The Decision to Sell (or rent) Our Church

Road Runner - The Bigger from Matt Costa on Vimeo.

You're probably wondering why I put a random music video on my blog. If you look closely, it just so happens to be filmed in our building. The hole in the wall doesn't look so bad when it's the backdrop for a cool indie rock band. I wish I could have posted this sooner because Road Runner is playing at the Brillobox tonight. It's looked down upon to bring a 3 yr. old to a club, so I'm home blogging about it instead.

Since selling off my store's contents back in August, we've been renovating a little (did you see the shiny floors in the video?) and racking our brains with ways to use this super, cool building. All along the main plan with buying this property was to build a garage for my husband's landscaping company (we were able to do so on the other side of the property). For awhile I ran my store by appointment only in the church, but decided to close that to focus more on redoing custom pieces vs. having to run a store. The actual church building has remained unused aside from this fun music video opportunity. We decided to list it for sale and see how it goes, but we're also open to renting it out if y'all know anyone interested. The acoustics are great for music videos! Read on if you're interested in details of what was done thus far to fix up the building.

For some background information [read: boring stuff] we bought this building as a foreclosure and knew nothing about it's history until after purchasing it (click here for before pictures). After chatting with some neighbors we figured out the previous tenants had a constant problem with water in the basement. This was a huge learning process, but thankfully I have a very capable husband who knows how to run really big machinery. The property next to the church was a big sink hole where water would just collect, and, thus, run into the basement of our building. Tony dug it out, installed a leech bed/drain so the water would properly run out to the street. He then filled in the hole with dirt making it a usable piece of land.

Inside, he installed a french drain and a sump pump that pumps any water that gets past the outside drain back to the street. The walls were also dry-locked and all repainted. There used to be a kitchen down there, but we stripped everything out since there was previous water damage. It's not perfect down there, but the water situation is under control and at least half of the basement would be able to be finished without concern of it getting flooded again.

The sanctuary was painstakingly repainted a more soothing color. There was a lot of purple and gold to cover up, even purple carpet. We recently sanded and polyurethaned the old floors.  The bathroom was a total gut and redo, but all our paint and materials were recycled from other jobs, from my shop, or purchased from Construction Junction. Half the windows were replaced on the side of the building with glass block. Half are still original, including the lead glass windows in the front of the building.

We had to completely replace the gutter system outside and now that (and the roof) is in pretty good shape. Those are the basics. Let me know if you have any more questions.


1675 Laketon Rd. Wilkinsburg, Pa 15221