Our story so far: My husband and I purchased a 126-year-old Methodist church to turn into our residence. We gotten through demolition and installation of new mechanicals, and now we were deep into the drywall, painting and flooring phase.
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Chapter 30
If you google “decision paralysis,” you’ll find 11,900,000 results. If Google didn’t prioritize the options for you, oh paralyzed one, you might never learn what it means. But Wikipedia’s definition rises to the top and you learn decision paralysis is a common problem in the modern world where one is faced with too many detailed options. The perfectionist is caught up in finding the one right one, and pretty soon, her over-analysis prevents any option from being taken.
Decision paralysis was beginning to affect our church renovation. We’d been choosing from among a million different options for months—granite or quartz? pecan beams or antique cherry? polished chrome or brushed nickel? Now we were presented 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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Tomorrow: How to choose? Read about the dilemma here.
Our story so far: As we wrapped up a long week that began with a flooded basement and ended with all kinds of kitchen cabinet issues, our electrician installed a ceiling fan in the sanctuary of the old Methodist church we had spent months rehabbing into a residence.
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Our electrician agreed to come back the next day—a Saturday—to install the sanctuary lights, the ones the former pastor had sold to us for practically nothing and that I had repainted and rewired. They had new LED Edison bulbs and were ready to go. This time in the rental unit, I put my hands on them immediately. I briefly thought I’d misplaced the assembly screws, but they were right there in the bottom of the box.
Our electrician ascended his ladder to perform his magic (again, I couldn’t watch the high work), and Tyler called me into the sanctuary of the church.
Our great room ceiling was complete—drywall, paint, beams, fans and lights. It had been months of effort and required the expertise of dozens of men (and one woman). We’d busted the Tequila Budget but not by that much actually. Tyler and I sat in the two rolling chairs he’d situated in the room for just this occasion—to ponder our work.
Lights, fans, action!
We leaned way back in the chairs and marveled at how finished and coordinated everything looked together. Our terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week was over. We couldn’t yet watch TV or dine or even do dishes in our “chome,” but we didn’t want to leave yet either. Finally, it was very good.
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Tomorrow: Chapter 30 opens with decision-making overload. Read about it here.
Our story so far: There comes a time in every mountain climb—and every renovation project—when exhaustion sets in and the craggy cliffs appear insurmountable. That time came for us when the days were literally the longest days of the year and nothing seemed to go our way.
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Friday, Tyler assembled the ceiling fans for the great room. He discovered the fan he’d scored on an open-box deal no longer had the necessary screws for assembly. So he carefully salvaged the one leftover screw from the box in which the brand-new fan arrived, and he drove to the hardware store to purchase duplicates.
Only he dropped the screw in the crevice of the truck console.
If you’ve ever shaken my husband’s baseball-mitt hand, you know it’s not built for salvaging tiny screws from narrow openings.
He talked a clerk at the hardware store into lending him a magnet. “We don’t usually loan tools,” she said, as she reluctantly handed it over.
He fished the rebellious screw from its hiding place and bought 20 news ones. Just in case he dropped another one in a crack somewhere.
At this point on Friday afternoon, I began feeling a tickle in my throat, signaling I was in for a cold (which was par for the course the week had been), but the rain had finally stopped. Tyler called our electrician, who wasn’t otherwise engaged (serendipity), and he agreed to install one of the fans before we all called it a day.
The electrician completed his work, and Tyler called me into the sanctuary of the church.
When I walked into the great room, I was like the mountain climber cresting a hill. The view of the summit—so much closer than it was at the bottom—was amazing.
The fan was majestic. Artistically designed. The perfect color.
After a long week, things were looking up.
The picture makes it look like the fan blades match the beams perfectly. In this case, the picture is an accurate reflection of reality. (For perspective, the cement board tower is the unbricked fireplace chase.)
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Tomorrow: Chapter 29 concludes with a look at the revamped sanctuary lights. Check it out here.
Our story so far: It was turning out to be a tough week filled with disappointments at the old Methodist church we were turning into our home. As we unpacked some of our kitchen cabinets that had been in storage, we discovered problems.
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Now that’s some wide molding.
Thursday, we determined the luxury crown molding for our kitchen cabinets was wide—too wide if we wanted to have a standard distance between the bottom of our upper cabinets and the countertops. Oh, we could order shorter upper cabinets, of course, for a price. Or we could go with narrower cheap-looking molding. What we couldn’t do was change the height of the support beam which dictated the height of the kitchen ceiling.
After some breathless waiting, the building inspector informed us that the standard distance was simply preference not code-required. We could tighten it up a bit if we wanted to. We opted for a non-standard distance between countertop and cabinets in order to keep the luxury crown molding.
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Today’s headline is a partial quote from professional wrestler and actress Ronda Rousey. Her full quote is, “If you want to be the best in the world you can’t cut any corners. Why do you think swimmers shave their arm hair off? Because every little thing counts.”
Tomorrow: All is not lost. Read about our redemption here.
Our story so far: We were enduring a week of setbacks at the old Methodist church we were turning into our home. We kept losing bits and pieces for starters.
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I finally found the well-hidden glass door fronts wrapped in furniture blankets in the back of one of the rental units where I had been directed to find the poles for the ceiling fans, which I had painted and stored weeks before.
A beautiful cabinet front. For someone else’s house.The gap-filled cabinets should have been a lovely shade of cream, like the cabinet on the right. (The stove vent was supposed to be a different color.)
Wednesday, we unpacked the new upper cabinets we’d purchased to fill in some of the kitchen gaps. After removing six layers of packing, we discovered we’d ordered custom cabinets in the wrong color.
Phooey.
Instead of being mounted, they would have to be exchanged. We hadn’t saved any time by ordering them weeks ago; in fact, they cost us money to store them.
Double phooey.
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Tomorrow: First wrong color. Then wrong size. Read about the heartache here.
Our story so far: As summer solstice loomed, rain fell on the old Methodist church we were turning into our home. After a long day of sanding floors, Tyler discovered lakes of water in the basement. And that was only the beginning of a week of woes.
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Rain continued to fall off and on all week. If it wasn’t raining, the skies were gray. The days that were supposed to provide the most hours of sunlight all year were only long days of gray.
Tuesday, Tyler pulled the upper kitchen cabinets out of the storage unit. Or at least the ones he could find. (Please don’t ask me why he was mounting cabinets before we’d finished flooring or painting—the foreman didn’t have the same sense of construction phases as I did.)
City of cabinets
Somehow, he’d lost the glass-fronted doors somewhere in the labyrinth of stored construction materials. The kitchen cabinets we snagged from the remodeling company had been disassembled for transport, and they looked like a lost civilization in the storage unit—the second storage unit we’d acquired to store all our finds. We had tucked away the glass-fronted doors somewhere on one of the units to keep them safe. Now we couldn’t find them at all.
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Tomorrow: The sorrow of cabinets continues. Read about it here.
Our story so far: We were slogging through the Drywall, Painting & Flooring Phase of construction in our church conversion project.
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Chapter 29
There comes a time in every mountain climb when exhaustion sets in and the craggy cliffs appear insurmountable. The ascent feels endless.
That time came for us in our renovation project when the days were literally the longest days of the year. They felt endless.
Our time of trial began innocently enough. With a few raindrops.
What’s a few raindrops? Into every life a little rain must fall. We’d already survived a spring hailstorm for the ages.
The summer rain accumulated into a flood.
Early on in demolition, we experienced water in the basement, a symptom of improper drainage and aging storm gutters. We replaced the gutters and thought we fixed the problem. Then a winter rainstorm came, and the furnace room got wet. Building a garage foundation should fix that, we thought.
But when the summer rain came, we hadn’t finished moving around all our fabulous dirt and instead of draining away from the foundation, the water drained right into the basement on the east side. And by the gas meter on the north side.
After a long day of sanding floors (a very long day), Tyler discovered lakes of water in the basement, one of them threatening my newly painted bathroom vanities. It was late, but still light(ish) outside. We slopped through the basement water, moving valuable items to dry ground.
The water in the vicinity of the vanities was blood-red.
Students of the Old Testament may recall that during Pharoah’s first plague, the water turned to blood.
This wasn’t a good sign.
Remember my painting parlor? Draped in red velvet?
The water in the basement was red because of my stupidity, not God’s wrath (at least, I don’t think so). I’d used the red velvet curtain that had once hung behind the altar of the church as a drop cloth, and as water puddled in the basement, the curtain soaked it up, dyeing it red. Why I was protecting the ancient basement floor that would be replaced anyway from paint drips, I still don’t know.
While Tyler squeegeed the water into the basement drains, I gathered up the curtain in a tub and lugged it outside. Sheets of rain continued to fall, and I nearly did, too, as I navigated the muddy yard to toss the tub away. I’m sorry the distinguished curtain that hung for so many years in the church and then served as splendid furniture blanket and drop cloth for us met such a lowly end, but it did.
That was Monday.
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Today’s headline is a quote from 20th century New Zealand mountaineer Edmund Hillary.
Tomorrow: It’s gonna be that kind of week. Read about Tuesday here.
Our story so far: Our spiral stairway arrived, and a dozen people tried screwing it bottom first into the front door of our converted church. But it was a no-go. So our master carpenter removed the front doors and the doors into the sanctuary while we sweated it out on the front lawn.
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The spiral stairs proprietress’ head man suggested we turn the spiral stairway around in the front yard to spiral it in top first.
Our spiral stairway, halfway born.
Much grunting ensured, but before long, our spiral was completely screwed inside our entryway. One doorway down, one to go.
Looky there, she’s inside.
Experience made the second doorway easier, and gruntingly, the spiral was inside the sanctuary of the church.
Upsie daisy!
We (or more accurately, the men, because I was spent) lugged the spiral across the room and, after one last round of grunting, tipped the spiral upright.
She (our stylish spiral presented as a she) was bolted in place, and within minutes, Tyler and I climbed to the balcony on the steps of our spiral. Total installation time, including false start: Forty-four minutes. Not a record, but a competent average.
She was beautiful in all her black hammered spindles punctuated by her elegant basket balusters. She fit the corner of the great room perfectly, both in size and in style.
Tyler and I posed for a picture standing at the top of the steps in all our sweaty glory. We couldn’t stop smiling.
Ta-da!
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Today’s headline is a line from Stevie Wonder’s hit “Isn’t She Lovely” written to celebrate the birth of his daughter. You can thank me later for this uplifting earworm.
Tomorrow: We are plagued, it seemed. Read about it here.
Our story so far: After working through every detail of construction for the spiral stairs we dreamed of for the old Methodist church we were turning into our home, delivery day arrived.
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To be clear, delivery day was officially delivery only. The install was the homeowner’s responsibility. The spiral stairs proprietress suggested we needed one guy for every hundred pounds of stairway, meaning we needed Tyler plus seven guys. I could help, but I counted as only a half a guy (which was a pretty accurate assessment of my strength).
Accumulating seven guys willing to lift a spiral stairway in a village to which we hadn’t even officially moved sounded like a tough sell only to me. Tyler drafted his hired man St. Johnny, our tiler/master carpenter You-Can-Call-Me-Al, the carpenter helper, three drywallers plus a very large man invited by the chief drywaller. Plus me, a half-lifter. The proprietress and two of her men unofficially pitched in.
Ten guys and two women.
A little grunting.
This should be easy, I thought.
Our spiral arrived on a trailer.
We began by removing the stairs from the trailer, which we accomplished reasonably easily.
A spiral stairway with a diameter of six-foot-three would be considered larger than normal (ironically, my husband at six-foot-three was also considered larger than normal). This size spiral would need to be literally screwed into the church—twice because we had one exterior doorway and one doorway at the top of the entryway steps to the great room. Fortunately, both were double doorways. The proprietress and her head man had performed this feat hundreds of times, and they were confident it could be done.
With a little grunting.
Their record was seventeen minutes from trailer to securing the bolts to the floor.
We began spiraling our stairway in bottom first. The top of the spiral had a landing which would be secured to the balcony, making the top even bigger than the rest.
Excuse me, question: How is that landing going to clear the doorway? Answer: It’s not. Back her up, boys.
After several minutes of turning, and grunting, and shaving off some edges of the exterior wooden doorway, it was apparent we weren’t going to get the spiral in bottom first.
We backed it out. Most of us huffed and puffed in the middle-of-the-day sunshine while You-And-Call-Me-Al removed the doors from the hinges in both doorways.
At this point in the installation process, I was reminded of the Bible story in the Gospel of Mark about the father who brought his child to Jesus to have him cast out the spirit that afflicted the mute child with convulsions. “If you believe, all things are possible to him who believes,” Jesus told the father, to which the father replied, “Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief!” Jesus followed through and cast out the unclean spirit.
I expressed my skepticism to the proprietress.
“Oh, we can get it in there,” the ever-optimistic proprietress said.
“I believe!” I said. “Help my unbelief!”
She laughed.
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Tomorrow: Oh, ye of little faith. Chapter 28 concludes. Read it here.
Our story so far: Among the treasures unearthed during demolition of the old Methodist church we planned to turn into our home was a choir loft on the second floor. We decided to open it up to the sanctuary and build a balcony. A distinctive balcony required a distinctive stairway.
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Chapter 28
Among the benefits of living a mile away from the spiral stairs manufacturer was getting to see—in person—the (ahem, excuse the cliché) step-by-step construction of our stairway.
After we visited the manufacturer when Tyler first uncovered the balcony during demolition in January, the proprietress had befriended us, so she invited us over whenever one of the artisans had a question about some element of masterpiece that would someday grace our great room. The spiral was constructed in total at the manufacturer facility, to be delivered whole. Like the fireplace had many parts I couldn’t name before buying one, so is a stairway.
A welder works on the center pillar of our stair.
After determining the height and diameter of the spiral stairway with the benefit of careful measurements in March, we pawed through some of the proprietress’ leftover balusters in April to cut costs on our stairway. Balusters are the columns that support the rail. We selected a 4:1 mix of industrial hammered balusters and traditional basket balusters.
Here’s our newel post. Sideways for now.
Then we chose a newel—the post at the foot of the flight of stairs. We selected a giant-sized version of the basket baluster.
The pillar upon which everything spiral revolves.
(In the case of a spiral stairway, the pillar supporting the staircase may also be called a newel.)
Treads? We went with the industrial diamond plate.
Clockwise or counterclockwise spiral? Ours would be clockwise going up.
Our stairway is prepared for painting.
Color? Painted black. It was May.
Railing? We waffled on this decision, first selecting a smooth vinyl cover for the flat rail, but in a last-minute decision in early June we went with just the flat steel handrail.
Our engineering-minded spiral proprietress also helped Tyler determine proper basement floor support for the steel structure that would weigh about eight-hundred pounds.
Finally, we had worked through every detail, and delivery day the first week in June arrived.
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Tomorrow: It takes a village. How’s that? Read about it here.
Church Sweet Home 