I bought a Church!

[rmoltis]

Awesome can't wait to see the final product.

Good luck with your endeavors.

[Pgh5spd]

Excellent adaptive re-purposing! And nice of them to have filled the windows in for you already.

[Safety Guy]

Right now it's all grass! I think there is some gravel left around the outside of the "drive" that help a bit, but you can't see it too well. I do plan on having an "open house" this spring when it's ready, and I'll provide the grills and most of the refreshments, but other than dogs, it'll be BYOMeat to simplify my tasks.

Future plans include a gravel drive up, a front gate, and a front deck. Oh, that front deck idea, incorporating a car ramp so a lift won't be necessary!

And yes, a garage door entry is also planned, for the far long wall. But first things first. I'll post more later; gotta run now.

Karl

[rmoltis]

That's awesome.

Let us know when the first official meet is.
After its all cleaned up.

I would love to stop by and grill some food and hang out with people.

Is it all grass or will there be pavement laid down some point in the future?

[PhoenixSHO]

who cares , it looks more like a garage then a church anyway , even real cathedral rock built churches are being converted to homes here cause no one goes there anymore. Nice score !

[drddan]

Raw watermelon!

Festiva Revival House! That has a nice ring to it!!!!


You should put in some small church bells ...and ring in the Festiva meets! :smile:

[getnpsi]

SO....cherry koolaid or watermelon? Sugar in the raw or regular granulated?

[Advancedynamix]

Most excellent! I'd be honored to stop in as a guest missionary on one of my short test drives. looking forward to seeing the progress.

[Smedley]

nice find Karl.

[purg3d]

Plans for a septic field? Nice setup. Can we nominate this for FOTY?

[TominMO]

Very nice! How much work will it take to put in a two-car garage door on a long side of the building? Being cinder block, I'm guessing it is all pretty much self-supporting, so there would be no structural issues worth mentioning.

[Bert]

Real nice score Safety Guy. Many folks spook at the prospect of buying/converting a 'place of worship' but it looks to me the original tenants had the foresight to foresee/design for multi-use. Metal roofs oftentimes do not leak directly even though they look shabby. Condensation is usually the culprit. If there is no vapour barrier (asphalt felt paper/plastic sheeting/ice % water shield) directly under those sheets (and this is often the case in 40-50 year old buildings) daily condensation as the sheets heat up and cool down will run down and away to ultimately appear indoors somewhere, usually ceilings and walls. Oftentimes the easiest fastest way to solve this is by taking the sheets off one by one and unrolling a plastic tarp under each individual before screwing the sheet back on. The metal roof then becomes the mechanical protection for the effective plastic or rubber roof underneath.

[zoom zoom]

The Festiva Revival House has some serious potential, its (imo) not as loaded down with bat crap and coon poop as Karl makes it sound, nothing a days worth of work can't fix. So far we've been working on securing the doors, and by the time its done not even the forces of John Himself will be able to penetrate! It's a fixxer upper but it shouldn't take much more than a garage door, some 2x4's, and a couple days worth of work gutting existing walls and floors and patching the roof to have a fully functional service and repair facility.

You can see a little of the progress made on the front door, the whole door frame could have easily been pulled out before, but a couple tapcons and some wood has made it fairly secure so far. The back door has been barred shut.

We got in a little hurry with the bench but it turned out great. Excellent idea for repurposing alter wood, maybe in the future some Festiva parts will be saved on it?!



Getnpsi, definitely need ideas for the sign!!!!!!

[jawbraeka]

Last month I bought a church. Okay, it WAS a church, but it's just been a storage building since the mid nineties. It's on the same partial acre that an older church had been built in the twenties, so there's quite a bit of history here, and I'll be looking for more info on that as time goes on.

So how'd I end up with a church?

About two months ago, as my friend Lee and I were on our way back from looking for land not too far from my home in Cowlumbus, we happened to stop by this place on a lark. I had seen it advertised but there was not enough land with it, so I hadn't intended to look at it, but I figured we could find it and we did.

Here is the first picture I took of it:



Soon after we saw it, I called on it and went to check it out better. Within a month, I had bought it! Another view:



The little room in back is the old furnace room. The furnace is long gone. There is electric (240V!) but no water. (There is an old collapsed outhouse out back.)

The walls are 12" thick cement block, about ten feet high. The roof is original and is metal. It leaks! A door had been left open out back and so some animals are present. The building is 30 X 45 feet in size, so it is rather large. If it were a garage (pause for reflection here...) it would be maybe a four car size, plus!

View from the back towards the street (note the old church sign, which I'll keep):



Some of the roof damage:



So what do I have planned for my church?

Next posting...

Karl

12" thick walls and 240v .. perfect for all the "civic converts" and thick enough to keep there soundtrack down

http://youtu.be/aSnTw1mAVzg

[jawbraeka]

as an member of the Australian chapter, i am impressed most high..

i hope to go over one day with my car and family and come visit this establishment.