Tag: Converted Church

When being clingy is a good thing

Monica Lee3 Comments

Our story so far: The finishing details were coming together in the old Methodist church we had been renovating into a home for several months.

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After a lot of debate about how to install the carpeting over the edge of the balcony, the actual installation on a warm day a couple of weeks before Labor Day went well. The off-white Snowflake with a silvery pattern looked lux. Only white wine drinkers allowed.

Since we were still generating construction dust and maneuvering a parade of contractors through the building, our light-colored carpeting would need temporary protection. Tyler invested in a couple of rolls of industrial carpet wrap. Imagine a giant, three-foot wide roll of super sticky Saran Wrap. Great concept. Tricky execution.

The carpeting installer did not put this stuff down. We did.

Tyler tried rolling it down himself, and even with his strength and wingspan, it was impossible. This was a two-person job.

He held the giant roll while I yanked it out with both hands in four or five foot lengths, balanced the flimsy sheet with one hand and cut it with a knife in the other and then, on my knees, stuck it down along all the edges. Frequently, the stuff would stick to itself. There was no going back. That piece was toast.

About twenty minutes in, I noticed I was getting splashed when I yanked the plastic off the roll. Tyler, who was standing over the roll, was sweating on it, and when I yanked the sheet, droplets of his perspiration popped up at me.

Exercise and a shower, too. Double duty.

The sticky on this stuff was truly industrial strength. Even a month later, it was sticking to the carpet, keeping it clean.

balcony carpeting
As with most of my After pictures in this era, you’re going to have to imagine the space without the construction materials.

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Tomorrow: Let there be light. Read about it here.

Home is where the pants aren’t

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: Nine months in, we were down to refining details on the first and second floors of the old Methodist church we were turning into our home.

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Some projects that would be considered minor in any normal renovation hogged time in this one (refinishing the floors was probably Exhibit A). But window coverings, too. We purchased blinds for every window on the first and second floors because, well, some of those windows were on the first floor and now they had clear glass. We didn’t want to see the neighbors all the time, and they didn’t want to see us all the time either. One or two or four blinds was a small project. Hanging fourteen blinds, some from twelve feet high, required all day.

Once they were hung, the windows took on a new feel. Instead of being wide-open public windows, they looked like windows that belonged in a home. I liked it.

windows before painting
Here’s how the main floor windows look pre-painting and blinds.
windows with blinds
And here’s how they looked after paint and blinds. In this shot, you can see the original  etched glass in the transom windows.

We hung basic white wood-like blinds in all the windows except the master bedroom, where Tyler hung light-blocking Roman shades. Well, he hung them in one of the bedroom windows. The other window presented a dilemma. One of the corners was eclipsed by the bottom of the stairway. He hauled the standard Roman shade to his mother and delegated this problem to her to solve. She is a talented seamstress who once sewed my wedding gown. If she couldn’t solve this pentagonal problem, no one could.

bedroom windows
One Roman shade hangs in the bedroom windows. The other window presents a bit of a challenge.

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Today’s headline comes from an internet meme. Google “home is where the pants aren’t,” and you might be surprised about how many T-shirts, wall signs and coffee cups come up.

Tomorrow: Better than Saran Wrap. Read about it here.

You will never ‘find’ time for anything; if you want time, you must make it

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: We were seeing the pay off of months of hard work in the renovation of an old Methodist church into our home.

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clock
Time will tell.

Another small detail that caught the eye of a lot of people who looked at images of our floors was the clock we put up above the interior entryway doors.

I coveted a clock like this even before we purchased the church. If you watch “Fixer Upper” even a couple of times, you’re bound to see a clock—usually with hard-to-decipher Roman numerals because it doesn’t even matter if you’re using it to tell time—in the After reveal; “oversized clock” was listed in our design style. When I found an airy, wrought-iron clock in the showroom of our glass guy, I purchased it on the spot.

Originally, I had planned to put it up on the fireplace, but we decided we had enough going on up there. We enlisted You-Can-Call-Me-Al, who could be depended on for straight-and-level installation, to put it up inside the interior entryway doors. Many more items would be hung on the walls in future weeks, but this one went up while we still had tall ladders at the ready.

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Tomorrow: Blinds. Read about them here.

Glow-getters

Monica Lee3 Comments

Our story so far: My husband celebrated his birthday with a litany of complaints about the enormity of the church conversion project we had taken on.

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Tyler’s birthday wasn’t the only occasion that week overshadowed by work at the church. A few days after Tyler aged another year, we celebrated a milestone wedding anniversary: Ten years.

Since we were buying things for the church like Home Depot shopping addicts, we agreed we didn’t need to exchange gifts for our anniversary, but I requested earlier in the month that we mark the occasion by going out to eat. Tyler obliged by making dinner reservations.

When our anniversary arrived, I realized I would be spending the entire day on my hands and knees. Hand-washing every square foot of wood floors in the church so Tyler could apply the last two coats of polyurethane before we left for the weekend.

If I didn’t do this, all the dust and tiny paint splatters on the floors would be forever encased in a layer of shellac, reminding me of my sloth and sloppiness.

I donned a pair of kneepads and began on the second floor. It was about 10 o’clock, and at this point, I was sure we would not achieve our goal because the floor of the sanctuary was still covered in ram board, miscellaneous cabinets and tools. But while I washed the pine upstairs, Tyler and his hired man St. Johnny cleared and vacuumed the sanctuary so by 1:30 when I finished the upstairs and the main floor master suite, I moved to the enormous empty open-floor-plan great room.

I earned a repetitive-stress strain in my shoulder by performing the same sweeping wiping motion with a wet rag a thousand times. Hand mopping sawdusty floors required me to refill my wash bucket several times for each room. Remember, at that point, the only running water in the church was in the basement. So I made many trips up and down two flights of stairs. I also scraped off paint splatters where I found them, so I carried sharp implements in my pockets (which, not infrequently, poked me, too). Fortunately, our painter prepped well, so there were few drops of paint to remove.

I finished washing at 4 o’clock, just in time for a much-needed shower before dinner, while Tyler wrapped up the first coat of polyurethane (to be specific, it was the third coat in total, but it was the first of the final two coats—if you’re counting down, which believe me, we were).

We dined on steak and pasta, which we most definitely earned.

third coat of poly
The granite counter top on the island hadn’t been installed yet.

The next morning, we surveyed the results before Tyler applied the final coat of polyurethane and we decamped elsewhere and left it all to dry. The way everything looked was the best anniversary gift ever. In the morning sun with the lights on, the kitchen literally glowed. The sawdust and tools were gone, and the floors gleamed.

I tiptoed around in my bare feet, taking pictures like a pro with both our phones so we could share the results with every last person we might encounter over the long weekend. We were so proud of ourselves. The pain and effort were worth it.

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Tomorrow: What time is it? No more guessing. Read about about it here.

A nuttier establishment you’ve never seen

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: We neared the finish line in at least a few spaces of the old Methodist church we were turning into our home.

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Among the finishing details I enjoyed watching come to fruition was the door to our granddaughter’s playhouse, the space under the eaves we’d named for her.

lucy's former door
Here’s a shot of the second floor when we purchased the church. See that door on the right? It led to a storage space under the eaves. The “Do Not Open” sign we ignored is on the table there.

More than once, I was amused to see a grown man working in that little five-foot-high space. The drywallers installed drywall, and the painter painted it. I sanded the floors with the edging machine (it was less amusing when I was the one on my knees).

Tyler recycled the old closet door that had led to the opposite eaves. When we’d first toured the church, a hand-lettered sign was posted on the closet door warning: “Do not open!” Behind it was a lot of dust and debris.

He removed several layers of paint until he revealed the last layer—a distressed sea foam green that I loved. He cut it to size, and I applied a couple of coats of clear polyurethane. He attached it to our granddaughter’s playhouse with some vintage-y black hinges; all we required now was a cool door knob. Our soon-to-be-walking granddaughter would find this little room to be just her size.

Lucy's Playhouse Door
Here are the eaves on the other side of the room (the belfry side), where the little door on the left now leads to our granddaughter’s playhouse. (And how about those floors?)
lucy's door
Here’s a close-up of the door.

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Tomorrow: More floors. This one you don’t want to miss. Click here.

Wake-up call

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: My husband Tyler and I bought a 126-year-old Methodist church and spent nine months demolishing the interior and renovating it into a home. And we weren’t done yet.

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Chapter 38

Chapter 38Tyler was a late August baby some fifty years ago, and he woke up early on his birthday the year we were renovating the church.

It was half past 3 o’clock.

Which is an eye-opener even for him.

He was tired, but couldn’t sleep, and his joints ached. Six weeks of all-out effort since our last break had taken a toll on his body.

I understood only a fraction of his complaints because I was still half asleep, but I remember clearly I couldn’t even squeeze in a “happy birthday, honey” before he said he was a “stressed-out wreck.”

Wrangling various contractors, who didn’t always see things the same way and argued about it loudly even though we were working inside a former peace-filled church, and making a thousand decisions a day was exhausting. On top of that, he was feeling the pressure of a self-imposed deadline of applying the last coats of polyurethane to the floors before we left to go camping over the long Labor Day weekend. And weeks ago, I made dental appointments for the both of us at 8 o’clock.

Birthday boy wasn’t beginning his day very happy.

Oh, boy, maybe buying and renovating a church wasn’t such a good idea, I thought in my sleepy haze punctuated by Tyler’s tossing and turning.

He finally got out of bed an hour later, and even though I really wanted to fall back to sleep in our warm and now motionless bed, I didn’t get the chance.

Tyler bellowed from the kitchen, “Where is the filter cap?!”

We used an AeroPress manual coffee maker (it really makes the best coffee), but sometimes we lose the filter or the filter cap in the garbage when we dispose of the used coffee grounds. Apparently, whoever used the coffee maker last the previous day—or possibly me when I cleaned up the kitchen though surely I couldn’t have been so sloppy—dropped the filter cap in the garbage. And I had efficiently taken out the garbage the night before, which meant I had to get out of bed to help look for the lost cap which led to us having to dig around yesterday’s cold coffee grounds and other detritus in a garbage bag outside.

I might have raised my voice in complaint.

At 4:45 a.m.

On Tyler’s birthday.

After waking up a bit more and resolving the coffee maker debacle, Tyler suggested we bring our insulated cups of java inside the church. He dragged the rolling office chair and a folding chair into the center of the sanctuary, where sunshine was beginning to stream through the now-clear-glassed windows. We were alone in the church, before any contractors showed up.

Low Talker, our painter, had finished painting the trim and walls of the sanctuary the day before. The room was bright and clean looking. Even though there were tools of various sorts all over the place, just as there had been pretty much nonstop for nine months, we could see how the room was going to look when we were done.

“We’ve come a long way,” I said, attempting to coax out the optimistic morning Tyler I knew and loved.

He was a little reluctant to cheer up. But it was hard to resist sitting in the huge, sunshine-filled room we would soon be living in.

“It’s going to look kick ass,” he said, with an emphasis on the word “kick.”

“Happy birthday,” I said.

“It’s about time,” he said.

“I couldn’t get in a word edgewise while you were complaining,” I said.

“I’m just tired,” he said.

“We just need to power through a few more days,” I said. “Then you’ll get a break.”

“I know,” he said. “It’ll be worth it.”

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Tomorrow: Granddaughter’s door. Read about it here.

It is how you cross the finish line that matters

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: Cabinets throughout the old Methodist church were installed, and the place was beginning to look like a home.

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Like the installation of our balcony railing, the installation of our counter tops was quick and satisfying. A week after the experts came to measure, they returned with finished stone and manhandled it into place. Because of the complexity of our kitchen island, they dry-fitted the granite during that second visit and returned a few days later to glue the finished pieces into place.

countertops in action
Hub of activity.

There was only one hiccup. Part of the beverage bar did not fit the first time. It had to be removed and refinished. Moving massive pieces of quartz and granite is not for the faint-hearted. At least four men were involved with every piece. I was reminded yet again about how heavy construction materials were, and grateful for the named and nameless men who helped us move items into the church.

When they completed their work, I would tour the church in the evenings, when everyone else was gone and quiet had descended on the place. I would pass my fingers along the cool, smooth stone of the countertops and, depending what room I was in, I’d imagine what it would be like to brush my teeth or chop vegetables or make a cup of coffee. We were nearing the point at which we’d have an operational bathroom, bedroom and kitchen which meant we could move into the church. All we needed now was a few tweaks by the electrician and by Glimfeather, our plumber (Glimfeather was on toilet duty, too). We were on to Phase Five: Finishing.

island countertop
Well, if you wanted glorious After shots of the installed granite, you’re going to have to wait (which is fair, since I have to wait, too). But these pictures give you an idea.
beverage bar countertop
Clearly, we’re still in a work zone. This is part of the beverage bar counter top.
master vanity countertop 2
Master vanity counter top.
upstairs vanity with countertops
Upstairs vanity. Those rectangle pieces of packaging paper? Mirrors, silly.

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Tomorrow: Chapter 38 begins, telling of finishing details. Read it here.

Happiness is … a mudroom cupboard with doors

Monica Lee2 Comments

Our story so far: We installed the kitchen and bathroom cabinets in the old Methodist church we were turning into a residence.

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closet window
This was the view from the mudroom into the master closet, with the laundry at the other end.

Throughout construction—especially after drywall—people asking about the window in our closet amused me.

No, we did not design a window into the closet.

But the hole at the end of the closet looked like a window for a while.

Instead, it was a slot for a bank of cabinets in the mudroom. They were designed at a height that would allow us to place a pew beneath them. Yes, a church pew! Tyler had owned this pew for decades; at one time he was responsible for shortening it and refinishing it. It sat just inside the front door of our previous home so people could sit to remove or put on their shoes. It would serve the same purpose in the new mudroom, which led from the garage.

One of our design rules was to build storage into every room, and the mudroom was no exception. A quick look at design magazines and blogs will tell you every homeowner’s headache is the “drop zone” in the entryway forever filled with clutter. A single little pew wasn’t going to cut it. But a bank of cabinets to store keys and purses, shopping lists and shopping bags, flashlights and lightbulbs might do the trick.

Tyler assembled the cabinets, and You-Can-Call-Me-Al installed them and trimmed them out. Suddenly the empty maw into the master closet smiled like an old man with new teeth. No one would be asking about the window in our closet anymore.

mudroom cabinets
The mudroom with the “window” closed.

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Tomorrow: Counter tops, oh joy, counter tops! Chapter 37 wraps up. Read it here.

Sticking to it

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: We installed cabinets like mad when we could finally tackle this phase in the conversion project of the 126-year-old Methodist church.

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Meanwhile, I had been working on the dressers that would become the vanity for the upstairs bathroom. After I painted them, most of the drawers wouldn’t close anymore, so I spent one morning sanding edges. I also dragged my lot of eBay crystal knobs to the hardware store to find appropriately sized screws.

You-Can-Call-Me-Al installed the dressers in the bathroom, created fillers and built a ledge for the makeup table in the center. More work would be necessary; Tyler would have to modify the drawers for the sink, I would have to paint all the added bits and pieces, and we needed mirrors, but like the kitchen, this vanity was ready to be measured for counter tops.

upstairs vanity in place
Crystal knobs: Good call, readers.

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Tuesday: Cabinets for the mudroom. Wait, there’s cabinets in the mudroom? Check them out here.