Our story so far: With four bathrooms planned for the old church we were converting into our home, we juggled a lot of details in the mechanicals phase of our project.

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One afternoon when I arrived at the church after a day filled with exciting errands like picking up rough-in valves for Glimfeather the plumber and more paint for the drywallers who were making like Michelangelo and painting the cathedral ceiling, Tyler put me to work handing him tools for the construction of a form to contain the floor-leveling compound in which the upstairs shower stall would nestle.

Tyler built sides for the form; the bottom was simply the century-old pine flooring. Leveling compound is similar to concrete, only soupier. After adding water to the dusty compound, Tyler poured the goop into the form.

Immediately, we could hear the dripping.

“Is it leaking?” Tyler said, then more urgently when it was clear it was indeed leaking, “Where is it leaking?”

I ran down the steps and looked in horror at the rainfall of gray, pasty soup dripping through the floor, through the form, through the shower drain hole.

“Everywhere!”

One of the HVAC guys, who had been working in the basement, appeared out of nowhere to rescue a big roll of aluminum foil bubble wrap covered in pasty drips of leveling compound. “What is that?”

“Leveling compound,” I answered.

“Well, it’s leveling all the way to the basement.”

I shoved a tray and a bucket in place to catch drops.

“Get back up here!” Tyler bellowed.

He’d filled in a couple of the holes but we’d lost so much compound through the cracks, we needed more to fill the form. Tyler began mixing again. “Hand me bottles of water.”

Remember, we didn’t have running water in the church yet. The first batch of soup was made with a jug of water collected that morning at the rental house.

Tyler mixed up another batch of soup and dumped it in the form. “Is it still dripping?”

I ran downstairs again to look even though we both knew it was because we could hear it.

“Yup.”

But the waterfall had slowed to a trickle.

When Tyler came downstairs, I asked, “Did you know that was going to happen?”

“Well, they’re old floors. There’s bound to be a few holes.”

“It was pretty holey.”

“Well, that’s right. We live in a church. It’s a holy floor.”

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Tomorrow: Things are looking up as Chapter 21 begins. Read it here.

Our story so far: We were in the building and buying phase of converting an old Methodist church into a home. And picking up stuff for free.

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After we sprang for the rental unit, we justified buying things when the price merited it because we could store them away from the commotion of the church.

One morning when we were on our way to breakfast, eagle-eyed Tyler spied a raft of furniture on the boulevard a block from our rental house. We drove by slowly and stopped—the beat-up headboard looked promising.

The low-profile of the headboard would be perfect on the bed we planned upstairs, where the ceilings sloped. It was solid wood, not veneer. It would need paint, but the iron work added style. And it came with a footboard. And it was free!

We loaded it into the pickup, and dropped it off at the rental unit. Celebrated not with a toast, but with toast. And eggs.

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Tomorrow: Vanity of vanities. All is vanity. Read about it here.

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.