Conversion progress posts
Aug
17
The next steps in building our new shower room upstairs involved putting in place the structure of the bathroom. We installed a new vapor barrier, had a window put in, and built the partition walls. We even did some of these things two or three times because it was so much fun the first time …
Aug
04
Over the last couple of months, we’ve been busy with building the new bathroom upstairs in the former Jugendraum, and renovating the rest of the room itself. Our initial plans can be found in this older post. We’ve had lots of new experiences, partially since we, the neophytes, decided to do some of the work …
Jun
25
The merits as I see them of solar thermal water and heating support, and a little of our experiences getting such a system installed.
May
13
We finally got planning permission. Since we couldn’t find a how-to for getting change-of-usage permission applications in Germany anywhere on the web, I thought I’d write one. I’ve decorated this post with images of buildings needing conversion which are currently for sale.
May
03
Relatives have been expressing curiosity about our kitchen arrangement. So, as promised, here are a few photos of where we cook now. We still don’t have warm water outside the cellar, and the spot where we will ultimately install a proper kitchen is still buried under a pile of boxes, and this isn’t likely to change for another few months. In such cases, one must improvise.
Apr
24
The house came with an overgrown hazelnut tree. I found the hard work of trimming the tree gave several benefits, some unexpected. I include a recipe for cured hazelnut-smoked goose breast.
Apr
06
I have a brown thumb. This has been well demonstrated to me by numerous crunchy brown houseplants. Any plant under my control generally looks vibrant and happy for a few months, and then suddenly dies. Then I give up on plants. I tend to forget about my ineptness if I haven’t had to care for …
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.
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