Our story so far: After a middle-of-the-night phone call from the security company in April, Tyler threw on his clothes at our rental house and drove to the old church we were renovating to find a dozen boxes filled with cabinets stacked at the front door. And then a cop showed up.  

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I’m no policeman, but I can only imagine the officer found it strange that a bedraggled old(er) man would be loading his pickup with boxes in the middle of the night outside a church that was widely known in the village to be a construction site.

Of course, Tyler—who dressed in a hurry while still half asleep—didn’t have his wallet or ID with him.

But he proved his ownership of the church by punching in his security code and unlocking the door. He and the officer tiptoed through the church looking for the housebreaker who set off the alarm, and they found nothing. Whatever small talk Tyler made while on patrol must have assured the officer that yes, indeed, he was the owner not an interloper, and the cop made his getaway before Tyler could talk him into helping load the boxes of cabinets into the pickup.

We assume the cabinet company had hired a fly-by-night delivery company. Literally. And the delivery company thought it would be OK to leave the boxes outside the church at eleven o’clock.

In any case, these boxes of cabinets sat unopened in the rental unit for a couple of months before Tyler hauled them back to the church basement to assemble them.

Compared to sanding floors, putting together cabinets was easy work, but Tyler required all day to put together the drawers and cabinet pieces for our 132-inch bathroom vanity. In the basement, they looked black, and I initially thought we had received the wrong ones, just like with the errant kitchen cabinet. But no, in daylight, our espresso cabinets were the perfect color. (The other thought I had when I saw the assembled cabinets for the first time was, oh yeah, we need knobs for those cabinets, too. Another item to add to the to-do list.) After the countertop was installed, the upper cabinets in cream would flank the gently arched vanity mirrors on order from the glass guy.

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Tomorrow: More cabinets. For the laundry room. Wait, there’s a laundry room? See it here.

Our story so far: Our carpenter trimmed out all kinds of nooks and crannies in the old Methodist church we were turning into our home.

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You-Can-Call-Me-Al also trimmed out our master bedroom tray ceiling with crown molding and tin salvaged from the basement ceiling. Originally, I had hoped to show off the original tongue-and-groove wood ceiling inside the tray, but I was overruled when Tyler determined he couldn’t repair the holes in it. So we covered it in tin which added tons of historic texture. The tin looked dirty against the bright white of the ceiling so it would need to be painted, but I had just the right distressed technique to try with it.

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Tomorrow: Ooh, the tray has secret lighting. Read about it here.

Our story so far: Tyler cleared the sanctuary floor in order to finish it, so our carpenter, You-Can-Call-Me-Al, got busy with trim at the old Methodist church we were turning into a home.

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You-Can-Call-Me-Al trimmed out the baseboard and the windows in the master suite, and among other details, he hung the linen closet doors and trimmed them out. Shaped sort of like a cramped confessional only without the screen between, those strange little cubby holes leftover in the master suite floor layout had become handy little closets for sheets and towels. All we needed was shelves and doorknobs! Oh, and paint. But at least now we could envision the closets instead of strange voids in the two-by-fours.

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Tomorrow: The tray ceiling in the bedroom. See it here.

Our story so far: Nearly every day, we checked finishing details off our long to-do list at the old Methodist church we were turning into a home.

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In fact, during the preceding month, You-Can-Call-Me-Al had replaced all the windows on the west side of the house plus the only one on the north side. Tyler guessed the old ones might have been in place as long as seventy years or more. The seals and gaskets were shot, and the wind blew right through them. The new ones looked virtually the same, only the new ones had two panes instead of four, but their insulation value was vastly improved.

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Today’s headline is a partial quote from Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, author of “On Death and Dying.” The full quote is “People are like stained-glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.”

Tomorrow: A temporary shelf. Read about it here.

Our story so far: Finally, we had a few things to admire at the end of the day during construction at the old Methodist church.

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Back in January, Tyler spent the month demolishing the rest of the interior of the church and wringing his hands about how he was going to take apart the twenty-foot ceiling of the sanctuary. But then he found our drywalling team who came to the rescue by demoing the ceiling and putting it back together again. They also lent us some scaffolding which were used to install the faux beams, the ceiling fans and the restored sanctuary chandeliers.

Oh, and the stone on the fireplace to the ceiling.

Thank God (and the drywallers) for that scaffolding.

But finally, months later, it was time to get it out of our great room. It obstructed the view.

You-Can-Call-Me-Al deconstructed it (single-handedly, which was a trick) and piled it into the back of the pickup. Tyler returned it to the owner, and now we could see the finished fireplace in all its glory. Ironically, or perhaps just as it should be, the fireplace occupied the same place the red velvet curtain did behind what was once the altar, the symbolic representation of the place where worshippers throughout history burned sacrifices (and probably enjoyed the resulting barbecued animal flesh). We would burn natural gas and enjoy the dancing flames just as much.

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Today’s headline is a quote from Marcus Tullius Cicero, a second century Roman statesman, orator and writer.

Tomorrow: Another finishing touch. Read about it here.