Our story so far: While the drywallers were working inside the old church that would someday soon become our home, Tyler & Crew were pouring concrete outside the church for the future garage.
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Chapter 27
As the lilacs faded and May transformed into June, much activity was occurring inside, outside and around our church-sweet-home project.
The conversations Tyler and I had sounded more like a corporate project manager’s Monday morning update meetings than a conversation between husband and wife.
“I need an update on how much we’ve spent on the garage so far.”
“Do you know when the drywallers are coming today?”
“When are you going to pick up that replacement siding?”
“When will you have a few minutes to look at that bathroom vanity with me?”
“Find the fireplace receipt—I need to return those parts.”
“I need the key to the rental unit so I can drop off the lights.”
“Listen to this voicemail from the carpet guy and let’s discuss.”
“What did the spiral stairway manufacturer say about the timeline?”
“Did You-Can-Call-Me-Al finish grouting the shower today?”
“Remind me to buy window wells tomorrow.”
“Have you heard from the guy who’s supposed to measure the shower?”
“Did you pay the concrete company?”
“You need to get back to the spiral stairway manufacturer about the stairway railing material.”
“Did the carpet guy call you back?”
The first time I finished with this message, I realized I forgot a “not,” completely confusing the meaning. Dumbhead typos.
We were spinning like tops, just trying to keep our equilibrium.
It seemed as though nothing was getting accomplished, but it was a big project with a lot of moving parts. In fact, we were ticking off a number of items on our to-do list. If we had been remodeling only the bathroom or building only a garage, these “little” tasks would have been big steps to completion. They only seemed small in the face of the mountain of all we had yet to get done.
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Today’s headline comes from author Deepak Chopra.
Tomorrow: Ticking another little task off the list. Check out the dramatic changes here.
Our story so far: My husband and I had spent months transforming a 126-year-old Methodist church into a home.
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Chapter 26
All the screen time Americans had been accumulating over the years has had a toxic impact not only on our attention spans but in our landfills.
We inherited—or bought, I guess—an old tube television when we acquired the old Methodist church. It sat in the basement in all its bloated 1980s glory, who knew if it worked anymore. We planned sleek flat-screen televisions in our new space, and even if the old TV worked, it didn’t work for us. I was reminded of a college art project in which we students removed the tube screens from old console televisions and created dioramas inside that made high-minded cultural statements of one sort of another. We recycled and learned something at the same time. Win-win.
That was 1987. The television landscape had changed in thirty years.
All the locations that accepted our old housewares like Goodwill and Restore wanted nothing to do with old electronics. Old televisions were as desirable as old cassette tapes. Ancient technology.
OK, so we’d recycle it. I did a little checking around.
Would the garbage man take it away? Nope.
How about the scrap metal yard where we’d hauled several truck loads of heating ducts, aluminum siding and copper-studded hunks of metal? We would leave there with enough jingle in our pockets for lunch. Alas, no. A big sign declared “No TVs.”
I recalled recycling a number of electronics in the past at Best Buy. Would the Big Box store take our TV?
Sure. For a price: Twenty-five dollars to recycle one old TV.
Wow.
Old television sets are filled with toxic components like lead, mercury, flame retardants, cadmium, beryllium and other terms one hasn’t heard since eighth grade chemistry. The value of the good stuff—platinum, gold, silver and copper—doesn’t outweigh the trouble of responsibly getting rid of the bad. It’s a huge problem in a society where its citizens upgrade their computers and TVs more often than they observe leap year. Think about how many television sets you’ve owned in your lifetime. Where are they now? The landfill?
I wasn’t the only one struggling to dump a TV. Once I realized how difficult it was to get rid of an old TV, I began seeing them everywhere. One of our neighbors left eight—eight! I counted!—televisions and computer monitors on the curb for four months, through drifting snow and falling rain. We wrinkled our noses in disgust every time we drove by. Then we left for a getaway one weekend, and when we returned, they were gone.
These old TVs were loved once. But no more.
Other folks in town had less obvious eyesores in their yards. A TV here, a couple there. Our rental house had a TV in the dungeonesque basement. I fantasized about playing the village TV fairy—taking all of them away and paying the reverse ransom to get rid of them.
Though troubled by the problem of excess and the resulting detritus, I was too cheap to play fairy.
We didn’t have the space to keep even one junk TV in the basement of the church, and we had too much pride to leave it sitting on the curb indefinitely. I sacrificed a lunch one day and ponied up the cash to let Best Buy take the dinosaur TV off our hands.
Part of me felt morally superior for getting rid of the old TV responsibly. And part of me felt guilty for coveting the flashy flat-screen models on display.
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Tomorrow: Some old things get more valuable over time. Read about it here.
Our story so far: As we renovated the old Methodist church into our home, we chose stone for the fireplace and the counter tops, and we were pleased with the poured concrete for the garage.
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The easiest stone to install at the church was the decorative rock we purchased to border the exterior.
The gravel that was there was old, tired and indistinct. Tyler wanted to freshen up the look, so he took me to the nearby landscaping supply store (where we had ordered a fireplace hearth) to browse the options. In the past, we might have used fresh mulch next to the foundation of the church, but we did that with the first house we owned together, and it just invited bugs inside. So we left the mulch to insulate the roots of the bushes on the perimeter of the church property.
Concrete bins as far as the eye could see offered up gravel options.
Until that morning, I had no idea there were so many different gravels, rocks and crushed stones with which to decorate a yard. Like to many things in my life, I just wasn’t paying attention. We could choose from every shade of gray and brown, plus a few blues and reds, in every size from pea gravel to boulders.
Grey Slate: Hmm, that would be a great nom de plume for a romantic novelist.Gravel with flare.
We were drawn to the grey slate with its rocks shaped to skip across a pond. It glittered in the sun with fifty shades of grey, mind you, not gray. I liked the cool blue hue which I didn’t know at the time but was very pleased to realize coordinated perfectly with the color the foundation was already painted.
We also chose some edge stones. Tyler and his hired man St. Johnny sweated it out to place the stones and spread the slate, and when they were done, it rocked.
The church, in her new grey slate flounce, is winking at you.
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Tomorrow: Chapter 25 opens with the story of another construction project. Read about it here.
Our story so far: We were in the midst of the heavy lifting—it was all things stone—for the old Methodist church we were turning into a residence.
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The footings had been poured. Untold loads of gravel hauled in. The steps formed.
After a couple of rain delays, it was time to pour the foundation for the garage.
Tyler was so excited that day, he got up even earlier than normal. He couldn’t wait for me to provide breakfast. He left before I got out of bed and pressed McDonald’s into service.
Dawn breaks over the foundation job.
Tyler had ordered 6-1/2 bag mix concrete, the importance of which, like nuances of 5/8-inch drywall versus half-inch drywall, escaped me. The higher the number of cement bags added to the mix, the stronger it is and the better it performs when exposed to freeze-thaw cycles, as our garage would be on the north side of a southern Wisconsin house. Something about how the finishers finished the edges of the concrete also pleased Tyler.
All I knew was that it looked mighty smooth and flat when the day was done, which is all you can ask for in a good floor.
So smooth you can see your reflection.
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Tuesday: Chapter 24 concludes with a few chips off the old block. Read it here.
Our story so far: We saved some money by choosing quartz remnants, rather than a whole sheet, for the miscellaneous counter tops in the 126-year-old Methodist church we were converting into a home.
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The back lot of the nearby counter top store had a few distinctive gems—strange yet beautiful hunks of stone that would require display in a small, special place. I had just the place for one of these pieces.
I snapped a quick picture of the antique coat rack when I saw it in the store, and I guess I captured an image of a shopper, too! Note the half-circle shelf.If this isn’t a mirror fit for an evil stepmother, I don’t know what would be! Who’s the fairest of them all?
Earlier in the year when we visited a nearby antique shop, a mirrored coat rack caught my eye. I thought I could create my own using a piece of stone and the ornate Mirror, Mirror on the Wall Tyler had purchased at an estate sale months right after we put an offer on the church. To support the shelf, I figured we could repurpose a corbel that had been used on the former decorative beams in the sanctuary. This would be both functional and beautiful in the front entryway of the church.
As I was shopping the back lot and describing this small half-circle piece I needed, the upbeat salesman directed me to a small piece of marble. It was mostly black with white veining and splashes of cinnamon and latte—stunning. Marble is porous, which means it’s susceptible to scratches and staining and therefore not the best choice as counter top for someone who actually cooks in their kitchen. It’s also expensive by the sheet. But a little bit of remnant would be just fine for my coat rack. I stared at it, squinting my eyes to imagine it in place.
Then the salesman told me the name of it: Michelangelo.
“Yeah, I need a piece of that,” I said.
Now that’s a standout piece of marble!
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Tomorrow: A work of art of another sort. Read about it here.
Our story so far: As we renovated the old Methodist church into our home, stone played a role in the design of our fireplace and bathrooms.
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This is a shot of our master shower, half tiled. But we’re getting there!
Our custom shower needed a curb, for which we wanted quartz. A shower curb is the threshold and door frame where the glass door hangs. Normally, homeowners choose the same material for the curb as they do for the vanity, but we didn’t have that luxury with our remnants. But in the midst of the back lot stacks, I found an oddly shaped remnant of Cambria quartz in Torquay, described in Cambria’s marketing materials as “an instant classic, Torquay offers a beautiful marble-like appearance that’s both posh and continental, much like this English Riviera town itself.” The copy writer had me at “marble-like.” Is posh transitional? I decided it was. The remnant I found would yield the pieces we needed to complement the tile in the shower.
For an idea of how much money we saved by using quartz remnants, we acquired a quote for a new piece of quartz on the beverage bar, a space of roughly eighteen square feet, that came to $2,353, measured, fabricated and installed. The remnant we chose for that space came to $928. And by shopping remnants, I took advantage of an opportunity to select a stone I would never be able to afford if I were buying entire sheets of it.
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Tomorrow: Have I lost my marbles? Read about it here.
Our story so far: When it came to shopping for counter tops in the old Methodist church we were turning into our home, we had one thing in mind: Remnants.
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Shopping the stacks of stone in the counter top shop’s back lot was a little like shopping in a high-end purse retailer—everything looked good. But choosing remnants for the bathrooms vanities was straightforward. I knew I wanted light and clean so I zeroed in on anything white. Because we chose to insert makeup nooks at a slightly lower elevation than the counters in both vanities, we didn’t require long remnants which were a rare commodity in the piles of odds and ends.
Biano Gioia, Italian for white joy
For the upstairs vanity—the repurposed dressers painted in light aqua and dark gray—I choose a white quartz with gray veining called Bianco Gioia.
For the master bath vanity.
The master vanity had dark wood lowers and cream-colored upper cabinets, so I found two similar looking white quartz pieces sprinkled with brown called Soprano and Clarino.
This picture shows Intermezzo against the main kitchen cabinets, which already have a dark granite counter top, but I was making sure Intermezzo would complement the scene.
The kitchen beverage bar was tricky. The cabinets were a different color than the main kitchen so we wanted something light-colored but also something on which we could prepare coffee, which is known to stain countertops. I really would have loved something with blue in it, but none were to be found. None of the suitably colored remnants I saw in the back lot of our countertop shop were big enough. We resigned ourselves to getting a half sheet of quartz, or at least acquiring a quote on one. So we shopped the sample rack inside and found a quartz called Intermezzo, a creamy cross between beige and gray with threads of black to create a crackle effect. (Intermezzo, musically, is a short connecting instrumental piece in an opera, so the quartz—between dark and light—was aptly named.) I borrowed the sample to compare it to the cabinets in our rental unit and determined it was It. When I returned it to the countertop shop, the upbeat salesman (who had seen our display kitchen when his firm disassembled the granite) confirmed our choice.
“That’s perfect!” he confirmed. And then what he said thrilled me: “And we have a couple of remnants of that.”
Apparently, I had overlooked them when I was shopping the back lot. He just knew his inventory better than I did.
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Tomorrow: We choose stone for the curb in the shower. Check it out here.
Our story so far: We rocked on as we chose stone for the fireplace and various elements of the 126-year-old Methodist Church we were turning into our house .
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When it came to shopping for countertops, we had one thing in mind: Remnants.
Sure, I dreamed of quartz countertops early on when anything I could dream was valid and we knew laminate was out of the question. No one on HGTV installed laminate countertops.
Quartz, of course, doesn’t come cheap. But we lucked out when we bought the display kitchen that offered the granite countertop for “free,” noting we would be extricating it at our own risk. Free’s good, especially for granite, so we paid a pro to remove it and store for a tiny fraction of what it would have cost to buy new. Granite is not quartz but. Free.
That left us with a long list of other countertops to procure: The beverage bar off the kitchen, the master bathroom vanity and the upstairs bathroom vanity. We also decided to use quartz for the curbs on the master shower. And I had an idea for a mirror in the front entryway that would require a tiny shelf.
Do you see dollar signs yet?
We could have chosen a single sheet of granite or quartz and used it throughout the house, but in another bit of locational luck, a custom countertop dealer had a retail shop only four blocks from the church. Driving by the establishment revealed they had what looked like a lot leftovers in their back lot. Hundreds of really lovely leftovers.
These are just a few of the remnants tempting drivers-by at the local countertop shop. I learned later that some of them were already called for, but still, a lot of options.
I was determined to find remnants for all our stone needs which would save us a little money and, I believed, add some interest to our home. We weren’t doing a California flip house, after all, and we didn’t want a slick, matchy-matchy look.
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Today’s headline is a Japanese proverb.
Tomorrow: Some of the deals I scored. Check them out here.
Our story so far: We chose to clad the fireplace chase in the great room of the converted Methodist church with a manufactured stone, and we found an old barn-wood beam we could use for the mantel.
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Besides sweat equity, one last piece was required to complete the fireplace.
Before we started shopping, the fireplace was all one thing in my mind: The fireplace. I didn’t understand that a fireplace consisted of a firebox, the chase, the mantel and the hearth, and other parts, too, that I couldn’t describe, let alone name. All priced separately, of course. Building a fireplace was like choosing the upgrades of an SUV; long ago when I purchased a Dodge Durango, the salesman asked me if I wanted a back seat. A back seat? Of course I wanted a back seat! Durangos come without back seats?!
Of course, we wanted a hearth for our fireplace. Historically, hearths are associated with home and family because the hearth was the main source of heat in a home and where meals were cooked. We wouldn’t have embers popping out of the fire, but without a hearth, a modern fireplace looks unfinished.
I had no idea where one purchased hearths. Oh! The fireplace store. Of course. But Tyler led us to a landscaping store located on the fringe of our little village. Modern Pinterest-worthy backyard patios feature fireplaces, so our landscaping supply firm did indeed sell hearths. And they would deliver. Not just to the front door but inside to the back of the great room. Which was important because we chose a seven-foot long solid slab of Indiana limestone. Like every other construction material, it was heavy as, well, heck.
Limestone, for those interested in recalling ninth grade geology, is formed of calcium carbonate, deposited over millions of years as marine fossils decomposed at the bottom of a shallow Midwestern sea. Because of Chicago’s proximity to Indiana, limestone was used extensively in rebuilding the Windy City after the Great Chicago Fire, which occurred two decades before our little Methodist church was constructed. The Pentagon, the Empire State Building, the new Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and churches, university structures and courthouses across the country feature Indiana limestone in their exteriors.
And now we had a piece of it in our living room.
We only purchased enough limestone for the visual part of the hearth. The landscaping supply firm delivered it right to where it will be in perpetuity.
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Today’s headline is a quote from Blessed Teresa Maria of the Cross, Carmelite nun and founder of many Italian schools in the early 20th century.
Tomorrow: Stone for the countertops. Read about it here.
Our story so far: We found some good-looking, affordable manufactured stone veneer for the fireplace in the great room of the old Methodist church we were converting into a home.
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You know how when you’re looking for something, you tend to find it everywhere? In that way serendipity works, we happened by a fireplace store on the way home from the manufactured stone showroom. The young salesman was well-informed about all things fire (including some envy-worthy outdoor grills we’d like to own at some point when we had free time to drink red wine and grill juicy steaks), and he was happy to show us some heavy-duty manufactured wood fireplace mantels. Unfortunately, the longest one he offered measured six feet; we needed seven. And his price was appalling.
Tyler began asking around for barn beams he could repurpose into a mantel, but he met with little success. We weren’t the only people who aspired to a rustic look, making barn wood beams all the rage and therefore, pricy.
So Tyler once again turned to Craig’s List, and before long, a real barn beam turned up. The seller was asking only about a quarter of what we would have paid for the too-short manufactured beam.
But he lived in downtown Chicago. Ninety minutes of high-volume traffic away.
My kind of town, Chicago is, if you’re content to ride the “L,” the city rail system. Or flag down a rude taxi driver. Or take your chances with Uber. If you’re driving a car, it’s a video game of narrow one-way streets filled with parked cars and obnoxious jay walkers who pop out of nowhere in the middle of the block.
And driving a nineteen-foot extended cab pick-up through Chicago’s residential streets only amps up the stress.
Well, the seller lived on a street like that.
But we managed to connect with him in front of his brownstone where we double-parked briefly, and he showed us to the alley behind his house. As he flipped open his garage door, the barn wood beam inside seemed to glow. I swear could hear the sort of cinematic music set to Bo Derek’s beach scene in the movie “10” (am I dating myself?).
This hand-hewn barn-wood beam was perfect.
Eight feet long and ten inches square, this beam could have been a model for an authentic looking manufactured wood mantel. Because it was as authentic as it gets. It even sported a rusty nail.
The seller told us he personally removed the beam from the peak of a 122-year-old barn near Dyersville, Iowa, and transported it to Chicago to use part of it in his house. If Dyersville sounds familiar, it’s because “Field of Dreams” was filmed there in the midst of America’s most iconic corn fields.
“What do you think?” Tyler asked me in a tone of voice he used when he didn’t want to show the seller how much he really wanted it.
“Sure, if that’s the look you’re going for,” I equivocated.
“Will you take $200?” Tyler asked the seller. He only asked this so he could say he tried.
“$275. Firm. You won’t find another beam like that for less than three times the price.”
The seller knew his product.
“Pay the man,” Tyler told me.
Now we had to get the beam home. It weighed two hundred pounds if it weighed an ounce.
Fortunately, the seller was willing to help. He and Tyler wrangled it into the back of the truck (tailgate down), and we secured it with a tie-down. But let’s be honest. If the beam was going to fall out of the truck when we were driving down the interstate at seventy-five miles an hour, no puny ratchet strap was going to stop it. We would have just kept going.
As we were driving away through the narrow alley, our perfect fireplace mantel in tow, Tyler marveled at his exquisite find.
“Kinda crazy though,” Tyler mused. “I thought I’d find one way out in the country, and I ended up finding one in downtown Chicago.”
We successfully transported the barn beam home, where Tyler pressure-washed 122 years of dust off it. Here, it’s drying in the sun outside the church.
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Tomorrow: What a home without a hearth? Read about it here.
