Our story so far: The concrete finishers completed the driveway for the old Methodist church we were transforming into a home.
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Now all we needed was the garage itself, which we had already determined would be an autumn project. In the meantime, Tyler erected our thrift-store patio set on the garage foundation. He conducted many-a contractor and wife meetings there while enjoying a cup of coffee or a beer.
Late one afternoon, while we were collecting our wits on the patio at the end of the day, he walked the garage foundation and described his planned layout. Pantomiming doors and windows, he would build some shelving there, his tool chests would go here, the beer fridge would go over there, and so on. As he dreamed of his mancave, I got a little flutter in my chest just to see him so happy.
# # #
Tomorrow: If mancave plans can evoke such emotion, think what beams in the sanctuary could do! Check it out here.
Our story so far: The concrete finishers completed their careful work on our driveway at the old Methodist church we were turning into our home.
# # #
Window wells, in process.
While he had the concrete mixer’s attention, Tyler had him pour the air conditioning pad. I’d enjoyed air-conditioned homes all through my adult life, but this would be one of those details to which I’d never paid attention. Not Tyler; he preferred concrete pads to the pre-fab plastic ones, and I didn’t even realize an air conditioner requires a pad at all.
Tyler also chose to install window wells around the basement windows on that side of the church so he could spread around all that fabulous black dirt he’d collected from the school across the street and coax drainage water away from the foundation.
# # #
Today’s headline is a quote from Edmund Burke, an 18th century Anglo-Irish statesman, author and philosopher. Now that’s the kind of resume I’d like to have someday.
Tomorrow: Dreaming of a mancave. Read about it here.
Our story so far: Among projects we ticked off our to-do list was installing tons of drywall inside the old Methodist church we were turning into our dream home.
# # #
Meanwhile, our concrete finishers completed their careful work on our driveway. A little like our dramatically swooping balcony, our driveway incorporated some graceful curves as well; cars would turn in from the street and curve around to enter the garage. The concrete finishers made the wood forms obey and figured out how to jigsaw the seams, and when they were done, they accomplished the twin goals of smooth conveyance and proper water drainage.
Our back yard before the garage foundation and driveway were poured.Our back yard AFTER the foundation and driveway were poured. Look at how green everything got in a few weeks!
# # #
Tomorrow: Hey, as long as you’re here and you have concrete in your mixer … Read about what Tyler calls for here.
Our story so far: Many months into the renovation of the old Methodist church into our home, it seemed as though nothing was getting accomplished, but it was a big project with a lot of moving parts. In fact, we were ticking off a number of items on our to-do list.
# # #
Our A team of drywallers was as dedicated as they were talented. Day after day, they showed up to hang heavy sheets of drywall and then mud all the seams and then sand it all down and then prime all the walls and finally paint the ceilings. Some in-between days, huge fans circulated the air to dry surfaces.
One afternoon I showed up to drop off something (probably another package from Amazon filled with some odd construction materials or tool), and the chief of the A team stood on our front porch (also know as the public sidewalk, seeing as our front door opened nearly onto the street). He was taking in the fresh air during a break, joking around with Tyler.
As I joined the conversation and looked into his eyes, I came to understand what step of the project we were into: Ceiling paint. The chief was dusted from head to toe in a thin film of paint. His normally dark eyelashes were alabaster. As he laughed and blinked, he looked alien.
Thank goodness for our drywallers. Just as promised, and right on time, they completed their work. When they were done, the interior of the church never looked so neat and clean. Now we were getting somewhere.
The entryway BEFORE drywall.The entryway AFTER drywall.The Hall of History BEFORE drywall.The Hall of History AFTER drywall.The second story BEFORE drywall.The second story AFTER drywall.The balcony and kitchen BEFORE drywall.Our balcony and kitchen AFTER drywall.
# # #
Today’s headline is a quote from 15th century artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci.
Tomorrow: Like our balcony, our new driveway has graceful curves, too. See them here.
Our story so far: While the drywallers were working inside the old church that would someday soon become our home, Tyler & Crew were pouring concrete outside the church for the future garage.
# # #
Chapter 27
As the lilacs faded and May transformed into June, much activity was occurring inside, outside and around our church-sweet-home project.
The conversations Tyler and I had sounded more like a corporate project manager’s Monday morning update meetings than a conversation between husband and wife.
“I need an update on how much we’ve spent on the garage so far.”
“Do you know when the drywallers are coming today?”
“When are you going to pick up that replacement siding?”
“When will you have a few minutes to look at that bathroom vanity with me?”
“Find the fireplace receipt—I need to return those parts.”
“I need the key to the rental unit so I can drop off the lights.”
“Listen to this voicemail from the carpet guy and let’s discuss.”
“What did the spiral stairway manufacturer say about the timeline?”
“Did You-Can-Call-Me-Al finish grouting the shower today?”
“Remind me to buy window wells tomorrow.”
“Have you heard from the guy who’s supposed to measure the shower?”
“Did you pay the concrete company?”
“You need to get back to the spiral stairway manufacturer about the stairway railing material.”
“Did the carpet guy call you back?”
The first time I finished with this message, I realized I forgot a “not,” completely confusing the meaning. Dumbhead typos.
We were spinning like tops, just trying to keep our equilibrium.
It seemed as though nothing was getting accomplished, but it was a big project with a lot of moving parts. In fact, we were ticking off a number of items on our to-do list. If we had been remodeling only the bathroom or building only a garage, these “little” tasks would have been big steps to completion. They only seemed small in the face of the mountain of all we had yet to get done.
# # #
Today’s headline comes from author Deepak Chopra.
Tomorrow: Ticking another little task off the list. Check out the dramatic changes here.
Our story so far: We struck a deal for a pair of antique safes we could repurpose as night stands in the master bedroom of the old church we were turning into our dream home.
# # #
The safe seller rolled them out of the garage on their perfectly burnished rusty wheels and then he fetched his front-end loader. Before he loaded the safes, though, he knelt in his driveway in front of the safes to show me how the combination locks worked, safecracker style.
One of them was empty, but the other one held a couple of bags of coins (quarters? gold doubloons?) and several hundred dollars in bills.
“Good thing I checked!” he said, trotting his booty inside. Yes, indeed.
Use your legs, not your back, when lifting heavy items. Or a Bobcat.
He rolled the safes into the front-end loader’s bucket and lifted them gingerly into the back of our pickup, no muscle required.
It wouldn’t be so easy for us on the other end. Those antique safes might have been almost as difficult to get into the church as the old TV was to get rid of.
Fortunately, Tyler’s clever creativity extended from bedroom design to the transport of safes. He built a temporary bridge out of the leftover wood from the garage foundation forms to roll the safes from the back of the pickup directly into the main floor of the church/chome.
The safes would require a bit of clean up, but voilà, distinctive and functional rustic night stands.
# # #
Today’s headline is a quote from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, spoken in a 1941 radio broadcast stoking the morale of the British public in the early part of World War II.
Tomorrow: Chapter 27 opens with a bit of project management. Read about it here.
Our story so far: Following a Craig’s List lead, my husband and I drove ninety minutes north to find an antique safe we could use as a night stand in the master bedroom of the 126-year-old church we were turning into our home. But the one the seller showed us was too big.
# # #
“A smaller safe? How big?” the seller asked.
I pantomimed a box roughly two feet tall.
“I might have something like that,” he said. “I’m sort of a safe collector.”
He led us to his house and through a sitting room where two safes performed duties as end tables.
“Yes, those exactly!” I said, pointing.
“They’re not for sale.” Me: Crestfallen again. “ But I have a couple more that might work.” Me: Interest piqued again.
Clearly, this guy was something of a safe aficionado. How could we be so lucky to connect with a genuine safe collector with not one safe but several?
Heavy, man.
We followed him through the sitting room and into the attached garage, where he pointed out three different safes tucked behind and under various garage items. Two of them were very similar black safes dating to the early 20th century—the stuff of matching provincial nightstands. And, he was willing to part with them.
We struck a deal after a bit of dickering (not much dickering—the seller knew the combinations to the locks, which makes them more valuable—repurposing a safe as a night stand may have been inventive but it wasn’t cheap).
But now we had to get them into our pickup. The safes weighed four hundred pounds each—the hinges could be manipulated when the safe was open to remove the handpainted door, the seller told us, and one of those weighed a hundred pounds.
# # #
Tomorrow: Overcoming the physics of heavy safes. Read about it here.
Our story so far: We added things like to mad to the old Methodist church we were turning into our home—a balcony, a new set of front doors, a garage—but we had a hard time getting rid of an old TV left in the basement.
# # #
Unlike outmoded technology, we discovered some old things never lose their value.
Take old safes, for example.
We had been shopping for ideas to furnish the church—or chome, as my sister wanted me to refer to is as. “It’s not a church anymore, it’s your home,” she implored.
“I don’t live in it yet,” I said.
“You should at least start using some transition noun. Like, hurch. No, chome. Call it a chome.”
In any case, Tyler and I ticked off the furniture we’d already purchased for the “chome”: Sectional sofa, bar stools, china cabinet, dining room table. “We still need night stands for the master bedroom,” I said.
Nothing we saw inspired us, but apparently, the problem percolated inside Tyler’s mind. Somewhere, somehow, my creative husband got an idea that we should use old bank vaults for night stands, and he started shopping for a pair, on Craig’s list, of course. I loved the idea—a pair of distressed antique safes would be the perfect foil for the sleek chandeliers I planned for lights flanking the bed.
One day, an antique safe was advertised for sale about seventy miles north of us. If you know anything about good safes, you know they are very heavy, too heavy to ship. That’s the point with a safe—they’re hard to move in order to deter robbers from just taking the safe to open later. A seller within a ninety-minute drive would do. He offered only one safe, but Tyler believed another one would turn up at some point and that we should have a look at this one while it was available.
Tyler and I took a circuitous route the following Saturday morning through Wisconsin’s heartland, dodging bike racers part of the time (Wisconsin, I’ve come to realize is big into B things—beer, bratwurst, bicyclers—plus cheese and Friday fish fries). After navigating a long, curvy country road, we were greeted by the seller and a flock of fluffy chickens in the seller’s yard.
Our greeting party fled the scene, probably to gossip like, well, a flock of chickens.
The chickens scattered, and the seller led us to the advertised safe, tucked behind a bunch of other miscellaneous items—including the unattached door to a walk-in safe—on an outdoor patio.
Impressive for an antique safe, the sale item stood about four feet tall. Too big.
I was crestfallen. A three-hour round trip drive for nothing. “This is too big,” I said. “We were looking for something we could use for night stands.”
# # #
Tomorrow: Oh, did you say night stands? See what I mean here.
Our story so far: Over the phone late one afternoon, my husband told me he was excited about a “big score,” and he summoned me forthwith to the church we were renovating into our home.
# # #
The view from my windshield: Dumping a load of dirt.
As I exited my truck, I heard the foreman telling Tyler he had two more loads. Did he want them?
“Yes! I’ll take all the dirt you’ve got!” Tyler told him.
The semi truck and the foreman left the scene, and Tyler, sipping a beer, regaled me with the story of his score.
The origin of the dirt: It came from the school yard across the street.
That morning, Tyler was knee-deep (quite literally) in his garage foundation construction project. He noticed an enormous backhoe digging a hole in the here-to-fore green yard of the elementary school. Huh, it had looked like the construction workers over there were wrapping things up, and now they were turning new soil.
Naturally, Tyler didn’t let curiosity gnaw at him. He walked over to find out what was going on. He was told they were building a turn-around for trucks that delivered lunch to the school.
“What are you doing with all that black dirt?” Tyler asked. It was rich, beautiful black dirt (if dirt can be beautiful—apparently, the blacker the dirt, the more organic matter and nutrients are in it).
“Haul it away, I guess,” the foreman told him.
Tyler offered to let them haul it one block. Straight to the church. His offer was one the foreman couldn’t refuse. Rather than pay a driver to haul it an hour away, he could niftily get rid of it only a block away.
“We’d pay $600 a load for black soil of that quality,” Tyler told me when I expressed disappointment that his score turned out to be … dirt. Only a gardener could appreciate the value of dirt; I was not a gardener.
That’s a mighty lot of dirt.
Well, we were the proud new owners of four semi-loads of black dirt, enough for a king-sized berm.
“The timing is perfect,” he continued. “I’ve got a grader right now to move it around.”
Indeed, he did. His cousin had lent his to us for our garage project.
Lucky us.
# # #
Today’s headline is a quote from the Dalai Lama.
Tomorrow: Chapter 26 tells the story of ancient technology. Read about it here.
Our story so far: While we renovated the old Methodist church into our home, construction workers were building a new addition to the elementary school across the street.
# # #
One afternoon as I was returning home after an afternoon of cuddling with our new granddaughter, I checked in with Tyler. He was breathlessly excited on the other end of the line.
“Oh boy, did I ever score this afternoon! What a score! Come straight to the church and find out what I scored!”
Apparently, he scored. Something.
A former member gave us this framed watercolor painting of the church.
I began conjuring up what would thrill him so. Recently, we had given a former member of the church a tour, and she gifted us with a watercolor painting of the church that had come into her possession. It was beautiful and meaningful, and we would certainly hang it in the hall of history. Did some other interested party drop off something equally significant? Or maybe he found something in the church. Another member mentioned losing a class ring in the church yard—did he find it when he was digging around? Alas, no class ring turned up, but maybe Tyler found something else—a piece of jewelry? A time capsule? Gosh, he sounded so enthused. Maybe he came into some money from some unknown benefactor. What could it be?
As I pulled up in front of the church, a semi-truck blocked the street. The back of the truck was filled with dirt, and some unknown foreman was directing the driver to dump his load.
In our yard.
I began getting the picture that it wasn’t jewelry he found.
# # #
Tomorrow: The benefactor is revealed. Read about it here.
Church Sweet Home 