52) We Did It!*

“You know that sound we heard last night?”

“That knocking that sounded like something was hitting the lift?”

“Yup. You know what it was?”

“Bats? Is there a pile of dead bats under the lift?”

“No. That was the sound of the lift sinking into the ground and the basket getting wedged up against the church.”

“You’re kidding me?!”

“No. I just spent the last 30 minutes trying to get the basket off the window ledge. Had to take the window back out because the basket wouldn’t come down from the ground, I had to get back into it… It scraped all orange paint onto the church windowsill… I spent another thirty minutes scraping that after I got the basket unstuck… unreal…”

“Is everything ok…?”

“I mean yeah… just looks like shit with the orange paint on there…”

“I’m glad that you and the lift and the church are all ok…”

“I guess…”

David sounded stressed. The lift was getting picked up later that day and quite frankly you couldn’t wait until it was off your property. You loved to see it come and you really loved to see it go. The windows were up, they looked beautiful. Now you were just waiting for rain to test if the lift had enabled the leak fix that had been alluding you for nearly a year now.

That afternoon your little city was holding its annual yard sale where families all across the area would haul there treasures (and trash) out to their front yards and garages, little tents and tables staked and weighted; piled high with books and clothing and shoes and household appliances and furniture too.

You and David walked a mile loop, crisscrossing the street, scouring for treasures. You had wanted to find a nice patio set. You were hoping to score the deal of the century on something that you could hoist up into the lift (if it was still there when you got home) and place into the belfry. Beautiful seating. You pictured a little table and chairs and hammocks and outdoor sofa, a glass or two of wine, some fresh grapes from your garden, a good book, a warm afternoon breeze, and a tightly rolled joint.

You managed to find an old nightstand that with a fresh coat of paint would look really nice inside somewhere. It was a dollar and you couldn’t say no to that. The woman laughed when you handed her the money, “That little drawer right there is where I used to stash my weed…”

You didn’t bother telling her that you already had a perfectly good basket for that at home.

On your last stop in one of the nicer neighborhoods you couldn’t say no to a vintage salt and pepper shaker set that resembled an old TV. When you turned the little dial on the side, the salt and pepper shakers would raise up from the little console’s top. You had never set out to collect salt and pepper shakers but you also just couldn’t seem to say no to the really quirky and unique ones you and David would happen across on your treasure trips. So far you had a TV set and two ceramic birds sitting on a branch… you wondered what you’d find next.

When you and David got home, the lift was still there. It was hot outside. The lift was hours overdue to be picked up.

“That would be amazing if they didn’t come today and we get all that rain that they’re forecasting for tomorrow.”

“Right, then if the leak was still leaking you could go back up there on Sunday and we could give it one more go!”

“Exactly.”

********************************************************************

The next morning’s weather could not have been more disparate in comparison to that of Friday’s. The sky was a pallid grey that lacked both warmth and luminosity. There was a steady drizzle coming down on the roof and a cool breeze coming from the open bathroom windows.

The lift had been picked up the day before shortly after you and David got home from yard-saling. That morning you were hesitant to get out of bed. So long as you stayed in the covers, cozy and warm, you could continue to live with the belief that the sanctuary’s roof had indeed been fixed. Getting out of bed and going downstairs to check meant that your current reality… a dry sanctuary ceiling… could be pulled right out from under you, and you weren’t quite ready for that.

Instead you reached for a book and your glasses and burrowed deeper into the blankets.

**************************************************************************

“Fucking sanctuary is still leaking…”

It was David, the harbinger of dreadful news.

“You’re kidding me?”

“I wouldn’t joke about that. It’s still leaking. I went into the attic… there wasn’t a drip, so we definitely changed the course of the leak, but the water was trickling down the chimney. We didn’t fix it.”

“Well fuck! Now what? I hate to rent the lift again… It’s getting too expensive to keep bringing it out here and still not having it fixed…”

“Tell me about it. I had an idea though… I’m going to try fixing it from inside.”

“Ok… how are you going to do that?”

“The ladder idea I had a while ago. I’m going to go build a platform up in the attic under the chimney so that I can get a ladder up there. I’m pretty sure that if I can get to the attic roof right next to the chimney that I can sprayfoam the hell out of it and seal the leak. Honestly I hope it works because at that point, if it doesn’t I’m all out of ideas.”

The other day you had suggested getting the lift back out there and disassembling the old defunct chimney from the top up, right down to the roofline, then patching the hole with pressure treated plywood and tarpaper and shingling over the entire thing. You were getting desperate.

David’s idea sounded far less risky, far less expensive, and a lot quicker… and a whole lot more feasible.

“I think it’s a great idea. When are you planning on getting in there and fixing it?”

“I’m going to figure out what I need, take all my measurements, then get up there this afternoon. We’re supposed to get some really heavy rain in two days so hopefully I can get the little platform built, get the repairs made, and some rain to test the work…”

“Welp… I hope this works. I’d really rather we not have to pull the chimney down brick by brick…”

“We?”

“You. I’d rather you not have to pull the chimney down.”

“Me too.”

*********************************************************************

That afternoon you watched as David made trip after trip, up and down from the attic and out to his workshop to take measurements then cut plywood and two by fours down to size. The trip was more of a trek. First David would carefully balance on the beams in the attic. It was hot and musty, dreary light partially illuminated the vast attic from the two far ends… four small windows on the far end cast a grey dusky glow that didn’t quite pierce through the entire darkness.

The floor of the attic around the perimeter was a good four feet below the beams that David balanced on. As the beams reached the inner section of the attic the floor sloped up to meet the massive beams that served as both the attic’s and your husband’s supporting structure. The floor of the attic was filled with a thick layer of dingy grey cellulose, pigeon feathers, a few bird carcasses, and some discarded bags of insulation that had been tossed and abandoned within the rafters. There were some old electrical wires and what looked like primitive screens for the attic windows. Above, the attic’s roof soared at least twenty feet at the peak from the attic’s floor. Crisscrossing the space were old wooden and steel beams that were bolted with massive metal pieces the width of your two thumbs. The attic was made up of a vast array of carpentry and metal work that seemed to both simultaneously soar and pull the roof in on itself.

The space was quiet and still. Eerie in a beautiful, mournful type of way. You pictured the sanctuary below, glowing with natural light and the sounds of a long gone choir echoing through the breathtaking white oak ceiling below; traveling heavenward, where it was thwarted and consumed by the hungry attic space, devoid of any of the glory and lavish splendor seen below. Voices and pigeons and praise all diminished in its envious rafters.

Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Songs to silence.

Now David balanced over the long dead pigeons and the dusty cellulose. Watching him made you nervous. You envisioned a fall that would send him inbetween the supporting beams and through the old oak ceiling and down onto the sanctuary’s floor some 23 feet below. Your palms sweat, your imagination ran wild. You imagined Nik Wallenda crossing Niagara Falls on a steel rope with nothing more than muscle memory, highly developed skill, and a balance pole as a hushed crowd looked on in awe. Surely the onlookers would have felt similar feelings of horror, trepidation, and the abject curiosity that kept them transfixed on the spectacle unraveling before them just as you were now watching David make his way to the back of the attic.

The stakes, much like the leak… felt unnervingly high.

All that afternoon David measured, climbed, crossed, balanced, screwed, nailed, and hammered his way through the day; the stark beige color of the new wood platform slowly materializing, juxtaposing against the near black of the attic’s ancient wood. When he finished he had built a small level platform at the base of the chimney. On each of the long ends he screwed a thick strip of wood to keep a ladder from slipping off the edge and into the rafters below. He then carefully, with the expertise of a man who was no stranger to carrying 80lb solar panels into place on steep metal roofs hoisted the ladder across the rafters and into the depths of the attic where he set it up on the newly constructed platform.

You watched as he climbed, his flashlight in hand swept across the far end of the darkened loft, illuminating the chimney and an old beam that looked to be stained with the blight of at least a decade of water degredation. “This is it over here, I think!” David called across the attic. “I’m pretty sure that if I can get some foam in here, that I can take care of the problem. This could be it, Vaness.”

“Alright then! Let’s get er’ done!” You called back from the safety and steady floor of the belfry bedroom.

************************************************************

The next day thick grey clouds rolled in, quashing any hopes of a warm, sunny, summer day. This was exactly what you had been waiting for. After the lift leak fix had amounted to nothing more than the fourth disappointment in just as many rentals, you were hopeful that David’s attic interior fix would finally prove to be the answer to a decade old problem.

The two of you waited on edge, checking the local weather page’s radar. When the first few drops of rain began to fall you looked at David, and he at you, neither one of you said a word. Now was the moment you had been waiting for. Not wanting to jinx the fix you busied yourself while David disappeared, headed presumably, into the attic.

When you saw him again the rain was still coming down. You were in the kitchen working on a commissioned piece. You scanned his face for the answer to the question you couldn’t dare ask… this was one of the few times when his face gave nothing away…

“Well,” he finally said… “I don’t want to be preemptive here… but I’m pretty sure that the leak is fixed.”

“WHAT?????!!!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!!” You were off your feet now and you ran to him, throwing your arms around him in a huge embrace.

He squeezed you tight, pulling you into his chest, “I climbed into the attic and the chimney is bone dry… I still won’t feel like it’s a reality until the rain starts coming in harder…”

“Oh stop it! You fixed it! It’s always leaked, regardless of how hard it was raining… and it’s dry now??? YOU FUCKING FIXED IT!!!! OH MY GOD! DAVID YOU DID IT! WE NEED TO CELEBRATE!”

“Well like I said, I’m not celebrating yet but…”

“Well I sure am. And I’ll celebrate twice as hard to make up for your trepidation. Do you realize how big this is? You fixing this…?”

“IF… IF I fixed it… I don’t want to get my hopes up…”

But by the end of the day and a very heavy period of rain the two of you were both celebrating. The attic and chimney remained bone dry. Thousands of dollars in lift rentals and the fix had finally come in the form of some out of the box thinking, scrap wood, and an eight dollar can of spray-foam.

That night David made you both chocolate pistachio martinis that you sipped outside in his workshop as you smoked two thick joints.

“I’m just in such shock. Do you realize what a big deal this is? We literally said before we even moved here that if nothing else, by the time we moved out of this place we wanted to have at least stopped the degredation of the church. Outside of the gutters… we did it. WE DID IT!”

David thought for a minute, “You’re right… I didn’t even really think of that.”

“I did. We set out and achieved our goal pretty much already… the windows this week, huge win… the basement… huge win… that leak in the sanctuary? Massive win. That was just about all of the major issues that were continuing to cause damage here. We only have the gutters left and that’s just a matter of doing, not a matter of figuring it out. We did it David. We did nearly all of it…”

“And we’re just ten days out from being here for a full year…”

“From here on out, all our work will be wants, not needs; general maintenance and cosmetic work. We did it in a year. I’m almost in shock to be honest.”

“Here’s to a wonderful week, and an amazing first year in the church…and here’s to you, David,” you raised your glass and he followed suit; you both took a drink.

“Here’s to us, Vanessa.”

“So we bought an old church… HA! We did it… we did it all. Can you believe it?”

“It still feels like a dream.”

“A really, really, really good dream. Thanks for doing it with me.”

David exhaled a long swirl of smoke, “You’re the only one I’d want to do any of this with. Thank you.”

“Right back atcha, dear.”

You might not notice it… but we sure do! No more plastic tote bin under the leak over here. No more pet pee pads stuck all over the wall to protect the plaster and molding. It already looks so much better!!!

At this point I’m in shock. I can’t believe that a year ago today at this time we were rolling out of St Petersburg for the last time. We picked up the kids from school, they had a tearful goodbye with their teachers and friends; I got up the road about 20 minutes and my oldest realized that he had forgotten his cup and started crying… I’m pretty sure he wasn’t crying about the cut.

So we circled back and got his cup and then the kids proceeded to “DJ” our entire drive into Georgia. They did pretty well. I was in a rental with a shit ton of plants and our cat and the kids. David was a few hours behind me finishing up packing the UHaul. That was a shitshow. Apparently we waited far too late to start packing… imagine that?!

Then the trip up… HA! We still laugh about that on the regular. Just this morning David brought up that horrific hotel we stayed at with the monkey in the window and the questionable stains all over the bedspread. I was pretty close to crying that night… now though, I crack up thinking just how bad it was.

I remember moving in on Elliot’s 11th birthday, all of us going to get sushi and then the very next day getting to work. David and Jackie started what was supposed to be a little drywall repair in the basement that quickly escalated into a monumental and very much surprise, major renovation. I took to cleaning the place up because after almost a decade of sitting unoccupied, there was a copious amount of dust and debris everywhere.

In that time we have: refinished the north tower’s 1st floor; built and almost completed a second half bath; demo-ed the entire basement; installed 40 floor jackes; rebuilt numerous sections of flooring; fixed holes and cracks in the plaster; upgraded the hot water system; moved the kitchen sink; added new appliances; planted a garden; fixed some of the electrical; cleaned out the belfry; completely cleaned out the yard; put in a dry riverbed; had a huge workshop installed and outfitted; weatherproofed the foundation; fixed some of the gutters; fixed the sanctuary leak; installed four new windows; began screening in the belfry; painted the primary bathroom; refinished several pieces of furniture; cleaned out and painted a room that we are now able to use for storage; removed 8 tons of junk from the church; cleaned from top to bottom; fixed the basement’s half a century water problem; unveiled an old archway; installed a new fence (twice!); replaced and installed new bathroom and kitchen sink fixtures; painted the entire basement; and more…

Crazy thing too though is that all of that hardly even makes a dent in what we have left!

One of the first few weeks that we were here I got the old roll of contractor’s paper… that brown bag type paper that comes on a huge roll and I tore off (I believe) 13, three foot long strips. I believe I had started with a single strip, just listing everything that had to be done in the sanctuary and when I realized that I hardly had enough room for that one space alone, I started tearing more sections out.

When I was done filling out a pretty comprehensive list of everything that needed to be done in each room, I taped them all up in a row in the sanctuary. The lists are still up there. At this point if we ever manage to knock them all out, I’ll probably frame and hang them up somewhere. Let’s just say I’m not going out to buy frames any time soon.

For all the wins, there have been plenty of setbacks. The whole basement project was in essence a setback. But one thing that we have noticed is that the setbacks almost always workout better in the end. I’m not quite sure if they’re actually better or if it’s just because we go into the project the second time around with a little more knowledge and experience… or maybe it’s my new attitude about ‘issues.’ Either way… there has yet to be a problem here that has set me into an outright panic. I’m knocking on wood, by the way. Which I must say was not how I rolled back in St Pete.

A year in now and while a lot of the novelty and bright shiny newness aspect of living here has worn off; surety in if moving here and taking on this batshit nuts project of ours was the right decision, has only grown over time. While we still work our asses off here, the pace of life is different. We’re busy in a different way and it’s a way we chose… and so it feels better. David was never home before. Now we walk the kids to school each day, come home and eat a nice breakfast together, then start work on the church around 10… or not. Some days we go antiquing or putz around or just do nothing. It’s a glorious reprieve from the rushing around like chickens with our heads cut off for the last two decades.

We miss a lot about St Pete. We do. It would be crazy to pretend that we don’t. We miss our friends and family… I have so many really good friends that I left behind and I think about most of them just about every single day. The kids really miss their grandparents. I long for the days when we could never run out of REALLY good food options vs the handful of so - so places we have locally. I miss the diversity that comes with living in a city… the people and the shopping options that come with a large population. There are days I miss the sunshine (plenty of days I don’t). I miss my old yard and the ease I had planting, gardening, and especially digging there. I miss our pet turtles that we had to re-home and I miss my pond and our neighbors and all of the people I used to chat with when I was walking Otto out and about.

Of course there’s plenty I don’t miss but I think that in all of this I’ve realized that there is no one perfect place. Everywhere you go will have its positive and negative aspects and being here is no different. What I do think though about being here is that I think I’m getting to learn about a part of myself that I probably would have taken a lot longer to come to know if I had never left.

When we let our friends and family know about our intentions to buy a 130 year old, 7,000 square foot church, sight unseen, 1200 miles away from our St Pete home to move to a state where we had never lived before, the idea was not met with much fanfare. Very little in fact. “Are you fucking nuts?” Was the general consensus.

And I gotta say, when you say it out loud, you can understand why. I still sometimes wonder how in the absolute fuck I got the nerve to do something like that… I’m very calculated, I’m a planner and I have never been a risk taker. Thank you, David.

Except that maybe I needed something like this to teach me that I am a risk taker. I’m unconventional… I always have been… and for the first time, maybe ever, this feels like me doing me. Me being me. Even crazier yet is that all of the things I never thought I was capable of, I’ve learned that I am in fact really fucking capable.

You know those paw print bumper stickers that say, “WHO RESCUED WHO?” I’ve thought about making one of the church, “WHO’S FIXING WHO?” Though I guess not too many people would get the meaning… they’d probably just think that it was some weird born again Christian shit or something.

Which is kind of even more hilarious… it only makes sense that when it comes to an unconventional, non conformist… an atheist at that… it would take rehabbing a church to heal my soul… minus all the god stuff. Go figure. I know I sure have.

***

I really hope that you have enjoyed reading and following along with our church journey. Like I said, the story will continue - we’re just getting started… moving forward that will be just a bit of a different format. I’m looking forward to going back and editing, reformatting, etc what we have created and eventually coming back with a tangible book. It’s always been a dream of mine to write an actual story and I thank you all for being a part of that.

While our story is far from over, the one year mark just feels like the right place to leave off (for now). We have so much work to do. We have so many more projects and ideas and adventures to go on. But I know in my heart of hearts, that what we’re doing is what we were always meant to do… Is it because we live in this old church? Is it because we finally just stopped giving a fuck about what other people think we should be doing? Is it because we’ve proved to ourselves what we’re capable of?

Maybe it’s a little bit of everything. Regardless though, we’re so happy to have this opportunity… this has truly been the adventure of a lifetime. Thank you for coming along.