Ah, the basement.

When we bought the old Methodist church, it was a mostly wide-open space with a semi-functional bathroom and a furnace room. With all the square footage and R2 zoning, we knew we wanted some sort of mother-in-law’s apartment here. There were enough windows to provide lots of natural light and three exterior exits, so we knew we could do it without making it dungeon-like. So we transformed the basement into a three-bedroom apartment.

I’ve been teasing a reveal on our basement makeover for what seems like forever. Shall we begin with the kitchen?

Here’s a reminder of what we were working with. The congregation’s basement kitchen offered the typical pass-through for baked goods and casseroles after the worship service. We (and by we, I mean Tyler and St. Johnny) tore this out in the very beginning when we were still renting 40-yard dumpsters by the week.

The congregation left behind a bunch of unmoored cabinets that were mostly empty. In the very back of the biggest ones, where apparently no one could reach, I found treasures like cutting boards, a vintage tomato sieve and a commercial-sized sheet pan. Even the sink was gone! All these beat-up cabinets also found their way to the dumpster.

Tyler knew he wanted to put the new kitchen in this space because we already had a drain.

Months later when You Can Call Me Al joined the team, he offered us used kitchen cabinets he was removing from another client’s house. For free! You betcha we accepted!

The high-end kitchen had beautiful white cabinets. The only problem with them was they were built for a room with 10-foot ceilings. After Tyler and Co. covered the mechanicals, we were working with and an 8-foot ceiling. So instead of leaving room for a backsplash, we just put the upper cabinets right on top of the lower cabinets, leaving a dummy space underneath so we didn’t lose all the counter space. Where we couldn’t use the uppers, Tyler built rustic shelves. Just like the cabinets in the main kitchen, we made what we had work in our space.

Here’s how the cabinets looked before they were anchored. (You can also see all the two-by-four walls in the background that would eventually encase the bedrooms. You can also see all the mechanicals we covered with a ceiling. Amazing the transformative power of dry wall!)

That pole on the far right? There were six of them throughout the basement holding up the main floor. Some of them were encased inside the bedroom walls, but this one in the kitchen would be turned into a decorative (but still functional) column.

Finally, in 2022, we had drywall, flooring, lighting, operational plumbing, cabinets with doors, countertops and appliances. I’m skipping over many steps, but finally, we had a kitchen!

Talk about a home improvement!

Here’s a look from the other direction. You can see there’s still a sort of pass-through over the sink. We even used some of the leftover cabinets for a desk in the corner. The whole space is bright and light and functional.

Anyone who owns any home knows the home improvement projects never end. When the house is new, the projects center around finishing and decorating. When the home is old, look out! The projects tend to be expensive, time-consuming and occasionally overwhelming.

For one thing, the structure that turns 135 years old this year needs a new roof. That might happen this year, it might not. But one project is solidly on the docket for 2026, and we ever want to do the roof, we’re hoping this one is not expensive, time-consuming or overwhelming.

Of all the spaces we have renovated in the ol’ chome over the years, the interior of the belfry has remained pretty much static. The bell tower on top was repaired in 2019 and remains operational. But the little second-story room beneath the bell is pretty retro.

Let’s go back in time to see how it looked when we bought the church in 2017.

Here is the doorway to the belfry the day we toured the church, before we even bought it. All that stuff in the foreground was the leftovers from Sunday School classes.

Here is some of the junk on the shelves inside the belfry.

And most alarming, here is the exterior wall of the belfry. The window had been covered up and we found a bullet hole in it!

Eventally, we cleaned the room out, replaced the window, switched out the door for a new windowed door to let the light into the guest bedroom and painted a coat of primer on the shiplap.

Here is how the shelves looked after we cleaned up and painted. That bell pull was brand new in this picture.

I filled those shelves with hundreds of books, only to revisit the room when I needed a new read. And that’s how the belfry stayed until last fall when I spent several days cleaning it out in order to create a clean slate for home improvement. I have at least a dozen boxes of books with which I could not part that are stored under the eaves.

Here’s how the little belfry room looks now.

At some point this summer, my husband will tackle this room, finishing the wall and floor treatments (not sure yet how) and rebuilding the shelves. I assume I’ll be called into battle to paint.

And then, and then! I’ll get to reshelve all my books. It will be the best little library you’ve ever seen!

I’m writing about it today as a way to making promises to myself (and my faithful readers) that I will fulfill later. So I don’t have the most satisfying after picture for you today, but I hope to share one at some point this year.

In the meantime, I will attempt to chronicle some of the other projects we tackled over the past four years, including the basement and the mancave. Never fear! The projects never end, so I guess neither will this blog. Stay tuned.