TheHighPriestess

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Author's details

Date registered: February 17, 2011
URL: http://www.convertingachurch.com

Biography

A nomadic American, (former?) academic, professional dilettante, who has decided to finally settle down in a somewhat randomly chosen spot. I bought a redundant church in Germany in early 2011, and am working on making it habitable. I'm an expat, and Converting a Church is a blog, but it is not primarily an "expat blog". It is nonetheless inevitable that my perspectives will be colored by my international experiences.

Latest posts

Bielefeld – Former Catholic Church — January 20, 2012
Another Church Conversion: Dorset Methodist Chapel — December 16, 2011
Garden planting: The Shade Corner — August 21, 2011
Jugendraum Conversion, part 2: Building the Walls — August 17, 2011
Garden Cuisine: Berry ice creams — August 12, 2011

Author's posts listings

Mar
24

The Plan of Renovations: Ground Floor Part I

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by TheHighPriestess

Via Lawrence OP@flickr. A typical rood screen, with the altar visible just beyond.

This is (finally!) the long promised third post in the series covering our plans for renovating and converting our church. Our plans have been changing quite quickly here, and there are some aspects that are still open. Nonetheless, a hazy picture of what is to come is slowly emerging. For comparison, my post about the …

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Mar
15

Meditations on Church Conversions

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by TheHighPriestess

via mental floss. A wonderful bookstore conversion. I could spend weeks in there and not want to leave.

I’ve collected some pictures of what others have done with their churches conversions, and the variety possible couldn’t be more evident. None of the pictures look even remotely in style like our church, but if you look closely, certain patterns do emerge after all. The major problems are high ceilings, non-obvious room divisions, and finding furniture that harmonizes well with the architecture.

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Mar
07

The Plan of Renovations: Upper Floor

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by TheHighPriestess

This is the second post covering our plans for remodeling our church. The changes we plan for this floor are probably the most urgent.

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Mar
04

The Plan of Renovations: The Attic

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by TheHighPriestess

I’m typing this while having just had more than my fair share of a bottle of my beloved St. Laurent – one of our last from Vienna. A snip of song has been coming in and out of my consciousness stream. I google the lyrics. Maybe I mistyped something, since google auto-completed my query with …

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Feb
28

The State and Floorplans at Purchase: The Basement

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by TheHighPriestess

The monster heating kettle. The two heating circuits and pump are clearly visible.

This is the third post in the series on the condition and layout of the property at time of purchase. This basement, like one would expect, is a bit less fun to look at than, say, the main worship hall. I’m going to focus a bit on the practical aspects of heating and other necessities. …

Tags: Original state

Feb
25

The State and Floorplans at Purchase: Upper Floor and Attic

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by TheHighPriestess

Triangular window above the front door. The colored glass is not dark at all.

This is the second entry in the series of posts on the state-at-purchase of the building. The first post installment included a tour of the ground floor. As throughout this series, the photos here were not originally intended to be “good photography”, but rather reference photos, so please lower expectations accordingly. Like last time, I’ll …

Tags: Original state

Feb
21

The State and Floorplans at Purchase: Ground Floor

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by TheHighPriestess

This is the first post in a four part series in which I’ll post some pictures from our various viewings of the property. These photographs were originally intended to be only for our own reference, so they are not exactly of the highest quality, or well composed or any such thing. Nevertheless, they should give …

Tags: Original state, Photos

Feb
19

Two fun images from the search

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Diversions

by TheHighPriestess

Tattered chintzy wall paper, a Kurdish freedom fighter, and a kitten.

Following a request in a comment to yesterday’s post, here are two more fun images from our house hunt. One of the schoolhouses we looked at had been used to house Kurdish asylum seekers in the nineties. This was the last time that particular house had been occupied, and there were still some remnants. There …

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Feb
18

The Search

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by TheHighPriestess

After 15 years and 6 countries of wanderings, my husband and I decided (well, ok, I insisted) it was time to settle down. After being mired in abstractions for so long, I’ve got the overwhelming desire to do something creative that is tangible, visible, and concrete for a change. Since we are not tied to …

Tags: Original state

Feb
17

Welcome!

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About

by TheHighPriestess

On this site, I’ll be giving an account of the planning and remodeling we will undertake to transform our new church into a home. Aside from progress reports, I’ll write about practical matters, like hot water implementation, solar power, heating solutions, chicken coops, etc. I’ll also post interior and garden design pictures that I find …

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About the author, this blog, and our church.

Together with my spouse, I bought a redundant church in a somewhat randomly chosen spot in Germany in early 2011 and we are working on making it habitable - and fabulous.

This blog is an account of our conversion adventures. I've also developed quite an enthusiasm for church conversions, and church architecture in general.

The building was built by the New Apostolic Church in the 1970s. It has lots of fundamental architectural features in common with gothic chapels (soaring ceiling, single nave, huge pointed windows, layout, etc.), but expressed using a modernist/post-modernist architectural vocabulary.

I love comments, so please do say hello!

Converting a Church

…for a change