32) The Buck Stops Here*

Although less than enthused, the kids got off to school without a hitch. Two weeks off and they were far from excited to go back… except of course for your youngest, she was thrilled. Both you and David found this hysterical… “She didn’t get that from me,” you said, remembering how much you had hated school.

“Definitely not from me either,” David replied.

You and David had both gone to high school together. He was a few years ahead though and popular and you were definitely not hanging with the ‘cool’ kids. It would be several years after graduation before the two of you finally met. You honestly did your best not to hang out with too many people, especially by the time high school came around, you always subscribed to having a handful of close friends and not venturing far outside of that group. Your husband on the other hand went to almost two dozen proms.

What you both found hilarious though was that both of you nearly didn’t graduate high school. Not because of grades, both of you had done really well… but because of absenses. Towards the end of your senior year you had gotten a letter in the mail letting you know that if you missed ten more days of school, you would not be allowed to graduate. You had been happy to get the notice… and subsequently you missed nine more days before graduation.

David got a similar letter except that if he were to miss just one more class period, he would not graduate. He was a pro and that much closer to the wire. He used to tell you stories that on days he didn’t want to go to school he’d dress in a full suit and grab a briefcase then park in the teacher’s parking lot. He’d walk in and get counted for attendance then walk out an hour later, waving to the school resource officer as he left, never once being stopped, “No one questions you when you’ve got a suit on and look like you know what you’re doing.”

Your father in law though always straight edge down to the book, one time echoed a similar sentiment… “If you carry a clipboard around and look pissed off, no one questions a thing.”

You had thought about getting a few clipboards to keep on hand.

“What if we just don’t ever go?” Your middle child asked.

“If you guys didn’t go to school anymore, they would throw your dad and I in jail.”

“I don’t understand the problem, you both look good in stripes,” your oldest chimed in.

“Not happening. You’re all going to school.”

“Well that’s some bullshit,” your middle child sighed.

“Get used to it son… the older you get the more you’re going to be expected to do shit you don’t want to do… that’s basically what being an adult is… doing shit you don’t want to do.”

“So then what’s the point of being an adult?!” Your oldest wanted to know.

“I still haven’t figured that out yet, but I’ll let you know when I do.”

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With the kids back in school and everyone feeling better, it was time to get back to work on the church. You were still in this fucked up shoulder induced waiting period… at that point there wasn’t much you could do in the physical labor department. You were basically standing on the sidelines until cleaning, paint prep, and painting could commence and you weren’t there yet.

David had finished laying all of the plywood down on what used to be “the floor pit” on the south side of the basement. He had installed an access door that he ended up hating due to the warping of the boards. That was the thing he had said about having to order wood and have it delivered, “No one gives a shit when they pick the order… you’re getting warped wood, like it or not,” and that had always been the case. When he had plopped the carefully cut access hatch back into the floor, it didn’t sit quite right and that had really bothered him. “I’m going to redo that,” he said.

“Does it matter that much? Like won’t the warp eventually settle back to a flat position? And I planned on putting a runner down here anyway…”

“It’s going to bother me. I’m redoing it. I’ll use the hatch for something else.”

Once the floor pit was sealed up though and all of the subfloor laid down, there were still some problems. One of the problems being that because there had been so many different floors piled on top of one another over the last 130 years, it had been impossible to find wood thick enough to create a level match to the existing floor and the gap in height was too big to ignore, but not big enough to fill with a thinner sheet of plywood.

There was another problem too. When the plaster was removed from the stone walls a gap was created between the existing floor and the wall. That was definitely an issue. Bridging that gap was a difficult problem that neither one of you were quite sure how to address.

“Maybe we just leave the gap and when we sweep we can just sweep everything down into the crawlspace instead of under a carpet…” you had joked.

The reality though was that the thought of having that gap, and all of the gross dust able to waft up from the crawlspace was sickening to you. The gap had to be addressed. Normally you would have just removed some of the top layer of flooring and then cut larger strips of plywood to lay over the old flooring and the gap, but because there wasn’t anything to support the strip of wood over the gap, that was going to be a problem.

Then there was that random column of cement and bricks just under the old radiator in a corner of the south wall. Neither of you knew exactly what it had once functioned as, but now it stood a good six inches away from each side of the wall, a large gap to fill.

You and David tossed ideas back and forth. You had both decided that you were going to need a lot of leveling concrete, but that he was going to have to build some sort of temporary framing to hold it all into place while it cured. Eventually David wound up adding a few more joists and you had mentioned that maybe using fascia roofing trim to keep the leveler from all pouring into the crawl space along the wall would be a feasible solution. It wasn’t how a carpenter would do it, David had said… but it would work… and it did. He bought enough of the trim, caulked it into place and was able to pour the leveler.

He started with four bags of the concrete leveler but when it was all said and done, you wound up using a total of 22 bags…. roughly 1500 pounds of leveler was needed to get the floor nice and even. Aesthetically the floor looked like shit… there was concrete and wood and more concrete and more wood… and the old floor had paint stains and knot holes and lots of old staples… not ideal for little bare feet… but once you had removed all the staples and addressed the knot holes and repainted, you felt that this floor would not only look ok, but serve as adequate flooring for the forseeable future… who knew when it would be in the budget to purchase almost 2000 square feet of nice flooring. Lots of area rugs were your solution for the time being.

When the plaster was removed from the north and south walls there was a lot of plaster that had proved pretty much impossible to take off from the south wall. Luckily it was roughlty 40” and down. It looked terrible and wasn’t going to be able to be sanded or made to look even remotely nice. The solution was you had both decided, to install bead and batten board up roughly 4’ off the ground. This would cover the offending wall… but this was no easy solution. The walls were bare stone and not even at all. On top of that you were still concerned about moisture. The walls had been dry for quite some time now but David had concerns that a warm wall against cool stone could cause some moisture buildup. Wood furring strips could be very problematic. The last thing that the two of you wanted was to spend several thousand dollars on wood only to have it turn into the same moldy mess that you had spent that last five months tearing out. The solution David found one evening was Quarrix ProTect Furring Strips… which were basically plastic furring strips with breathable channels made specifically for damp applications.

Bingo.

And that was what he spent the next two weeks working on… installing the furring strips and finishing up the floor.

During this time you kept cleaning… there was no shortage of that to be done. You managed to get a bunch of the doors scrubbed. They had been wiped many times but actually taking time to scrub dirt when you were all making more dirt seemed futile to say the least. Now it made sense to start. The doors and frames in the basement’s exterior foyer had really taken a beating. They had been kicked open repeatedly while removing much of the basement debris. The beatings were visually apparent. You swept and picked up large chunks of plaster that when the kids ran around upstairs, still managed to fall on occasion. You removed some of the large strips of paint coming off of the laundry room walls in sheets. The laundry room was an absolute disaster. Every day though… bit by bit… progress was… progressing.

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Later that week when the kids were in bed, you and David sat in the guest-room on the two chairs you had brought up there, perched in front of the massive southern facing window. David had brought a little space heater upstairs and you turned it on high, the heat warming your backs.

You were celebrating the week’s progress with a nice drink. David had made you a chocolate martini and he had a Maduro… one of his favorite beers. There was still snow on the ground and more was gently falling, visible only in the halo of the distant street lights. From here you could view the old hospital’s parking lot, the aging hospital, and far down the street to where it eventually curved out of sight and disappeared into the trees. Off in the distance you could see hillsides that rose to the sky, covered in barren forests and two sloping fields.

You were both exhausted but content with all of the work that had been accomplished that week. The kids were back in school… the basement was continuing to come together… and now you were both enjoying a relaxing night with a cocktail in front of the spaceheater. A deer suddenly appeared far off in the distance it materialized in front of the hospital and walked slowly towards the center of the street, stopping right in the middle of the road to take in its surroundings.

“Oh my god! David look! It’s a deer!”

You saw them frequently but each sighting always seemed like a bit of magic, some sort of gift that you could view perched out of their line of site (and smell) from your church’s south tower.

“Oh wow! That’s so cool.”

“Weird how the deer just stop in the road like that… out in the open…”

You were both talking in a hushed tone. You’d be hard pressed to believe that the deer could hear you from this distance, but you always kept your voices down whenever you saw one. After a few minutes passed the deer continued its journey across the street and disappeared into the tree line on the edge of the old parking lot.

“That was definitely a male deer,” David said breaking the silence.

“Oh yeah? Because it was big?”

“No… because the buck stops here.”

“Stop it,” you laughed.

It was true though… at least in regard to the church… because you had both taken on the full responsibility of the building, starting from the ground up… and shoring up the basement had been just the beginning of adding to her legacy of resilience.

A zoomed in view from the south tower’s guest-room window.

The guest room’s southern facing window… my favorite view but these windows are by far, the worst in the entire building. They are definitely going to be the first to be replaced. We had to put up plastic for the winter… as you can see the window on the right won’t close all the way. I’m low key terrified that one day the window is just going to crumble and pop out of the opening. Directly below the window are high voltage power lines… these things are going to be an absolute nightmare to replace. From the top of the arch to the bottom, this is about 13’ of window!

First photo: these are the furring strips we wound up getting. We’re really hoping that they do the trick… sometimes old problems call for modern solutions!

Second photo: here are the furring strips installed with the sub-flooring laid down.

Third photo: another photo of the strips and the sub-flooring, you can see the raised wooden panel is where the access hatch has been placed. We had to build a temporary frame around that hatch which will be flush with the floor, in order to pour the leveling cement.

Fourth photo: here’s David spreading the floor leveler. I can not believe that we ended up needed 22 bags of that stuff… over a half a ton of leveler was poured in this space!

Pictures are deceiving… this wall is roughly 50 feet long. You can see what bad shape the lower portion of the wall is in. We’re not sure what caused this section of plaster to become inpenatrable, but we couldn’t make even the smallest dent in it with a pretty heavy sledgehammer. Bead and batten it is!

Here’s a close up of the Quarrix ProTect Furring Strips… they’re basically just a very durable corrugated plastic strip. They’re supposed to allow airflow and because plastic is pretty much impervious to water, we’re hoping that they’ll remain intact for at least another 130 years!

David set up the laser level to put in the Quarrix strips. He did such a great job with all of this!

My most favorite place to “watch the world go by”…

This week has been full of paint prep and getting more joists installed in the laundry room. The laundry room is by far, the worst area in the entire church. Roughly a three foot long section from the wall towards the interior of the room was cut out, old rotted joists (I’m assuming here as this was done long before we got here) were removed. There is an old patch job on the wall with hydraulic cement. The floor is old and in very rough shape. David just finished up getting the joists in there today. I’m so happy to have that done because we will be able to get the subfloor in, cover up the old floor, and no longer have a massive gaping hole in the space.

The stairs here are rickety and the dog even fell off of them one time while trying to run back inside… it’s a pretty long fall from the top of the stairs to the dirt bottom of the crawl space. Luckily he only hurt his pride.

Paint is peeling off the wall in huge sheets. A lot of this we haven’t even been able to address on account of most of the peeling paint being on the wall without the floor. Since this picture was taken, we have replaced the washer and dryer (I love both of the new appliances, I purchased the largest top loading washing machine that they make - outside of going the commercial route - the dryer is the same… we do SO much laundry in this house that being able to do the equivalent of what used to be four loads in a single wash is awesome!). Aside from that not much else has been done.

Not pictured here but if you were to turn to your left the room is pretty deep. The plan eventually is to divide this room in half, this side pictured will remain the laundry room and the other side will become a very large full bathroom. This space is right off the kitchen.

I had joked (kind of) with my husband about leaving the floor open and installing an indoor koi pond. How fun would that be to cross a koi - moat every time you go up the stairs? David disagreed, “After we’ve worked so hard to get the water out of this basement you want to do what with it??? Are you fucking nuts?”

Maybe a little. But seriously… indoor moat? Come. On. This could be really cool!

He swears it’s a terrible idea. Jury is still out on that one.

On the main section of the basement that we plan to turn into our family quarters, I have removed a ton of old staples… they were sticking out just enough to snag bare feet and were put in in such a peculiar manner… There were two heavily stapled parallel rows that traveled the width of the basement. No clue what their purpose was. What I do know is that they were an absolute b*tch to take out. I also went and added wood putty to the floor to fill in all the old knot holes. Once that was dry I went and hand sanded the puttied areas. I went through two massive containers of floor putty… truth be told I could probably use another two or three but I keep having to remind myself that eventually this floor will be under a new floor and in the meantime, throw rugs will be my friend.

I also managed to sort of overcome my ridiculous fear of ladders. When we moved in I struggled to get on anything higher than a kitchen chair. Ladders absolutely terrified me. Slowly I’ve been working myself up to ladder work… (pun intended) and managed to remove an old fluorescent light, multiple screws, hooks, smoke detector backings, and boards from the ceiling (which is almost 12’ up). Winning!

I also took down a 15’ long HEAVY wooden shelft that has been driving me nuts (the brackets were so freaking ugly). You would not believe how dusty that thing was! And then I went through and spackled all of the holes in the walls. I still have to caulk a bunch of gaps between some of the wall paneling, prime the poured concrete floor, and I’m sure a few more things but then we can go ahead and paint! So. Damn. Close.

David and I also primed all of the bead and batten boards and although we had planned on attaching them to the wall / furring strips the other day, we decided to hold off and add a few coats of waterproofing paint to the backside first. I’d hate to spend all that time and money only to have the backside get all moldy, so an extra ounce of prevention… or in this case an extra gallon… seems worth the added effort.

Once the walls are painted, we can get to the floors and then at that point start moving down to the basement! That is going to be big on so many different levels: one my husband and I can move back down to our bedroom with the bathroom attached (so thankful to have that back), two we can get everything out of the sanctuary and start utilizing the space for rentals (it will be so nice to be able to bring some money in with this place vs having it all just flying out) and three we can have a nice finished, put together, climate controlled family living area… oh and let’s not forget that I can get my fucking shoulder put back together because that has only been getting worse by the day… much worse. This is going to be fabulous to knock this massive undertaking off our list… And while the basement still won’t be 100% finished when we move down there (our boys’ rooms won’t be framed out, neither will my studio, and the drywall and door won’t be up in my daughter’s bedroom yet, this will still be a live-able, living space).

We are so close friends! What an absolutely nutty six months this has been!