheena at the WoodsCollective.

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Tomorrow: A clear sign we needed good signage. Read about it here.

Our story so far: We made decisions that affected the look of the entire church we were turning into a home: Wall paint and trim. Fortunately, we saved a lot of scrap trim and wood when we were taking the church apart during demolition, and at least some of it was usable.

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While he was in the bedroom making a feature wall, Tyler used up some of the miscellaneous beadboard we salvaged in the church to finish the wall of the closet so it would coordinate with the original beadboard in the room. It wasn’t an exact match, but it was an easy decision—it was free. Once trimmed with chair rail and painted with the rest, it would look dynamite.

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Tomorrow: We juggle a number of projects as Chapter 31 opens. Read it here.