And Now You Know The Rest of the Storage

Remember this story about storage under the stage?  Paul hadn't finished it yet when I posted it, so here's how it turned out:

The rounded part of the stage is an addition to the original, so the floorboards never matched to begin with.

Using a good friend's suggestion and an old piano hinge, Paul turned what had originally been a plan based on pull-out drawers and made something fabulous and immediately vulnerable to stashing.

Someday we'll get more serious about organizing it, but for now it works great.  Especially when we can keep the cats out of it.

Storing the Storage

What do people do when, on one hand, they need lots of seats for hosting several families at once, and on the other hand, don't have lots of space to store the seats when they aren't hosting several families at once?

The answer: they make storage table benches and store the benches as tables.  At least, that's what the people at The Swallow's Nest did.

I always loved our antique coffee table.  My grandma tells me that my great-grandfather adapted it from a discarded library table by cutting down the legs.  You can see a picture of it at the end of this post.

What you can't see in that picture is how incredibly small and inadequate this pretty piece was in our living room configuration after we moved more furniture in.  Here is another picture, but we've never kept our chairs and sofa as close together as they were when it was taken.

Even from the start, though, we knew we'd need something different.  This is where we turned to one of my favorite blog authors: Ana White of www.ana-white.com.  With some simple instructions, we were able to turn out three of these great benches in one weekend, and with plenty of time for us to put them to use during our hymn sing on Sunday night.

They worked beautifully!  We had plenty of room for plates and beverages during the meal while the kids ate outside, and when everyone gathered around to sing, none of the 33 people here had to sit on the floor.

Add to that the additional storage under the flip-top lid and the shelf below, and we have great potential for tidy organizational happiness.  *contented sigh*

They still need to be stained and finished, though, so you haven't seen the last of this project.  We made them out of pine, so I don't expect them to look like fine furniture when we're done, but we'll get them as close to it as we can.

In the meantime, it's time to purge in preparation for this weekend's garage sale!

Organ Donation

Remember how we used to sleep on the stage?  Well, the kids were the first to move their quarters to the basement.  We moved them down there before the heat of summer set in.

And I loved having the entire nave as a bedroom.  It might have been a little weird for our guests to walk into our master bedroom, and all the cats may have started pa-dumping across the floor and around the furniture just as we were ready to get serious about falling asleep, and it may have been hard to fall asleep in an 88-degree room, but I really liked it up there.

Only something really great would entice me to give up that spot.

A couple weeks before my birthday we received word that a family had moved away from their home, leaving behind an organ.  Yes, they were offering to be an organ donor.

The perfect birthday gift, and perfect for the birthday budget!  I'd often dreamed of owning our own church organ ever since we'd moved into our own church building.  And so my darling, wonderful husband man, with a lot of help from some really kind men, loaded it into and out of the van, hauled it up the stairs, and into its new home.

I'm not an organist, but I'd like to play well enough for congregational singing.  Mastering some good organ literature wouldn't hurt, either!  I just wish I could dedicate more time to practicing.  *sigh*

A funny thing about Pipes: she, of all the cats, has been the most interested in befriending the organist.  How sweet that she's so aptly named!

It Started with Storage

Paul figures we spent 5% of our income this past year on paying rent for our storage unit, and he rightly observed that it's like buying all those things we're storing all over again.  Arg.

So until we can purge our unit of stuff we don't need, and until we can build a storage shed on the property, we're exploring how we might use what we already have at our disposal.

I've long had my eye on the space under the stage: it seems like a perfect place to store camera tripods, light stands, and other such equipment.  But we wouldn't know for sure until Paul could open it up and look at it himself.

The cats enjoyed their look under the stage, too.  Elliot dubbed this chubby guy "Dust Bunny Dilly."  The top of his feet are dirty?  Hmm...

The portion of the stage that Paul tore up was an addition to the original stage and was built on top of the original flooring, so he took advantage of the exposed floorboards to replace a plywood patch in the floor.

The crisp boundary and color difference between the old and the replacement don't really hide the fact that it's a patch, but we figure that it will look better once it's refinished.  Besides, it's part of the building's history, and it's a lot nicer than it used to be:

(Naughty kitties.)

Cat Fur fer Kitty Pants

Whenever Grandma didn't want to bother answering my "What for?", she would reply, "Cat fur for kitty pants."

I don't think I ever thought to ask who made these kitty pants and if they were sewn or knitted from homespun cat fur.  I suspect that was beside the point, but if I were to make kitty pants today, I would prefer to sew them.  However, as I'm sewing them, I could also collect the cat fur from the project fabric and spin some cat fur yarn with what the cats leave behind.

As you can imagine, I haven't been overeager to set up shop where the cats are ever looking for that novel surface to lie on.  Until...

We weren't using the cracker jar in the kitchen.  Perfect!  Now I can decorate with the pretty fabrics I'm sewing together even as I keep them safe from the cats and their kitty pants.

I'm very happy with the solution.

The Social Ladder

It's that time of year again. Only this time we have have curious cats to deal with.  Most of the climbers managed to find their way down without falling.

But oh, they're so naughty!

(Paul was not amused.  He was less amused than I was when we came home from church to discover the full length of the nave floor covered in a complex web of yarn one Sunday afternoon.)

Nave Cabinets

A unique space requires unique storage, especially if we hope to host people in the same place we work and live. Stuff that is used on a daily basis needs a place to hide, and there isn't a lot of room downstairs to store essentials like fabric, the microscope, recording gear, and LEGOs.

The solution will be massive, custom-designed cabinets and hutches, engineered to our specific storage needs, and built and installed along the perimeter, much like the drawing above demonstrates. Both sides of the nave will feature the same basic layout.

One key element of this design is the modular nature of the tables. They are intended to be pulled out from the wall without messing up the integrity of the overall design, and having a 2:1 length to width ratio, they can be placed in many different configurations, depending on our need: a square, a skinny rectangle, a fat rectangle, a hollow square... Purposefully flexible.

To get an idea of how well my theory might work in reality, I recently pulled out the measuring tape and a roll of painter's tape. Now that I can see the outlines on the wall and the floor, I'm still quite happy with the size of the future furniture and how it fits the scale of the building.

But that means that the top of the hutch comes to 9 feet tall! At that height, I'll need to plan to store one more thing: a short step ladder for reaching items on the top shelf!

The depth of the cabinets will be 30 inches instead of the traditional 24. This will create a smoother line to unify the tables and the cabinets, increase our storage below, and give us a more roomy and comfortable work space on top. And again, it fits the scale of the room. Then to complement the extra-deep base cabinets, our upper cabinets will be 15 inches deep instead of the traditional 12.

My inspiration for thinking about custom cabinets comes from Ana White, a woodworking mom who, in her words, likes to put the "make" back into "homemaker". Visit her site and see if you don't begin to feel inspired and empowered to create some great things yourself!

Moving In

I should probably clarify that we don't actually live here yet. For just one more month we'll continue living in the inner city of Chicago, driving out to The Nest for a few productive days at a time as we can. But only for one more month! It's time to start setting up a home with the things we already have as we wait and work to accomplish our dreams and goals.

The bookcases came out of storage, and with it, some of our books. After a year and a half, it was like a reunion with old friends.

From the Floor to the Table

Remember the stack of floor boards that had been left behind when we moved in? Measured and counted, they rested along the side of the nave. They served well to contain the plastic bowling ball for our New Year's Eve 5-frame bowling tournament, but other than that, they've just been in the way.

Over 17 feet long, they couldn't make it down the stairs in one piece, so in the interest of making the most of what wood we had, I needed to decide how short or long each piece would need to be for us to make, in this case, the tops for our tables.



For this, I turned to my print publishing software. After creating a scale model of each floorboard, I was able to cut and assemble them over and over until I had them in the right dimensions and configuration to create four of the six matching, modular tables we have in mind.

The wood is pretty rough, and while I'd love to retain as much of that character as possible, I do need the surfaces to be smooth so the tables can function as a place where we can write, eat, and sew, to name a few essential activities. And they need to be easily cleaned up.

So now that they're cut, we'll have to plane them down, rip them to equal widths, fill in the holes, and glue and clamp them together. By then, perhaps, we'll have figured out how to make the table base. This is the look we'll be aiming for:

Camden Trestle Table

Restoration Hardware

And oh yes, I cut them all myself. With the help of my handy hubby, of course.

Northwest Windows

From left to right: The sheaf of wheat symbolizes the bread of the New Covenant, the open Bible exhorts us to make God's Word central to our lives, and the dove with the olive branch speaks of peace and happiness such as Noah would have experienced following the worldwide flood.

Of all the kinds of stained glass windows that could have been here, I consider myself blessed that these windows feature simple, flowing lines and symbolic representations rather than ornate motives and figurative depictions. They're beautiful, and for the most part, I wouldn't change a thing.

Southeast Windows

These are the stained glass windows on the southeast side. Clicking on a picture will enlarge it for looking at the detail.

The window on the left, closest to the front of the nave, features a bunch of grapes to communicate the wine of the New Covenant. The central window portrays a crown and a cross to remind us of Christ our King. The window on the right features an anchor, an ancient symbol of hope.

The windows were installed in 1910, and the glass itself is Tiffany-style glass, composed of many layers of color within each piece. Elliot commented that the glass in the main part of the outer windows looks like mother-of-pearl, and indeed, it does.

I'm sure there's quite a bit more to say about the glass and the style and period of the design, but I'd need to do more research first. When we are able to turn our attention to restoring them, we'll write more about what we learn.

Next: the windows on the northwest side.

Along the Sides

More (fuzzy) pictures of the nave. Elliot stayed in the shot to give an idea of the scale, but Aelsa joked that with how quickly he's been growing lately, perhaps there were better people for the job. She wasn't volunteering, however.

Regarding the scale of the windows and the space they fill, it's worth mentioning that the window trim is 10" wide. From the floor to the top of the window trim is 12.5'.

Stained glass window detail coming later.

Setting the Stage for a Repeat Performance

We may sleep here now, but later our musical instruments will fill this space.

View from the Back

It's hard to get the room to fit into one picture, but here's my attempt to capture it from the back. Notice how the stage is set for the sleeping show. And the stairs to the basement are on the right.

That's it! The space in its entirety is about 28 feet wide by 38 feet long, and we have big plans for it. More on that later.

View from the Front

So far I've posted several close-up pictures of isolated elements of The Swallow's Nest. But now here's the beginning of a tour of the grounds to give you a better idea of the space we're adapting.

This is the view from the platform in the front of the nave. The doors in the back lead to the front entry. Yes, the front door is in the back of the room. We hope this won't lead to much confusion. =)

You see the carpeting and the linoleum floor have been removed. The guys finished that up last week. It's interesting to see where the pews sat; marks on the floor reveal where they were bolted to the floor, and stripes of varying colors betray the toll that years of foot traffic took on its once-protective finish.

Our plans are to sand the floor and finish it in a dark brown stain, but that won't be until the bathroom is functional and we have bedrooms designated downstairs: the platform is currently where we stage our airbeds, sleeping bags, and pillows. It's quite a show, but it's been known to put everyone to sleep.