Our story so far: My husband Tyler and I purchased a 126-year-old Methodist church to turn into our home. Three months in, we had completed demolition and were deep into the framing and mechanicals phase of the project.

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Chapter 21

Our Number One design rule was “details matter,” and this was most important starting at the top: The ceilings. The high ceiling in the sanctuary—our future great room—was the whole reason we were interested in a church so we wanted it to look not just good but grand. This is where the finishing work began.

As soon as they had completed demo on the sanctuary ceiling, the drywallers got to work installing the product from which they derived their name: Drywall.

Drywall, for the uninitiated, is a panel made of gypsum plaster pressed between thick sheets of paper. In modern homes, drywall is rarely seen but it literally surrounds us, concealed with paint or wallpaper or paneling inside our walls and ceilings. In the 1950s, it began replacing the traditional lath and plaster as a speedier alternative. We’d removed a good deal of plaster lath from the church to expose areas where we required ducts, pipes and wiring, but on the whole we left it intact where we could because it was strong and secure. But this wasn’t the Sistine Chapel, and we weren’t creating frescos in the plaster. Our sanctuary ceiling required new drywall to replace the fiberboard tiles that were there when we bought the church.

Drywall comes in 4-by-8-foot sheets, and the drywallers chose to get it into the church with a boom truck through the upstairs windows. One might think an eighth-inch doesn’t make any difference in most matters, but not Tyler. He chose 5/8-inch drywall for the sanctuary ceiling because it was stiffer and laid flatter. It was also heavier. At one point, Tyler’s hired man St. Johnny and I moved a few pieces out of the way, and it was like, well, like hitting a brick wall.

But the unwieldiness of these large sheets of drywall didn’t deter the drywall team, even as they navigated scaffolding fifteen feet high and higher. Mudding the seams came next, and in a matter of a few days, they had performed their magic.

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Tomorrow: How many gallons does it take to paint a church ceiling? Read about it here.

Our story so far: We had established we weren’t willing to tile our own shower in the old church we were renovating into our home, but we were going to take a bath on the project if we accepted some of the stratospheric contractors’ quotes we received.

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Then I experienced another one of those moments of serendipity that had been blessing us throughout this project.

I went to the post office to ask about whether we were the getting a mail box or post office box. I had already been there four times and had left without a clear answer.

As I was about to step into line, the man who held open the door for me motioned to let me in line before him.

“No, go ahead,” I said.

But he was a gentleman of the generation when etiquette demanded ladies first (let’s be honest, he looked to be my age). I accepted his offer.

I explained my problem to the man behind the counter, beginning with this description that had become familiar to my lips: “I bought the old Methodist church, and we’re turning it into our home.” Etc, etc.

During a pause in our conversation, the gentleman behind me asked, “You’re remodeling a church?”

“Yup, we are.” I smiled.

“Do you need any help?” he asked.

“Yes! You know anyone?”

“Yeah, me,” he said. “I’m a master carpenter. And I do other things.”

“Do you know any tilers?”

“Yes, I do tiling.”

“Do you have a card?”

He fished a card out of his pocket. By now I was ignoring the postal employee. I read the card, and an old Paul Simon song floated into my head.

“Al? Can I call you Al? Do you have time now? My husband is at the church. He handles all the contractors. You could go talk to him now.”

“Sure,” You-Can-Call-Me-Al said. “Where’s the church?”

And the polite gentleman went to the church, introduced himself to Tyler—You-Can-Call-Me-Al—and told him, yes, he could tile a shower for us, he did it all the time.

Meanwhile, I nailed down an answer on about our mail: We would be getting a box at the post office, not a mailbox.

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Tomorrow: We piece things together. Read about it here.

Our story so far: In the midst of the framing and mechanicals phase of renovating the 126-year-old church into our home, we tackled showers. And it was like having a cold shower—a real wake-up call. The first quote was a doozy.

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We would have to make some compromises. We started by eliminating custom showers on the second-floor and in the basement; we could go with fiberglass surrounds for those showers—only our guests would be using them anyway. We also relegated the basement shower to Phase Eight when we tackled that level; we needed to get the main floor habitable first.

So Tyler went back to the acrylic shower guy and got a quote on the master bathroom shower only: Still $8,728 plus plumbing and fixtures.

Uff-da.

We had two insurmountable hurdles for this shower. It was extra-large so we couldn’t go with a standard insert. And we wanted to maintain an openness in the bathroom that demanded two glass walls. “Extra large” and especially “extra large glass” were pricey.

OK, let’s get another quote, this time for tile. We approached a well-known area remodeler who sent a knowledgeable and efficient estimator to the church. He asked informed questions, performed detailed measurements amidst our dusty church and returned a professional, detailed quote: $12,500. Plus fixtures and plumbing.

Oh, boy.

Well, unless we left out a toilet and sinks, such a beautiful shower was still more than we budgeted for a master bath in the Tequila Budget.

This was a problem.

While shopping for cabinets elsewhere in the church, Tyler spied a do-it-yourself shower option that wouldn’t require us to tile. The material for the shower walls came in full sheets that could be cut to size.

Price for this do-it-yourself option? $7,414 plus plumbing and fixtures.

Well, we were getting warmer, I guess.

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Tomorrow: Serendipity in the form of a gentleman pays us a visit. Read about it here.

Our story so far: Consumed with all things related to HVAC, plumbing and electrical, we were deep into the mechanicals phase of renovating the 126-year-old Methodist church we hoped to turn into our dream home.

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Chapter 19

Few people go through life without hearing the old maxim, “When God closes a door, he always opens a window.” It’s the line a friend uses to impart hope in the face of loss, which appears on the scene in every life occasionally.

This was the case in the old Methodist church, too, literally if not metaphorically. We were going to seal off one of the doorways. Instead of opening a window, though, we were creating a new doorway.

The doorway on the outs was the side entry to the main floor. While we were keeping the exterior entrance which opened to the basement, the three steps up into the main floor were going to become part of our master bedroom which allowed us to incorporate another window into the boudoir. Tyler would have to weave in a new oak floor over the steps, but we salvaged flooring from the other side of the room where we were installing the master shower. When he poked around into the stairway above the departing entrance, he discovered where the stair stringer was cracked, which explained why that stairway was uneven. It would have to be replaced in the reconstruction process.

Just inside that entrance, one could see a peculiar row of nail holes in the beadboard. It didn’t take much imagination to realize those holes were for coat hooks, where generations of Sunday School kids probably hung their jackets. I hoped to keep that beadboard and add more along the new wall where the door was removed; I weighed whether to use of wood putty in the holes or keep that little tribute to what the room used to be.

Meanwhile, we were going to build a door in the north wall of the church to the garage in an area Tyler called the mudroom. But since it was February, and the garage wasn’t going to be built for months, this door would be just a little spray paint and imagination for a while.

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Tomorrow: As in our renovation project, February brought closing and opening doors in real life, too. Read about it here.

Our story so far: Among the finds we made while shopping to outfit the old Methodist church we were turning into a home was a pair of leaded glass windows to decorate the interior balcony.

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Meanwhile, Tyler found another set of leaded glass windows on eBay. Unfortunately, they didn’t survive transport; they arrived in the open package Brown left on our doorstep.

The second set of leaded glass windows were intended to replace the etched glass transoms on the front of the church. One of those windows had a crack in it. The eBay windows were exactly the right dimensions and, coincidentally, they were salvaged from a church in Michigan twenty years ago. The seller never put them to use so she put them on auction. Tyler secured a great deal and we paid $118 to have them shipped and insured, but we kicked ourselves for not driving to Michigan to pick them up ourselves. When they arrived on our front doorstep, nine panes in the two windows were cracked.

We had them insured, but Brown insisted on collecting the windows before paying the insurance. What? To throw them away? We wanted the insurance to pay for repairs.

After wrangling with Brown via email, the shipping behemoth agreed to let us keep the windows and send us a check. Now we had to find an artisan to make repairs on a pair of decades-old windows.

Which we added to our long to-do list. But we had another open window distracting us.

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Coming up: Chapter 19 opens with the truth of a maxim. Read about it here.

Our story so far: From fans to faucets, we were accumulating pieces and parts to install in the old Methodist church we were turning into a home.

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One Saturday while junking, we found a pair of leaded glass windows we couldn’t do without. Every other antique store we’d happened across sold stained glass windows in all kinds of strange rectangles, decorated with gaudy oranges and red glass, and almost always as singles. Nothing was quite right.

We were looking for a matched pair we could install on either side of the balcony doorway. In this way, they would be interior windows and we wouldn’t have to worry about weather-proofing leaded glass. The windows would add decoration to the balcony wall while adding natural light from the second story to the sanctuary.

“Our” windows were on display in an a well-curated antique shop less than ten miles from the church. The leaded glass seemed so much classier to me than so many stained glass windows we had seen; they fit our aesthetic perfectly.

The next weekend, Tyler built a frame for transport from waste lumber accumulated at the church. When we picked up the windows, he sealed the custom-built frame on the sidewalk in front of the store, and then we added them to our collection in the rental unit to await installation with so many other pieces we had collected.

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Tomorrow: Chapter 18 closes with a pair of windows that didn’t travel as well. Read about them here.