We interrupt our storytelling to wish our readers a happy Halloween!
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Today’s headline is a quote from “The X Factor” contestant Ella Henderson. The quote on the church sign is a popular internet meme, sometimes attributed to @lovemydogduck.
Tomorrow: Anything is better than what we first put the dining room table on. Read about it here.
Our story so far: Choosing rugs to cover the hard-earned refinished wood floors in the old Methodist church proved difficult.
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I agonized for weeks leading up to the move about the color scheme for our master bedroom, mostly because I was too cheap to buy new sheets. We had good quality sheets for the king-sized bed in khaki and in a white-and-blue print. Either would work just fine in our master, but I didn’t have a decent quilt to match. (I was the sort of woman who liked to match her bra and underwear to match, too, even though almost no one but ever saw them.) I ended up with an all-white bed-in-a-bag with a comforter, knowing I still wanted a lighter quilt to fold at the foot of the bed (eventually, I found a great deal on a navy blue one). Maybe later I’d invest in some more printed pillow cases.
I settled on a mottled gray, black and turquoise rug. We also bought a matching runner for the Hall of History, which was right outside the bedroom. The runner was so wide, it covered up all the interesting paint we left on the floor, so I moved it into the bedroom as a path to the bathroom (so main rug was right size, runner was wrong size, at least for its intended purpose). Of course, this meant making another choice for the Hall of History at some point—ugh.
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Thursday: A rug with texture. Read about it here.
Our story so far: My husband and I had renovated an old Methodist church into our home, and now worked to make it cozy.
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Floor coverings. Oh, you’d think we had the most difficult part done once Tyler applied the last coat of polyurethane to the refinished floors, but no. Wood floors are oh, so chic, but they are not cozy. Rugs are de rigueur, and choosing rugs is not for the timid. Google “how to choose a rug,” and you’ll get 113 million pieces of advice. Tips on finding the right size sift to the top, so anyone with access to the internet and a few minutes of time can figure that out. Choosing a material, a design and a color proved to be paralyzing for me. These were not towels or curtains that could be easily changed if they were wrong—a properly sized rug covered a lot of real estate. And if I didn’t like what I purchased, cha-ching. Good rugs weren’t cheap.
The first rooms to get rugs were the bedrooms (which saved us the trouble of having to move beds). Tyler’s favorite approach—shopping Amazon—led him to Houzz, where he found the rugs for the second floor guest room and our master suite. He parsed through hundreds of options, narrowing them to three, and made me choose.
On the second floor, where the trim was white and the walls were gray as in the rest of the church, my accent color was seafoam green. I knew I wanted to use a handmade quilt I’d won in a raffle on the bed (it was quite a prize for $5 in raffle tickets), and its main color was crimson, so a version of green would complement it. I also planned to put my antique steamer trunk at the foot of the bed, and Tyler had once had it painted for me by a Rockford, Illinois artist as a gift; the color scheme was cream and blue and seafoam green. For the rug, I chose a muted tradition design in gray and greenish, big enough to cover the floor beneath the bed and the walkway to the bathroom.
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Tomorrow: A rug for the master. Read about it here.
Our story so far: We moved into the old Methodist church we renovated, and commenced with installing creature comforts.
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One weekend morning, Tyler and I installed shelving inside our master closet. The closet rods were great, but only half the story. Shelving was necessary to make the space above our heads useful. Much measuring, sawing and drilling ensued, but we accomplished this necessary project, too, with only one mishap. While sawing a hunk of shelving on a table saw, Tyler lost his grip and the hunk hurled itself into his stomach. “Ooph,” he exclaimed in a manner eerily similar to Skipper on “Gilligan’s Island”; for a week, he had a perfectly rectangular bruise across his torso (fortunately for me, I earned no blame in this). Just another badge of honor earned by renovating a 126-year-old church.
With shelving and coordinating baskets installed, my master closet could now neatly contain all my purses, scarves, workout gear and swimwear.
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Today’s headline is a line from the ’60s television show “Gilligan’s Island” uttered by Skipper, to which Gilligan replied, “I do know one thing. You take up more of it than I do.”
Tomorrow: Choosing a rug is hard. Read about it here.
Our story so far: We continued to make ourselves at home as we added cozy and convenience touches to the living space inside the former Methodist church, now our residence.
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As all of our cabinets were brand new, none of them had any sort of sophisticated organizers beyond shelving. One evening, early in our residency, Tyler and I addressed the storage situation inside the kitchen island.
As a display kitchen, the supporting structure to the tongue of granite that was a seating area was nothing more than pretty support. But in our real kitchen, where we had no lack of serving bowls and trays, that space could serve as storage—if only we could get to it. Tyler installed three cabinet doors, but the interior was so deep, even I with my freakishly long arms could not reach the back of the cabinet. So he ordered a two-deck lazy Susan. It was a bit of a trick getting the pieces through the narrow cabinet doors and reassembling it again inside, but we triumphed, and all that hidden space became useable.
Dad also helped a lot when he visited by installed the tip-out trays in the bathroom vanity and a number of wire racks inside various cupboards to contain spices, glassware and rolls of tin foil and plastic.
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Tomorrow: Master closet shelving. Read about it here.
Our story so far: We implemented meaningful ways to make the old Methodist church our home.
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The Hall of History, when we purchased the church, was paneled and dark. Removing the paneling and installing drywall helped immensely, but it needed good lighting, too, to be inviting. What better fixtures than historical ones? Among my favorite recycling projects in the church was our reuse of these various light fixtures; one of them, for instance, originally lit the side entry. The globes shared color—white—but varied in shape.
We also unearthed a number of rusty collars of unknown age. I spray-painted the collars in matte black and had them rewired. The globes required only soap and water.
Then they sat in storage for ages. I could hardly wait until it was their turn to get installed. They were among the last ones.
The best parts were the screws used to secure the globes in the collars. I, hater of all things brass, chose brass. They were just the right accent, and I loved them.
When we moved in, I took great satisfaction in flipping the switch to turn on the lights in the Hall of History. They warmed my heart a little bit.
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Tomorrow: More cozy touches in the kitchen. Read about it here.
Our story so far: Having moved into the old Methodist church which we had renovated into our home, I worked on making my home office homey.
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I still had a dozen boxes and bags of books to find a home for, but they were slated to occupy the belfry when construction there was finished. The belfry would make a lovely little reading nook someday.
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Tomorrow: Lights for the hall of history. Read about it here.
Our story so far: Having moved into the old Methodist church we had renovated into a residence, we now were working on making it a cozy home.
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I began establishing cozy in my office. Guests wouldn’t be using this space, but I would—every day.
In our previous house, my office occupied the smallest bedroom. It was usually filled to the top with paper of all sorts—books, magazines, files, notebook paper, printing paper, loose papers, mail, greeting cards I treasured, greeting cards to send and stationery … I was a papyrophiliac. And it drove Tyler just a little bit crazy. He successfully encouraged me to upgrade from newsprint to digital editions of my favorite newspapers (yes, I subscribed to two), but I still adored paper anything and hesitated to let it go.
When we moved out of that house, I trashed and shredded a literal ton of paper. The experience was freeing. I felt so much lighter in a physical sense and a spiritual one, too, but I getting rid of a lot of paper didn’t mean I wanted to get rid of all paper.
I stored some of that treasured paper (books, primarily) and lugged around the rest of it in the RV we lived in for nearly a year. My desk in the RV was a corner desk—literally a triangle that had enough space for my computer and a pen caddy. It was difficult working that way, and when we finally moved into the church I got grumpy having to unpack and put together other rooms before doing my office. I longed to have my own paper-centric space back.
We chose the back corner of the second floor for my office because most of the time, no one but me would ever see it (paper piles everywhere—how fun!). My nook had a window overlooking the elementary school playground across the street. The sound of children’s voices made me happy and reminded me of how the window in my old office overlooked the basketball court in our former neighbor’s driveway where children frequently spent time throwing baskets.
When I finally had time to assemble my desk, the hardest part was finding all the parts. My desk was actually two desks made of sheets of glass and a whole lot of metal tubing. At first I feared I was missing some of the legs but a little digging revealed the missing parts in the closet—maybe the movers stashed them there, or maybe I did and I forgot. So many moving parts.
I spent the day with an Allen wrench and successfully reassembled both desks and they fit in a perfect L-shape in the corner. When my mom visited, we unpacked a dozen boxes labeled “office supplies” into the eaves behind my desk, and ta da, I had a real office again with a real desk and plenty of room to pile up paper. I was in heaven. Well, if not heaven, I was enjoying the rarefied air of the second story of an old church, and that was just fine.
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Today’s headline is a quote credited to genius physicist Albert Einstein.
Tomorrow: Where will the books go? Read about it here.
Our story so far: My husband and I purchased a 126-year-old Methodist church, renovated it into a home, moved in and built an attached garage—all in 11 months.
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Chapter 43
Some measure of coziness can be derived from candles and comfort food. So said Meik Wiking in her book about the Danish concept of hygge (pronounced hooga).
I had vowed to work comfort and coziness into the design of the old Methodist church conversion, and I knew I could get there with some soft throws and by serving hot coffee, cold drinks and good food to guests.
But what about the church itself? Especially that wide open sanctuary?
When friends visited the church in those early days of living there, they frequently said something along the lines of, “It’s more cozy than I thought it would be.” (More than one visitor stood in the great room, turning around to look at everything and refused to be hurried to the next stop on the “tour”; two people said they got goosebumps taking it all in—I loved comments like that.)
I credited Tyler’s brilliant concept of the balcony, which had the kitchen beneath. By pulling the kitchen into the great room, we took a bite out of the openness and had created a more cozy gathering place. The space was no longer imposing and formal, as it might have been when it was a worship space—it looked and felt like a home.
Oftentimes, guests would gather around the island (it seated five) to nosh on treats or appetizers while I puttered around the kitchen. It was fun to entertain. On the other hand, our only “living room” seating was the sectional. Six people could sit comfortably on the L-shaped couch, but it was a little awkward when that was the only place to sit, which I suppose is why some people gravitated to the island. We would remedy the seating arrangement in due time, but we worked on making the church more cozy and livable with many other small projects in those early days.
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Today’s headline is a quote from spiritual teacher Yogi Bahjan who said, “What is a cozy home? Where you enter and you feel the radiance of your divine self.”
Tomorrow: I get cozy in my office. Read about it here.
Our story so far: We moved into the old Methodist church we had turned into our home, and my husband turned his attention to construction of an extra-large attached garage.
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The final doors to be installed on the garage were the garage doors—the ones used to drive a vehicle inside. The garage door guy showed up and motored through installation, one section at a time from the ground up to the windowed top section. Tyler chose brown doors. He consulted me but we’d talked about so many options, I was a little surprised when I drove up upon returning from grocery shopping.
The garage door guy also installed garage door openers (that could be operated with our cell phones!), but we weren’t able to use them to actually drive our vehicles inside because we weren’t yet up to code. The drywallers still needed to drywall the exterior of the church that was inside the garage. Drywall is a fire barrier, and a fire barrier is required between the attached garage and the residence (and if our building inspector was a stickler about anything, he was a stickler about fire barriers). So despite having an enclosed garage with a shingled roof and operational garage doors, we parked our vehicles outside until the drywallers could perform their magic.
While they were here, the drywallers were going to fix the vanity wall in the second floor bathroom that had been torn apart to install proper wiring for the light fixtures. That’s what I was excited about: We were turning our attention back to the interior of the old Methodist church.
Here’s the “end” of that slide show we started with the beginning of Chapter 42 (yes, the Typar stays until we side over it, probably next spring):
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Today’s headline is a quote from American country comedienne Minnie Pearl. The full joke: “The doctor must have put my pacemaker in wrong. Every time my husband kisses me, the garage door goes up.”
Tomorrow: Chapter 43 opens. Read about how the church was cozy here.
Church Sweet Home 