Our story so far: As reality has caught up with this blog about converting a 126-year-old Methodist church into our home, I’ve run across a few odds and ends that occurred after I wrote about the subject initially. That’s how it goes with a real-time memoir. Sometimes stuff happens after publication. So this week, I’m sharing a few little stories that will ultimately be integrated into the relevant location in the memoir. Think of this as the time in the novel—especially a mystery novel—when you page back to reread a few passages to remind yourself about what’s going on. Here’s a tidbit for Chapter 18.

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We ordered samples of rigid polyurethane foam beams, and we were duly impressed. Lighter and more durable than actual wood beams and more affordable, these faux beams would be installed on the ceiling of the sanctuary-cum-great room. After getting a look at samples of pecan and antique cherry, we decided to go with antique cherry, and Tyler’s fingers flew across his keyboard getting them ordered.

About ten days later, a semi-truck slowly turned into the street in front of the church. Delivery men (and they were invariably male) frequently looked confused when they compared the address on their clipboards to the building to which they were about to deliver a bath tub, a hearth stone or a bunch of faux beams. When he’d confirmed he was indeed at the right place, he opened the back of the truck to reveal a pile of very long boxes, all with reinforced corners. These foam beams were packaged like crystal wine glasses; the packaging was heavier than the beams themselves. A little team work got the beams of assorted lengths inside the sanctuary, and now we would sidestep them for several weeks until after all the drywall was installed.

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Tomorrow: The back door. See it here.

 

Our story so far: As reality has caught up with this blog about converting a 126-year-old Methodist church into our home, I’ve run across a few odds and ends that occurred after I wrote about the subject initially. That’s how it goes with a real-time memoir. Sometimes stuff happens after publication. So this week, I’m sharing a few little stories that will ultimately be integrated into the relevant location in the memoir. Think of this as the time in the novel—especially a mystery novel—when you page back to reread a few passages to remind yourself about what’s going on. Here’s a tidbit for Chapter 18.

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Tyler was a man with a mission to build his home solidly, and as with many efforts in his life, that meant cooking for eight when only two people were eating dinner.

Our doors would, of course, be solid wood, not hollow core. The church came with a number solid wood doors, so this wasn’t difficult to achieve.

As for drywall, only 5/8-inch would do. In his opinion, standard half-inch drywall did not hang flat or stand up to wear and tear.

Insulation, for all its cotton candy fluff, was another way we built solidly. Besides the attic eaves I insulated and the blow-in insulation Reroofer sprayed in the roof, I spent days rolling the pink stuff between wall studs to keep the cold out, protect pipes and provide a sound barrier between us and the outside world. I imagined us living in a muffled pink cloud bank.

Tyler even gave thought to the connective elements of the church.

Glue, for example, is a pansy in terms of connectivity. If one’s house is glued together, the Big Bad Wolf could blow it down even the morning after a bender that involved copious amounts of cigarettes and whiskey. Nails, well now you’re talking power in terms of connecting solid surfaces. But if you really want two surfaces to stay together, you use screws.

But the big daddy of connective devices is the TimberLok. A TimberLok is a coarse-threaded screw, usually used on larger timbers (as the name implies). In most cases, these expensive babies are not sold by the case; one buys them in a box of twenty at a time. These are not screws to leave in one’s pockets as one’s pants go through the wash. Tyler used TimberLoks in the kitchen header, in the columns holding up the balcony and in whatever warped pieces of lumber he encountered to straighten them out. If a tornado hit the church, we might lose the roof to Kansas but the two-foot thick foundation and the balcony would remain attached to the terra firma.

And then there was the blocking.

At the end of framing, Tyler spent long, boring days nailing blocking between the wall studs and ceiling joists. Blocking creates the sort of solid structures that resist barroom brawls.

More than once, Tyler returned to Home Depot to buy more lumber. “I can’t believe we used all that wood,” he’d mutter.

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Tomorrow: How do you fit a sixteen-foot-long beam into a box for shipping? Read how here.

Our story so far: Who needs duct tape when one has spray paint? I made use of it to rejuvenate a set of crystal chandeliers for use in the old Methodist church we were turning into our dream house.

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I also employed spray paint to bring another set of light fixtures into my rustic transitional design scheme.

The lights we chose to hang in the sanctuary, our new great room, would feel right at home because they had hung there in the past, illuminating church services, baptisms and weddings for a least a decade, maybe a generation or two.

The former pastor had purchased the light fixtures when the congregation moved out sixteen months before we bought the church. She told us one of the members had donated them, so they had sentimental value. When she met us, she offered to sell them back to us for a song, to which we readily assented once we saw them. The design was a nice union of traditional and modern with a hint of religiosity but without overt evangelism. The cross on all four sides of the square fixture was a curved geometric design. Both Tyler and I were honored we could recycle these light fixtures and hang them where they were meant to be.

They needed a little work, and I was the right woman for the job.

I disassembled them, sanded the surfaces, spray painted them hammered black (I tried a few parts in hammered bronze and rejected the two-tone look) and then hauled them all to the glass expert—the same one who would be installing our glass shower door at some point—to replace the dingy shades with seeded glass. They sparkled when he was done.

Now an associate of the Lighting Savant was employed to rewire them, and weave the wiring through the chains from which they would hang from the ceiling. These chains had been left empty and dangling from the ceiling when we took over. More than one member of the peanut gallery observed they were heavy enough to pull a car. Well, we were “building solidly” per our mission statement, weren’t we? These light fixtures would never fall down! Two of the chains were shortened considerably as the lights would be hanging over the balcony.

More than any other light fixtures, these chandeliers excited me. I could hardly wait for the day we would hang them from the beams in the sanctuary.

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Tomorrow: Lights for the hall of history as Chapter 22 concludes. Read it here.

 

Our story so far: We invested in a number of new light fixtures for the old Methodist church we were turning into our home, but we also had big plans for some used ones.

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During demolition, I ran across a quartet of ugly, spider-like lighting fixtures. They were ugly to me because I disliked brass (if you’re a fan of brass fixtures, we’ll just have to agree to disagree; I’d heard brass fixtures were coming back, but that was just one trend I couldn’t endorse). I was so close to getting rid of them, I relegated these fixtures to the donate pile. Tyler stopped me. I didn’t understand why at the time, but he obviously saw something in them I couldn’t see.

Also during those early days of clean-up, I ran across a couple of banker’s boxes full of plastic crystals. I thought they might be Christmas decorations; perhaps they somehow hung on a Christmas tree like icicles. I packed them away with the intention of figuring out how to use them later.

Then, more recently, as we discussed how to run electrical wiring, Tyler and I browsed the lighting displays at a couple of big box stores. We were trying to determine which rooms would have can lighting, where we might put sconces, whether to put light kits on the ceiling fans. The electrician would need to know these nuances when he ran wiring through our ceilings and walls.

While in the lighting department, I was inexplicably drawn to the crystal chandeliers.

This was me being stupid. We didn’t have a ballroom in the church, and I didn’t spend a lot of time in floor-length gowns ordering around the servants. “Chandelier” wasn’t in the rustic transitional design plan.

But. Chandeliers are so lovely! Ethereal even. Evocative of heaven. Fit right into a church!

(I can justify anything.)

I began thinking I could maybe use those Christmas icicles I found in some sort of chicken cage or tin can to create a rustic chandelier (you’ve heard that definition of creativity that suggests putting two opposite things together in a new way? A tin can chandelier would be the dictionary picture for that).

I actually found a modern light fixture like this at Menards, so I’m not delusional. It’s a thing.

But before making this Frankenstein light fixture, I tried using my icicles on the brass light fixtures I found and almost gave away. Couldn’t hurt to try, I thought.

Poof! Magic happened! The crystals were made for the light fixtures. Whodathunkit? (You knew this was coming, right?) Beautiful! Two of them would be offer perfect lighting for the night stands in our bedroom.

OK, they were still brass, but I could remedy that.

Ever hear of spray paint? It’s magic, too. A few years back, Tyler and I turned sofa legs into the coolest curtain rod ends with spray paint (read about it here; it’s worth checking out just for the before-and-after shots).

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Tomorrow: Great light fixtures for a great room. Read about them here.

Our story so far: While shopping for light fixtures for the old Methodist church we were turning into our home, I met the owner of a nearby lighting showroom who described himself as a “lighting savant.”

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While I could have chosen the exact same lights for all the bathrooms, I decided instead to customize each to the space. This wasn’t a hotel we were outfitting after all.

The first lights that caught my eye in the Lighting Savant’s showroom were the ones I chose for the powder room—the big, clear glass bells were distinctive without calling undo attention to themselves.

For the master bath, I wanted narrow up-and-down lights in polished chrome to install between the three arched mirrors I planned above each sink and the make-up area. (Well, to be fair, what I really wanted was lighted, mirrored medicine cabinets, but that idea was shelved when I looked up the prices. Still, these were the most expensive light fixtures of all the new ones in which we invested.)

Upstairs, I planned a full-on farmhouse feel, and this was the bathroom where I planned to paint a pair of old dressers for the vanity. The vanity lights I chose were country-inspired glass in industrial polished chrome. The result had a dash of the nautical.

My new lights would be delivered in two to four weeks. Now I devoted my attention to recycling some of the light fixtures we found in the church. At first glance, some had more potential than others.

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Tomorrow: Chandeliers? Really? Read about it here.

Our story so far: As the electrician wired the old church we were turning into our home, we selected light fixtures.

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The first light fixtures a guest would see upon visiting our new home would be the exterior lights. The existing lights were functional but sadly plain. And too small for my taste. The new lights would frame the castle doors, so we chose contemporary castle mash-up stylistically, and Tyler found a matching set on eBay.

The fixture included seeded glass, which roughed up the design just enough to qualify as rustic. We would employ this strategy on other light fixtures inside the house, too.

In another delivery snafu, one of the light boxes arrived with a distinctive rattle. The round glass—impossible to replace—was a pile of shards in the bottom of the box. Fortunately, the seller offered a quick refund and Tyler bought another immediately. Like our other finds, the lights went to the ever more crowded storage unit.

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Tomorrow: Lighting for the entryway. Read it here.

Our story so far: Reroofer, who once helped us repair the belfry, was enlisted to blow insulation into the roof of the 126-year-old Methodist church we were turning into our home.

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But Reroofer, our agile roof walker, wasn’t finished yet. With an uncharacteristic daytime handoff from Glimfeather the plumber, Reroofer threaded the soil vent pipe through the roof and proceeded to repair the hole in the roof created when we removed the portable gas heater (and accompanying stove-pipe) from the second floor.

A soil vent pipe, for people who only use bathrooms but don’t know how they work, has nothing to do with soil. It runs vertically from the underground drainage system to the roof. The vent allows odors from waste to be released into the atmosphere. By placing it above roof gutter level, no one’s the wiser about the stink of your, shall we say, poop.

For what wouldn’t be the first time, Tyler sent Reroofer up there with a can of black spray paint. I don’t have to remind you that details matter, and who wants a white pipe sticking out of the roof when one could have a black pipe. Not Tyler, the Virgo, who had already spray-painted the exterior vents for the dryer and stove white to match the siding.

Reroofer’s work was impeccable; when he was done, the roof looked as good as new.

A week or so later, the HVAC guys threaded a flue vent liner through the chimney in preparation for the fireplace we were installing in the sanctuary-cum-great room. Before ascending the ladder to straddle the highest peak on the roof, Tyler handed the appointed HVAC guy a can of heat-resistant black spray paint with explicit directions to paint the vent at the top of the chimney.

“What did the HVAC guy say?” I asked later.

Tyler said, “I think he was surprised I had heat-proof black spray paint on hand.”

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Tomorrow: Chapter 22 opens, and the air is electric. Read it here.

Our story so far: Things were looking up in the old Methodist church we were turning into our home when my husband Tyler finished constructing the floor of the balcony in the great room.

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Now we could not just imagine but actually see all the square footage we had added with this balcony. It was magnificent even in its inchoate state. We had essentially added a second living room; one would be able to watch the big-screen TV on the main floor from the balcony. Tyler described the dream recliner he wanted to situate there in all its roomy, reclining leather glory.

But the drawback of all that square footage was all that square footage. We had planned to save a lot of money on flooring by restoring the Douglas fir, oak and pine floors throughout the rest of the main floor and second story. But there was no restoring the plywood flooring on the balcony.

A trip to a flooring store yielded one word when the salesman announced the price per square foot of the carpeting we liked: “Ouch.”

OK, well we could put off that decision (and expense) for a while. Clearly, we would have to shop around. One of the Big Box retailers was summoned to measure and provide a quote, maybe install the ethereal loop-pile carpeting in a creamy white with light gray lattice pattern we saw displayed on an endcap. It was called “Snowflake.” I was reminded of humorist Erma Bombeck who once quipped, “All of us have moments in our lives that test our courage. Taking children into a house with white carpet is one of them.”

“Do we dare install white carpeting?” I asked, polling family members with chunks of Snowflake, Moon Dust and Hammerhead.

“The Hammerhead is safer,” my son-in-law said.

But everyone else voted for creamy white.

I didn’t know if we had the courage required to install such light-colored carpeting in the place. But on the other hand, weren’t we—a couple in their 50s with no children in the house looking to cover a floor far from muddy outside entrances—the perfect candidates for white carpeting?

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Tomorrow: Nailing a railing. Read about it here.

Our story so far: The 20-foot ceiling in the sanctuary—our future great room—was the whole reason we were interested in the old Methodist church so we wanted it to look not just good but grand. 

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As long as the scaffolding was in place (and before we built the balcony), Tyler enlisted the drywallers to paint the sanctuary ceiling. As with the drywall, they were nothing if not efficient. They used a sprayer and an enormous roller to do the work. When I walked into the sanctuary to check their progress, it was like walking into fog; the process created an astonishing amount of airborne particulates. Hours later, a fine white dust covered everything in the room.

What color white? This was another detail that mattered. I didn’t want neon white—this was no hospital—so I chose Behr’s Sleek White in eggshell. It was that or Polar Bear, which had a grayish cast. I hoped I chose well.

How much paint is required to paint a church ceiling? Now we knew. We purchased ten gallons of primer and ten gallons of white paint. I couldn’t even lift the buckets! Then, two days later, I picked up two more gallons of paint so the drywallers could finish the job. Twenty-two gallons. That’s a lot of paint.

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Tomorrow: Building a balcony begins with two steps. Read about it here.