Our story so far: My husband and I bought a 126-year-old Methodist church to turn into our dream home, and we–with a little help–spent nine weeks demolishing the interior.

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Chapter 16

Activity at the church began to accelerate, as evidenced by the number of checks being written and the volume of building materials accumulating in the church.

One day, a relatively small box—Amazon’s smallest shipping box—was delivered to the front door. I tried to bring it inside, but I discovered abruptly I couldn’t lift it.

“What is that?” I asked Tyler later. “It’s as heavy as a thousand screws.”

“Two thousand, actually. Two thousand nails,” he replied nonchalantly.

So we were embarking on a construction phase requiring at least two thousand nails.

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Tomorrow: “Wood”n’t it be nice? Read it here.

Our story so far: We tried to be careful and responsible as we demolished the interior of the old Methodist church we intended to turn into our home.

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We also were warned we had asbestos in the walls.

If one thought lead and mold were bad, exposure to asbestos was known to cause lung cancer. And eliminating it was expensive. In fact, it was asbestos that had scared us off from going through with the purchase of a church in Pecatonica at one time.

On this project, however, we’d gotten such a good deal on the church, we figured if we found asbestos, we could afford to pay to get rid of it.

One former parishioner reassured us that only love flowed from those walls, and we believed her. But unlike some matters related to a church, this one we could test. We sent three samples to the laboratory: main floor ceiling tile, main floor wall sample and basement flooring, which looked a little suspicious to us. Within twenty-four hours, we’d learned the ceiling and walls on the main floor were mostly cellulose with no asbestos. Cause for celebration!

The avocado green basement floor tiles lovingly installed by a couple who were active members of the church when avocado green was in vogue, however, were 3% chrysotile, a Category 1 asbestos-containing material. Category 1 was the least bad of the three types of asbestos, that is, not brittle, breaks by tearing rather than fracturing and does not easily release asbestos fibers upon breaking.

We got a reasonable quote for professional asbestos abatement, but since our structure was now privately owned, we could legally get rid of it ourselves. When we were ready to refloor the basement, we had the Tyvek suits, goggles and respirators to scrape up the flooring if we decided to go that route. But in the meantime, as long as we didn’t disturb the floor tile, we’d be fine.

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Tomorrow: Hey, this testing business is fun! Read about it here.

Our story so far: We proceed with caution as we renovate a 126-year-old Methodist church into our home.

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Immediately after putting in the offer on the church, our real estate agent sent us a seventeen-page brochure, “Protect Your Family From Lead in Your Home.”

“Many houses and apartments built before 1978 have paint that contains high levels of lead,” the pamphlet warned. The list of health hazards read like a drug ad in an AARP publication: Lead from paint, chips and dust can cause high blood pressure, nerve disorders, muscle and joint pain, memory and concentration problems and digestive problems.

Eek.

So when we finally got inside the church, we tested a number of surfaces. No lead.

Then more than one former parishioner in the church suggested we had a mold problem. The list of symptoms from mold allergies was worse than lead exposure: Everything from runny nose and coughing to internal bleeding and death.

Tyler scoffed at this notion that we had anything more than a pedestrian mold problem, but we disposed of anything porous that was in the basement (where we had witnessed a water problem). One warm December day, early in the demolition process, Tyler donned his Tyvek suit, a respirator and safety goggles and power-washed the entire basement, including the furnace room which once in its history had a coal chute.

Only a Virgo.

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Tomorrow: We get the results of an asbestos test. Read about it here.

Our story so far: Despite what people might have assumed about the recklessness of a pair of 50-somethings in purchasing a 126-year-old building to turn into a home, Tyler was a businessman who’d heard too many horrific insurance claims to pursue a daredevil approach to construction.

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The hazards of remodeling a building as old as the church were many, and we were warned by many well-intended bystanders.

Long before we’d closed, Tyler had already made investments in face masks and safety glasses, purchased in bulk. These came in handy as we removed millions of nails from trim and crown molding (I might be exaggerating about the volume of nails, but not much). Tyler also bought work gloves for the hired man and for me. One of the pairs for me were Level 5 cut-resistant rated; I didn’t even know such a thing existed, but I was grateful for them as we loaded and unloaded scrap metal into the pickup. All this safety equipment was de rigueur when Tyler and St. Johnny removed the tin ceiling in the basement. Since we hoped to reuse the material again, someone standing on a ladder had to peel off each piece of sharp-edged, dust-covered tin, sheet by sheet. The basement was already expansive in square footage, but it gained space in our minds as they spent hours on this task. And I was amazed at the debris that must have fallen from the ceiling (and elsewhere) as I went through Tyler’s jacket pockets on laundry days.

As one might expect of a building constructed only twelve years after the invention of the electric light bulb, the wiring Tyler discovered in the church was like a trip through time. Cloth-wrapped 12-gauge copper wire in conduit and ArmorFlex wiring was mingled with current code-approved Romex wiring. With an abundance of caution (we certainly didn’t want all of our hard work to burn to ashes), all of it would be replaced. And the existing 100-amp circuit breaker box? It would be exchanged for 200-amp service (Tyler confided he could reuse the 100-amp box in the garage).

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Tomorrow: Do they have a test for that? Read it here.

Our story so far: We purchased a 126-year-old Methodist church to turn into our home, and all through the demolition process we found a lot to love in the literal corners of the building and encountered supporters in various metaphorical corners.

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Chapter 15

The final 10 percent of a project is the hardest, and this was true of the demolition phase of ours.

The first 90 percent was no cakewalk. Sure, we revealed some beautiful architectural elements of the church, and that was rewarding, but it required back-aching work. And then there was the suspended ceilings, plaster and lathe, old carpeting, basement pass-through, walls, doorways. Well, it amounted to two thirty-yard dumpsters worth of debris.

But that still left the ceiling of the sanctuary. The twenty-foot ceiling of the sanctuary.

Shortly after we’d closed on the church and realized we’d thrown out the remote controls for the ceiling fans in the sanctuary, Tyler climbed on top of a six-foot rolling baker’s scaffold in order to install pull-chains to the fans to get them to operate. It didn’t work. But Tyler did learn something: His baker’s scaffold shook something awful as he stood there fiddling with his arms above his head, and he didn’t like it. And besides, a six-foot-three man standing on a six-foot scaffold was still eight feet short of the top of the ceiling. (This is probably why most standard family homes don’t have such high ceilings, but I didn’t think of that when I fell in love with the open space.)

As he demoed the rest of the church from a safe altitude, Tyler pondered how he might safely take apart the sanctuary ceiling and put it back together again. Despite what people might have assumed about the recklessness of a pair of 50-somethings in purchasing a 126-year-old building to turn into a home, Tyler was also a businessman who’d heard too many horrific insurance claims to pursue a daredevil approach to construction.

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Tomorrow: We take action to combat potential dangers. Read about it here.

Our story so far: We entered the utilities and mechanicals phase of our home renovation project.

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Demolition had revealed the bones of our old Methodist church, and now we needed to run the veins and arteries and intestines through the structure.

This required detailed planning in order to know where to put sinks and drains, electrical boxes and outlets, heating vents and cold-air returns. Tyler and I had been scheming and debating for eight weeks (well, and two and half months before that), and by now, we had a fairly complete plan in place, both on paper and in spray paint on the floors of the church. By “fairly complete,” I mean we would show a plumber providing a bid exactly where we wanted a shower, and then he would ask us, “what kind of shower head do you want?” and we’d look at each other like, “Hmm, what kind of shower heads are there?” Or the electrician would ask, “Are you going to light your bookshelves?” and we’d look at each other like, “What a great idea! Lighted bookshelves!”

Our floor plan had another missing piece, I learned at a regional home improvement show one weekend in January.

A home and garden show is like a chocolate chip cookie. The boring but necessary ingredients like vendors for basement waterproofing, excavators and roofing materials are punctuated by the chocolate chip hucksters of granite countertops, acrylic shower stalls and designer garage doors. Real DIYers like us passed on the booths populated custom home builders, but we were impressed with innovations on otherwise boring details such as solar tubes, remote control operated shades and automatic lawn mowers.

It was at the garage door vendor where I learned Tyler was planning a thirty-six-foot bar along one side of the garage with a clear glass garage door opening. (Didn’t I mention he was a “go big or go home” kind of guy?).

“What?!” I said, my mouth falling open. “This is the first I’ve heard of this!”

“Some things are on a need-to-know basis,” Tyler said, and resumed discussing the options in tempered glass for garage doors and related costs with the salesman.

Over dinner, I pressed Tyler for details on his man cave and encouraged him to draw up a detailed plan. He obliged, and I learned what he thought I needed to know. (A week later, he was forced to rethink his fantasy garage plans. Alas, the zoning set-back requirement would mean a smaller garage would be necessary; a thirty-six-foot bar might not make the cut.)

In any case, we had some semblance of a plan, so now we would spend weeks running plumbing, wiring and all-new ductwork for the heating and air conditioning through the exposed floors and ceilings of the church. The work of all these skilled laborers would commit us to the floor plan and certain fixtures. We’d better know what we wanted, because once all the mechanicals were sealed behind drywall, changes would be costly. We needed a style book and design plan in order to help us make good decisions, and fortunately, I’d had plenty of time to develop one.

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Tomorrow: Chapter 13 opens with the background to our design plan. Read about it here.