Tag: Home Improvement

The fondest memories are made when gathered around the table

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: Room by room, the old Methodist church we’d renovated into our home was taking shape.

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Once the movers completed their work, boxes literally everywhere surrounded me. I chose to start unpacking in the dining corner of our great room because we expected visitors: My stepdaughter, our son-in-law and our granddaughter were coming for dinner, and I wanted to entertain on new dining room table.

The table and a china hutch had been delivered a week before. Both were enormous, and I was glad I wasn’t one of the guys hauling it inside. We found them at a nearby importer situated on a farm in the middle of nowhere. Most of their goods were imported from Asia, so the farm had a wide selection of stone Buddas and Hindi gods, but it also offered unique jewelry, colorful dishware, one-of-a-kind furniture, hand-woven rugs and cotton bedding.

dining room table
We’ll call this the dining corner, instead of the dining room.
table legs
Pay no attention to the furniture pads acting as temporary rugs in the dining corner.

When we moved out of our old house, we’d vowed never to buy new unupholstered furniture again after selling off so many pieces for chump change, but the legs on the teak table at the importer were just the unique touch we wanted in a rustic table. We’d never find something so cool on Craig’s List.

china hutch
This is the grand sight that greets me every morning as I walk out of my bedroom, and it impresses me still.
china
My china has the flowers; grandma’s has the simple silver rim.

Ditto for the china cabinet which was the perfect size for the corner of the great room. I’d never owned a piece of furniture like it, and I longed to display the china I inherited from my grandmother when she moved out of her home. As I unpacked the box of her china, a box of my own china and a box of pink Depression glassware my mother gifted me, I realized: This was a big china hutch. I had more than enough display space.

We found six dining room chairs on sale at a nearby mass market retailer. Tyler picked them out, and I was amazed at how well these chairs matched our teak table, which I dressed in table runners my mother sewed just for this purpose and a tray of candles I found among my packed dishes.

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Tomorrow: Guests! Read about their visits here.

 

It’s all about finding the calm in chaos

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: We moved into the old Methodist church we had converted into a residence.

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The movers and I also transported dozens of boxes of books, office supplies (we had an abundance of boxes labeled vaguely as “office”), home décor and odd boxes of speakers, speaker wire and “cords.” When we’d moved out of our previous house nearly two years before, I distinctly remembered dumping a literal ton of paperwork and boxes of weird wires. But still, we had a lot. At some point later in the week, Tyler would sort through all these extension cords, phone chargers and computer connecting wires; among the ephemera, he’d find one of my old cell phones which he plugged in to recharge.

Meanwhile, the Big Box guys arrived. Tyler had prepared and installed the television bracket above the fireplace with a typical overabundance of caution. Whatever was hung on that bracket would never come down. Ladders were erected, a whole bunch of plastic and cardboard packaging was removed from the state-of-the-art TV, and with great care, two guys lifted it into place and secured. Within a few minutes, rich pink flamingos in high definition was strutting across Tyler’s enormous television. The hairs of every feather were visible. Just like in the commercial, he was glued to the screen while chaos ensured around him. Joanna Gaines would never approve of such a monstrosity, but Tyler was well pleased.

TV
With three inches of play on either side of the television, one of the movers noted, “It could have been bigger!”

Among the items we were moving in was our sectional sofa. We had gotten rid of most of our furniture when we moved out of our house two years before, so when we moved into the rental house over the winter, we needed somewhere to recline in the evenings; we invested in an enormous sectional that we barely squeezed into the tiny rental house. Now, in our great room, it looked normal sized. We intended to invest in a couple of other chairs and other pieces, but for now, all Tyler required was this sofa, situated to take best advantage of the fireplace and TV.

sectional
Here’s the balcony view of our sectional. Imagine a different rug, a sofa table, an end table (and more seating near the fireplace). But it’s an abundant start.

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Tomorrow: Grandma’s china gets displayed in the dining room. Read about it here.

I cook with wine; sometimes, I even add it to the food

Monica Lee4 Comments

Our story so far: My husband and I slept in our new home for the first time, ten months after we’d purchased an old Methodist church to turn into our residence.

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Monday dawned. If ever a man could be labeled as a rolling stone, it was Tyler. He gathered no moss on this day, two days after we first slept in the church. The movers were scheduled to arrive at 8 a.m. The guys from the electronics Big Box store had also confirmed they would arrive with Tyler’s new television between 8 and 10 o’clock. And, just to make things interesting, Reroofer had agreed to come and execute a mini demolition of the belfry that morning. Tyler was looking at the calendar, and he figured if he was going to repair those pilings that supported the bell before winter, he’d better start now.

I was assigned to supervise the movers who were to empty one of our rental units and our cargo trailer. First object of interest: The used six-burner stove we’d scored on Craig’s List and stored since early spring. It was time to haul it into the church.

She was heavy, that stove (everything seemed heavy at this point in the project), and the movers earned their pay hiking it into our pickup, back out of the pickup, up the entryway steps and into the kitchen. A few gymnastics were required to hook up the gas behind the stove and exit this space again, but Tyler and one of the movers persevered. Tyler reattached the oven door and fired up the gas. Remember, we’d purchased it used and never hooked it up to natural gas because we had no place to do so. Had we acquired a good deal? Or a bum one?

Church Sweet Home Stove and Tile Rug
Here’s the stove, in place. You can see our tile rug, too, set into the Douglas fir wood floor.

Burner One ignited. Burner Two ignited. Burner Three ignited. Four, Five, Six and the oven, too. We were cooking with gas, baby!

Having an operational stove was a real turning point. I could now move all our food into the church. I would unpack boxes of cookware—soup pans, woks, cookie sheets! Instead of cooking a tiny RV kitchen or a poorly equipped rental house, I could whip up creations as I used to. I dreamed of stews and chilis, muffins and cookies. It was autumn, and I would have been drawn into the kitchen anyway. Now I could use this enormous new stove in my properly equipped kitchen, and I was inspired to chop and dice like never before.

Church Sweet Home Kitchen with Stove
In this further off view, one can see the island, now clad in granite, and the bar stools around the “tongue” of the island with the beverage bar in the background.

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Today’s quote is a joke of W.C. Fields, an early twentieth century comedian.

Tomorrow: TV land! Read about it here.

Everything gets better with coffee

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: After months of work, my husband and I moved into the 126-year-old Methodist church we had converted into our residence.

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We woke up the next morning, feeling refreshed after sleeping on our favorite bed. A Sunday. I found this somehow significant, even though we weren’t conducting any services. First day of the week. First day living in the church.

Church Sweet Home Beverage Bar
The beverage bar with all the pieces in place.

First task: Making coffee. At the beverage bar. The extra-deep counter had room for all our coffee-making paraphernalia, and a little sink to rinse off the Aeropress when we were done. But on this day, Tyler brewed us a whole pot. We sat at the island—because we’d hauled in the bar stools when we brought in our bed—and we enjoyed our comfortable seating. I saw everything with new eyes because I was no longer planning it or walking by it mid-construction, I flipped the light switches, I stood over the countertop, I ran the faucet to rinse a cup. It was all so weird.

When the time came, I walked over to the Congregational church only a block away to worship. And I said a little prayer of thankfulness.

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Tomorrow: Filling the closet. Read about it here.

Your paperwork has been approved

Monica Lee7 Comments

Our story so far: We found an old Methodist church we wanted to turn into our home in September 2017, we took possession in November, we finished demolition in January and we spent the next seven months renovating the first and second stories from top to bottom.

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Chapter 40

Tyler placed a call into the building inspector and asked him to drop by when he had a few minutes to inspect the church.

“We’re hoping to move in this week,” Tyler said.

Move. In.

We had a flushing toilet and a shower. The bedroom needed only a bed. The kitchen had a sink, a fridge and a hole for the stove. We were within a hair’s breadth of having the operational bathroom, kitchen and bedroom the building inspector told us nearly a year before that we would need before he would allow us to occupy the church.

Very early the next morning before the sun had completely risen above the horizon of the village, Tyler and I were standing in our master bedroom gazing at the ceiling where he was showing me the wonders of the high-tech rope lighting that had been tucked into the crown molding of the tray. Tyler was fiddling with the app on his phone, changing the colors like he was operating a disco ball. I spied movement out of the corner of my eye. The building inspector was standing in the doorway to the hall of history.

“Come on in,” I said. “Check out our ceiling lighting.”

He gamely observed our superfluous bedroom lighting. The last thing the building inspector cared about was our disco vibe.

I skeedaddled, leaving the foreman to show off our work and acquire a permit.

Which he did. A few minutes later, Tyler handed me a piece of paper that specified we were the proud recipients of a temporary habitational permit. All that was outstanding was listed as “life safety,” that being smoke detectors (which were installed later that afternoon) and hand rails on the stairways.

We could move in! We could move in! I carefully folded and filed our permit, smiling ear to ear.

This was the relay handoff for which we had been sprinting.

That was a Tuesday. We were allowed to sleep in the church/home, but we didn’t yet have our big, beautiful king-sized Sleep Number bed in it. With all the distractions of construction, finishing and cleaning, it would take until Saturday to move all the pieces of the bed into the chome and assemble them.

We tackled the job in relative privacy on Saturday and accomplished the task. Planning ahead, we rolled out a new rug and dressed the bed in new bedding.

With our gleaming chandeliers, the rustic feature wall and our funky night stands made out of safes, our master bedroom looked like one straight out of Pinterest.

Church Sweet Home Master Bedroom
Now doesn’t that looking inviting? We found those rustic church windows at an antique store months ago, and they’re just the right accent on that half-wall headboard. (Feel free to Pin this.)
Church Sweet Home Tray Ceiling
You’re just going to have to trust me on the tray lighting. You can’t see it in this picture, but it’s ethereal after dark.

 

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Tomorrow: First shower. Read about it here.

Even a stopped clock is right twice a day

Monica Lee2 Comments

Our story so far: The finishing phase in our church conversion project was where the rubber hit the road. We encountered so many challenges, our wry son-in-law joked he was going to start a competing blog called “Everything Wrong With the Church” and reveal all our mistakes.

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The finishing detail that made me thunk my forehead with my palm came not with an element of the church, but with a piece of furniture. It was a project that spread itself over a couple of weeks and required attention from both me and Tyler.

headboard
Beat up maybe, but this abandoned headboard and footboard had potential.

The beat-up headboard and footboard we found on the side of the road in early spring? We would need a guest bed sooner rather than later, so I spent a weekend painting it. The project put me in the way of any number of contractors who required space or basement access, but it needed to be done. I ran out of paint before I finished so I used some leftover paint in a close match to finish the back (no one would ever know—unless they read the blog about Everything Wrong With the Church). When it was dry, St. Johnny and I hauled it upstairs taking care not to ding the drywall.

Via a friend, we sourced a barely-used mattress set that came with a bed frame. We counted ourselves lucky because our benefactor of the headboard and footboard did not bestow us with the frame. Tyler and I hauled it to the church, and as we were about to shove the box spring up the back stairs, we realized it wasn’t going to fit (this was a throughway designed for Sunday schoolers, not queen-sized box springs). OK, so we enlisted a few contractors to help shove it over the balcony railing the next morning.

As we set to assembling the bed frame, we realized it was designed for a headboard only. There was no way to attach the footboard. OK, so Tyler jerry-rigged a solution, spray painted it out in the yard and hauled it upstairs. Because it was jerry-rigged, it required an inordinate amount of grunting and number of screws to assemble. OK, Tyler grunted and succeeded. He and St. Johnny lugged the box spring into place …

And Tyler called me upstairs.

“Your bed doesn’t fit,” he said in summons.

“Okayyyy,” I said slowly. “Whaddya mean ‘my bed doesn’t fit’?” I had measured the headboard and knew it would be a tight fit for nightstands, but I also figured I could find a creative solution (what’s Pinterest for anyway?). I joined him at his side, looking at the bed.

“It’s not a queen headboard,” Tyler said. “It’s a king.”

headboard too big
Um, yeah. That’s not a queen size headboard and footboard. Nice paint job though.

We had plucked it from the street. Unloaded it into our rental unit. I had moved it to the church to paint, and touched every square inch of it. St. Johnny and I had moved it upstairs. I had measured it to determine what kind of nightstands would fit. Tyler built a frame on it to fit a queen mattress. And not until the mattress was in place did we realize the headboard was king sized.

Do you suppose we were a little distracted?

The queen mattress with the king headboard looked ridiculous. It was all wrong.

“Well, I guess we’ll be moving this down to the basement when we finish a bedroom down there,” I shrugged. There was no modifying it. “One of our guest beds in the basement will be a king, I guess.”

When we looked back upon all these finishing mistakes, they were small things. The oven fit perfectly. The kitchen sink worked like a dream. The chandeliers in the bedroom were beautiful. The shower drained like it should and felt like a luxury to use. So many things fell into place, even without a documented plan.

So the headboard was the wrong size. It made for a good story. Who’s to say it wasn’t meant to be?

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Tomorrow: Move-in day. See the master bedroom here.

There are no big problems; there are just a lot of little problems

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: Little problems arose in the finishing phase of the old Methodist church renovation.

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In one of his last acts, Glimfeather our plumber determined the faucet in the powder room—the one we’d acquired for an amazing deal in a display vanity—didn’t have all its parts. During the test, water sprayed everywhere. A fail. Another vendor complaint would have to be issued. Another reason to see Glimfeather again.

open handle in shower
We can thank Joanna Gaines for this awesome design feature. But I bet she washes her hands of it. Ha!

Then I had buyer’s remorse about the trendy glass cut-out handle I’d specified so precisely for the master shower door. After it was installed, and I admired it repeatedly, I noticed it was impossible to use without leaving fingerprints. This was one of those mistakes that couldn’t be fixed with a new coat of stain or a store return. There was no going back. Windex and I would be getting real familiar.

We fired up the zone cooling system we’d invested in so we could cool only the master suite instead of the whole church. Worked great. Then we noticed cool air shooting out of the vent in the mudroom. It dawned on me that the HVAC guy, way back when he installed ductwork, saw only two-by-four walls; the back door didn’t yet exist. The mudroom—with its maple wood floors—probably looked like part of the master suite back then when in fact, it was really an entryway to the sanctuary.

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Today’s headline is a quote from Henry Ford who created the Model T car in 1908, nearly two decades after our little Methodist church was built.

Tomorrow: When it rains, it pours. Read about it here.

Be humble to see your mistakes, courageous to admit them, and wise enough to correct them

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: In the finishing phase of renovating the 126-year-old Methodist church into a home, a quarter inch—or foot—made the difference between something fitting or not. We found out the hard way missing steps meant going back to retrace them.

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The upstairs bathroom was particularly vexing.

When the lights I’d ordered months ago were delivered, I unpacked the fixtures for the vanity, and a knot formed in my stomach. What I had unpacked was beautiful, but I knew instantly the wiring—around which had been drywalled and painted—was in the wrong place. The electrician did the best he could with the direction he got—from me—but I was wrong. The wall would need to be ripped into, re-drywalled and repainted.

upstairs lighting fufu
In order to get the lighting fixtures in the right place the second time, I made templates of the mirrors to show exactly where they would hang. No more by guess or by golly. Note the exposed two-by-fours that should be behind drywall.

We had invested in a standard shower stall for that bathroom, and a standard glass door. Both had been delivered in March so the stall could be installed before we built walls around it. When You-Can-Call-Me-Al got to installing the door, he realized it was too tall. After rummaging around in an inches-deep pile of receipts, we remembered we’d purchased it at Lowe’s. Tyler made a phone call. Thank goodness, the Big Box store had a lenient return policy. I boxed the door back up, drove a half hour to Lowe’s, stood in line twenty minutes to return it, purchased a new door with Tyler’s specs and drove back to the church. You-Can-Call-Me-Al set to installing the new door, and he determined it was now the correct height but the wrong width. Back to Lowe’s. Apparently, “standard” comes in a variety of sizes.

On the last day of our plumber Glimfeather’s work, he brought two helpers and powered through a lot of plumbing details. In the last hour of his work, he announced he was nearly done; he had only to install the bathtub faucet. Where did I want it to be installed again? We surveyed the tub, and I fixed the point. I went about some other task, leaving him to his work, only to be called to the tub a few minutes later. The faucet—a beautiful one we’d coveted, ordered and paid for in April—was designed for a vanity sink, not a tub. “It’ll take forty minutes to fill your tub with that faucet,” Glimfeather said. “The water will be cold before you’re done.” Alas, the plumber’s work was not done after all. We’d have to track down the correct faucet, and he’d have to come back.

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Today’s headline is a quote from author Amine Ayad.

Tomorrow: A litany of little snafus pops up. Read about them here.

Make time for planning; wars are won in the general’s tent

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: Early on in our church conversion project, our wry son-in-law joked he was going to start a competing blog called “Everything Wrong With the Church.” This chapter is for him.

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We had been cruising along, making a lot of decisions by hook or by crook, and we had arrived at the point where our lack of design plans exacted a price. In time or money. Or both. The finishing phase was where the rubber hit the road.

The size of the refrigerator nook, for example: We measured incompletely and ended up having to re-drywall the nook so the fridge would fit.

This would never happen to a house builder who built the same five house plans over and over again. Key word: Plans. Same for a custom home builder. An architect would have determined measurements for everything before a single nail was driven. We weren’t home builders, and we were arrogant enough to believe we could do an architect’s work (we had a floor plan—what more is there?). As the saying goes, we didn’t know what we didn’t know. If we had a written plan, we still might have ended up with a crooked wall here and there, and we might still be making decisions by the seat of our pants, but we wouldn’t be redoing work. Now, in the finishing phase, a quarter inch—or foot—made the difference between something fitting or not. Missing steps meant going back to retrace them.

On top of our lack of plans, we were making the final push towards occupancy, so Tyler sometimes had a half dozen men working in the church at once. If the street in front of our house didn’t look like a construction zone before, it did now. Timing issues—this task was required before that task could be finished—were bound to arise.

img_0808
Vehicles belonging to contractors and to us lined both sides of the street in front of the church on many days during the push for occupancy.

Someone—we’re not pointing fingers here—screwed a hole in the electrical wiring behind the beverage bar. When the electricity didn’t work, we pulled out both beverage fridges and performed trouble shooting. Two hours, gone. While we had everything torn apart, Tyler added some insulation to the plumbing running up an exterior wall. Maybe in this way, a mistake prevented a future problem. This was how we had to think in order to keep frustration from outrunning hope.

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Today’s headline is a quote from author Stephen Covey.

Tomorrow: The upstairs bathroom … uff-da. Read about it here.

Playing dress up begins at age 5 and never truly ends

Monica Lee1 Comment

Our story so far: Phase Five of finishing details had arrived at the old Methodist church we were turning into our home. Chapter 38 concludes.

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Besides installing shelving in all the various cabinets we’d installed in the church, we needed closet rods before we could start moving in.

We reused the closet rods that came with the hall closet, and Tyler hung a standard closet rod in the upstairs closet in a matter of minutes. The master walk-in closet, with nearly twenty-five feet of horizontal hanging space, required a bit more effort.

Tyler was inspired to use half-inch steel plumbing pipe for rods. It was strong, cheap and eminently customizable. I liked the industrial vibe so much, I’d chosen cabinet pulls and closet light fixtures to match. I spent one evening researching standard closet measurements in order to achieve the most efficient use of space. One morning, Tyler operated his measuring tape inside the closet and dictated measurements to me. He ordered pipe fittings online, and he called up the nearby Big Box store to have pipes cut and threaded to size.

When everything arrived, we laid it all out on the bedroom floor, a bit confused about where to begin. Which pipes were forty-two inches long and where were the forty-four-inch ones? Is this one a vertical pipe or a horizontal pipe? Which pieces do we screw together first?

After the first attempt, we realized we needed more five-way pipe fittings. Oh, and the ceiling and floor weren’t perfectly parallel, so we’d have to have some of the pipes shortened a bit (which the plumber handled for us on site with his pipe cutter-and-threader—his tool probably has a different name, but this was its function). As with all construction projects, this one also required a bit of grunting and sweating, but the stud finder and electric drill came in handy. As far as items on the Honey-Do list went, this one was pretty easy. Presto, change-o, the plumbing pipe turned into closet rod.

pipe flange
That thing used to attach the pipe to the wall is called a flange. The thing a girl learns in a construction project.
closet rods
If you think the size of this closet is extravagant, wait until you see the size of Tyler’s TV.

I had lived for two years in a camper or a tiny rental house, neither of which had more than a few feet of clothes hanging space. I had been pretty proud of myself to downsize like that. In truth, I had gotten rid of a lot of out-of-fashion and ill-fitting items, but several boxes of really nice clothes had been packed away, waiting patiently to be worn again. I was in heaven, admiring something as simple as closet rods.

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Tomorrow: Chapter 39 begins: Everything that’s wrong with the church. Read it here.