Our story so far: We were seven months into renovating the old Methodist church into our home.
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Chapter 31
We juggled enough projects as summer inched on that something different occurred in a steady rhythm every day.
Remember the “Shampoo is ugly” post? This is the result in the master shower stall. The hooks? For washcloths and shower poufs, all hidden from view of the bathroom doorway.
When the shower was finished being tiled, we could get curbs, which you see installed here.
The carpet guy measured the balcony. The railings guy measured the balcony, too. The glass guy measured for our shower door. Because the quartz guys finally installed the curbs on the shower! And while the glass guy was there, he measured for new screens for the entryway windows and new glass for the sanctuary windows. Trim Guy measured for trim. A couple different painters eyed the walls to prepare estimates.
The WoodsCollective.
To help all these contractors find our place, we installed temporary house numbers on the church. Do churches ever have house numbers? Maybe the church sign was evidence enough of a worshiping congregation, but as residents we needed something more definitive. I wanted to build the permanent sign, but my idea required using a saw, and Tyler said he had more important things to do than cut circles of wood, so I found what I wanted on Etsy, thanks to Zach and Sheena at the WoodsCollective.
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Tomorrow: A clear sign we needed good signage. Read about it here.
Our story so far: We made decisions that affected the look of the entire church we were turning into a home: Wall paint and trim. Fortunately, we saved a lot of scrap trim and wood when we were taking the church apart during demolition, and at least some of it was usable.
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While he was in the bedroom making a feature wall, Tyler used up some of the miscellaneous beadboard we salvaged in the church to finish the wall of the closet so it would coordinate with the original beadboard in the room. It wasn’t an exact match, but it was an easy decision—it was free. Once trimmed with chair rail and painted with the rest, it would look dynamite.
The beadboard on the right is the original beadboard where I found little holes indicating coat hooks for a long ago Sunday school class.
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Tomorrow: We juggle a number of projects as Chapter 31 opens. Read it here.
Our story so far: Using reclaimed wood from the basement ceiling, Tyler constructed a unique accent wall for the powder room in the old Methodist church we were turning into our home.
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Then Tyler tackled the half-wall in the master bedroom where our king bed and the bank-safe night stands would ultimately be placed.
In our former house, we invested in an enormous bedroom set featuring a grand four-poster bed with marble accents that looked a little like a throne (we got a deal on the floor model). The whole set was so big, I didn’t move it once in the decade we lived there and we sold it when we moved because we figured we’d never have a bedroom big enough for it again. This left us without a headboard in the church for our king mattress, and I decided I wanted something non-standard: The whole wall would become our headboard.
During construction, Tyler and my stepson built a half wall, a la one featured in “The Downtown Loft Challenge” episode of “Fixer Upper,” in which Joanna Gaines created an accent wall with white oak planks and a narrow shelf. She set artwork, a few books and a candle on the shelf above the bed. Instead of white oak, we used the reclaimed basement ceiling boards—a mix of the white, gray and black ones—to decorate the lower half. During one of our antiquing trips last fall, Tyler and I found a set of old arched church windows without glass; that’s the artwork we would display on the shelf.
Now that’s a rustic accent wall!
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Tomorrow: Another bedroom wall gets some love at Chapter 30 closes. See it here.
Our story so far: We were a bit overwhelmed with decisions and budget considerations while determining paint colors and trim for the old Methodist church we were turning into our home.
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Fortunately, we saved a lot of scrap trim and wood when we were taking the church apart during demolition, and at least some of it was not only useable and money-saving, we could recycle it in a beautiful way. And the best part: We were using what we had so it required very little decision-making and no paint.
When Tyler took apart the basement ceiling to save the tin plates, all of it was nailed in place with tongue-and-groove planks. The church builders of old may have used leftover pieces from elsewhere in the church or another location altogether because though it matched in shape, it came in a rainbow of painted and unpainted colors. We saved it and moved it around the basement and then the deteriorating tool shed out back and now finally, we could put it to use—as accent walls, the modern method of featuring one wall in a room for some aesthetic purpose. One of our ten design rules required putting an accent wall in every—or nearly every—room.
First up: The powder room.
Without sanding, treating or even cleaning the tongue-and-groove boards, Tyler nailed the shortest and most uniquely colored boards to the south wall, on which our sleek, pure white vanity and mirror set would stand out. When he was done, the rustic backdrop added miles of character to the 21-square-foot room, and it would require only a coat of polyurethane to finish it.
Powder room accent wall.
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Tomorrow: If you like this, you’ll love the accent wall Tyler built in the master bedroom. Check out it here.
Our story so far: One of our contractors working at the old Methodist church connected us with Trim Guy, who showed up just in time to avert a marital spat and was willing to help us choose trim.
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Trim: Where an inch matters.
Tyler and Trim Guy talked about the differences between primed fiberboard and Gesso-coated pine while I flipped through a book that looked like it could be a shapes primer for toddlers. It was filled with backbands, bar rails, base caps, bases, brick mould, casings, casing blocks, chair rails, crowns, crown backers, dentil moulds (dentil moulds?! Shouldn’t those be part of a dentist’s offerings?), jambs, mantel mould, mulls, panel moulds, rope moulding, specialty millwork, stops, and tongue & vee groove. That would be everything from B to V. Every bit of it came in different sizes and thicknesses.
Uff-da.
No wonder I didn’t know what to write down.
Fortunately, Trim Guy read hand signals. I talked with my hands a lot and pointed around the room, and he figured out what we needed, including flexible matching trim we could use around the round top of our front door in the entryway. How clever! Who knew such a thing existed? Trim Guy knew, and he knew what it was called. He proceeded to walk the entire church making measurements.
Then he sent us a quote.
Which looked a lot like Sanskrit. Except for the bottom line. Which was infinitely understandable.
Here’s what I mean about the foreign language. One of the lines on the quote read this way:
520 LF 18136-OG-B 4-1/4” CASING FIRST FLOOR 1.520 790.40
How do you even know if you’re getting the stuff you want?
The bottom line was an eye-popper. The first digit was a 5. Like so many other construction materials, we weren’t just buying “trim,” we were buying casing and fascia and crown moulding and base board and chair rails and something called “pop,” and every piece had a price, and it was priced by the foot. (And that didn’t count the two boxes of nails in which we’d probably be investing, too.)
Naturally, when we were enjoying tequila and jotting dream numbers on a piece of notebook paper in the fall when we first saw the church, we didn’t budget for trim. And even if had, we probably wouldn’t have budgeted $5,000.
But we had to have trim. And Big Box basic maple trim wouldn’t do the job in the vision we had for the church.
So we squirmed and harrumphed and eventually called Trim Guy to place an order for 2216-CB fascia and 24136-A-CR crown and a bunch of other indiscernible stuff, whatever it was.
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Tomorrow: Fortunately, not every bit of detail is going to cost us an arm and a leg. See it here.
Our story so far: Decision paralysis was beginning to affect our church renovation. We were faced with decisions that affected the look of the entire church cum house, and we would have to look at them every day: Wall paint and trim.
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The next day (and I’m not compressing chronology here—literally the next day), Tyler gathered You-Can-Call-Me-Al and me in the great room to start measuring for trim. I was supposed to be taking notes, but the conversation was over my head about ninety seconds in. I knew what a baseboard was and I understood we needed some sort of wood around the windows and doors, but after that, I was lost. You-Can-Call-Me-Al threw around words like casing and chair stops and measurements like five-and-a-quarter topped with one-and-seven-sixteenths, and I said, “Wait, huh? What am I writing down?”
Tyler threw up his hands.
You-Can-Call-Me-Al, with all his people-pleaser mediation skills, suggested we call his Trim Guy.
Before Tyler could say “What’s his number?” You-Can-Call-Me-Al dialed his cell and left a message for Trim Guy.
A few hours later, Trim Guy was standing in our great room with thick books of trim descriptions and a clip board.
Fortunately, the sanctuary of our church came with a lot of beautiful trim. The window casing was five inches wide, and the beadboard wainscoting was topped with a bold chair rail. The narrow original baseboard, however, was long since removed (I’ve painted a fake baseboard here). And if you look closely, the casing on the main door doesn’t match the window casing; it must have been a more modern addition.
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Today’s headline is quote from Charles Eames. He and his wife “Ray” were 20th century American designers.
Tomorrow: Learning a foreign language. Read it here.
We interrupt our storytelling to bring you this holiday message.
A version of this quote is attributed to founding father Benjamin Franklin, who said, “The Constitution only gives people the right to pursue happiness. You have to catch it yourself.”
If we’re splitting hairs, the U.S. Constitution does not explicitly call out citizens’ right to pursue happiness, but the Declaration of Independence that we celebrate today and which was signed by Mr. Franklin as a representative of Pennsylvania, did describe life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as unalienable rights.
I changed “you” to “we” in Franklin’s last line because I think catching happiness is better achieved in community rather than by oneself.
May you find yourself among other happy revelers today. Happy Independence Day!
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Tomorrow: If you think choosing paint was a trick, try trim. Read about it here.
Our story so far: At the urging of my friends, I invested in a half-dozen paint samples to try on the walls of our great room, the former worship space of the church we were renovating into a home.
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One of the samples I chose for the trim—Casual Khaki—turned out not to be just similar to the trim color already in the church, it was exactly the same shade of creamy beige.
I’m still not sure if that was serendipity or if my subconscious was simply a copycat, but I liked it. And so did Tyler when he saw it in the early morning light.
For my medium gray, I narrowed my choices down to Loft Space and Silver Bullet. Loft Space was the early contender, but it wasn’t quite right.
From Behr.com
I continued to over-analyze, and I found a picture on Behr’s blog of a room that had different colors on the trim and wainscoting. Well, we had bead-board wainscoting around the entire perimeter of the great room and master bedroom. Maybe we needed a third color, too. Maybe this was the answer.
I needed to finalize some decisions soon because Tyler had decided he wanted to hire a painter. He didn’t trust me to cut in the wall lines to ceiling and he didn’t have time to do it himself. A pro would be enlisted.
A tri-color scheme: Bleached Linen on the trim, Casual Khaki on the wainscoting and Loft Space on the wall. Hmm.
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Thursday: You think paint is hard to choose? Try trim! Read about it here.
Our story so far: As we approached the painting phase of our church renovation, I’d settled on creamy beige for the trim and medium gray for the walls. All the trim. And all the walls. And then my paint chips met hard reality in the great room of the church.
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As my friends and I chatted over the options in form of tiny chips in the natural afternoon light, I also realized every choice would look different in morning light. And under cloudy skies. And in artificial light (which I already learned from the Lighting Savant came in various shades of kelvin).
Did I really want to paint the whole house in the same colors? The trim in the sanctuary of the church was originally creamy beige. Did I really want that everywhere? Did I really want medium gray walls?
My resolve was dissolving.
My friends urged me to get some paint samples and paint big swatches of the colors on the trim and walls of the church and look at them at all times of day. They departed and an hour later, I was at the nearby Big Box store choosing paint samples in a half-dozen colors. And that evening, when all was quiet and Tyler had already gone to bed, I burned the last half hour of natural summer daylight painting those samples on trim and walls all around the great room.
Some of my artwork.
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Today’s headline is a quote from James Cash Penney, the founder of J.C. Penney stores.
Tomorrow: Vacillation leads to a breakthrough. Read about it here.
Our story so far: Analysis paralysis had descended upon the church renovation project, especially when it came to choosing paint colors.
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Paint chip mania!
Way back in the autumn when I’d created my design template for the project, I’d chosen a limited palette of about eight colors to guide my choices, but anyone who’s considered painting their trim beige knows there are about a hundred different shades of beige from unbleached silk to khaki.
In any other house I’d owned, I (or my husband) painted every room a different color. Isn’t that what everyone does? But in every other house I’d owned, paint color was usually the most distinctive design feature of the room. In the church, I had all kinds of other distinctive features vying for attention—etched windows, high ceilings, a dramatic spiral stairway, original wood floors. I decided I didn’t need a bunch of different paint colors muddying up the canvas. As we approached the painting phase of renovation, I’d settled on creamy beige for the trim and medium gray for the walls. All the trim. And all the walls. I wanted to paint every room in the same colors to create a cohesive backdrop to everything else going on. Now I’m not sayin’ I didn’t vacillate about this decision. Of course I did. Especially when it came down to choosing which creamy beige and which medium gray.
A trio of girlfriends came to have a look at the church in person (oh, and catch up, too—we did talk about subjects other than the one that obsessed me). While they were there, I pulled the paint chips I had been pondering back at the rental house into the great room for the first time.
And I simultaneously realized that not only would I have to coordinate trim and wall colors with the ceiling color I already had, I would have to think about my kitchen cabinets (which came in two colors).
And my fireplace stone.
And the floor stain.
Yes, I confess I had been dreaming of creamy beiges and medium grays in the form of tiny paint chips in a vacuum far removed from the church. Probably not wise. As soon as I held my creamy beige up to the off-white kitchen cabinets, I realized my creamy beige was yellow.
Blech! Yellow was not in the design scheme. Oh, how narrow the line between creamy beige and yellow! (I will note, for the record, I was once an ardent fan of yellow. I painted the office in my last home yellow—even the ceiling!)
The office in our former house was painted three shades of yellow. It was bright and cheerful, but a little intense.
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Tomorrow: Time to pull out a paintbrush. See what transpires here.
Church Sweet Home 