he Peter Graves TV version, too, not that cinematic vomit Tom Cruise ran wild-eyed through. Sally and I had a mission, which we decided to accept, to get moved out of our church and activate some demolitions on the way out the door. We also planned on doing a slo-mo walk away from the building as it blew up in a messy conflagration visible from space.

Due to budgetary constraints, our ambitious plans were dashed. We managed to move out, but "demolitions" turned to "demolition" and the slo-mo walk became a nightly lurch of a rapidly aging, out-of-shape married couple, covered in plaster dust and heading to bed only to begin again the next day.

Moving out required considerably more effort than expected. We put a lot of stuff on the curb, and it disappeared like David Copperfield was our neighbor. We were amazed at what was taken and what left for the garbage truck. Lots of clothing went to Goodwill, and a few things went to Craigslist, which so far has worked out pretty well. We still managed to fill the basement to the rafters, and made sure to put everything a few inches off the floor in case we get flooded again. We invested in a commercial-grade dehumidifier though, because we don't want everything covered in mold by the time we pull it out of storage.

We have two rooms to strip to the brick and the studs. It's roughly 3,315 square feet of walls, ceilings, and floors, and will become a master bed & bath on the first floor (old people hate stairs, and we'll be old by the time this is over). The upstairs will have two smaller bedrooms, with a shared bath between them, and a sneaky little loft above the bathroom giving access to a huge, four-foot diameter window at the peak of the ceiling. Perhaps the cats will like the view.

I've been taking Fridays off for the last few weeks in an effort to devote more full days of work to the church. Last weekend was Labor Day, so Sally & I had four straight days of real demolition work going on. My body is still recovering, and I suspect I'll creak when I walk for a long time. Our neighbor Sam stopped by on our first Demolition Friday, and stayed literally the whole day helping out. We pretty much cleared the whole master-bedroom area in one solid day. Sam is awesome, and really knows how to do demo work. We're lucky when it comes to our neighbors. Saturday my brother Chris and Dad showed up to help, and we started in on the upstairs bedroom. We had a bathroom to tear out, and a lot of wood paneling and drywall before we could get to the heart of it all - the plaster and lath [insert dramatic piano cord here]. The next week was filled with plaster tear-out and disposal, then lath tear-out & disposal (death by fire!), then removing the 1"x5"x17ft nailers the ceiling plaster was attached to. Sally worked during the day, and I would come help in the evening. Then this last weekend my dad, and our neighbor Robin and our friend Kate all came and helped out. We cleared out junk in several rooms in the basement, freeing up space to clear out the clutter above ground and make space for the new framing that will eventually (shortly?) be going up.

All this week Sally's been cleaning the trusses of the plaster & deconstruction dust they've accumulated over the last two years. Her hands are in a permanent claw grip now due to the 100+ hours of shop-vac use for the task, but the trusses look shiny and... old.

This weekend... THIS WEEKEND we begin tearing down the second floor in the sanctuary. After some testing we believe we'll be able to recycle most of the materials, and sell off the unused bits. It's a pretty exciting line for us to cross - this is the first time we'll get an unobstructed view from our floor to our ceiling, and the way our finished house is supposed to look.

We did detour slightly last weekend and tore out a bit of the bell tower interior. We saw sections of it that we had never seen, and likely have been boarded up for many years. We finally saw the bell for the first time. It's a beast, and 30+ feet off the ground. This weekend should be pretty great, if I can get out of the office, duct-tape a pry bar to Sally's claw-grip, and start pulling out that floor. A special shout-out to the folks that have pitched in, family, friends, neighbors and the anonymous curb-vultures. We're really lucky to have their help in this undertaking. Sally's parents get a special award, as they took half our cats on for the last few weeks so we wouldn't have to have FOUR of those creatures in our somewhat abbreviated temporary living space.