Building Before & After

Here are pictures for you to see the progress of the space we are renting for the church building. Three days after Silas was born, Stephen and I went to view the space. Here are some pictures we took.

View from the back of the space. 

Utility closet

The toilet!

The toilet is in the door to the right.
This is the sink to the bathroom as you come in. 

The nursery/classroom.

The kitchen with the terrible, dripping,
streaks of color and the yellow bar. 

View of the room from the front door.

We started renting the building in July of 2015 and started working on it right away. We cleaned, removed the vinyl stickers and tape residue off of the front windows, and agonized over paint colors. We also were doing a lot of shopping around online, trying to find the best chairs for the money. We took a trip to IKEA one day to buy mugs, rugs, teapots, and all of the little things you realize you need.

Starting to clean up the space.
Everything was so filthy.
Silas was one month old here.

Our first sign and pretty flowers in
our window boxes.
There is a maintenance man that does
all of the flowers for the building. 

In August we flew to the USA. Stephen visited supporting churches and we went to two weddings of Alisa's brothers in September. When Stephen visited Fall Creek Christian Church in Pendleton, IN, they gave us one of their extra projectors. It was very thoughtful and helpful. After we got back, Stephen primed over the bright colors. Some friends from Drogheda came over one weekend at the beginning of October to help. Stephen and Andruis spent LONG hours painting, and painting, and painting. Colette and I helped when we could, but mostly we just watched all of our children. We were so glad that they came to help.

Starting to paint. 

All of those dripping, bold, colors are gone!
It looks so much cleaner now. 

After Andruis and Colette left, Stephen continued painting on his own. Thankfully, our friend Matt came to help. He didn't paint, but he saved us a lot of time by taping edges. Those doors with all of the windows took forever to tape! Matt also aided Stephen in hanging the projector and screen. That project took a whole day. Stephen's brother, Michael, his wife, Heather, and their daughter, Selah, came to visit at the end of October. We received help with the building from them. They came up with the pattern and hung the sound panels.

The chairs are in!

Trying to be helpful while still being a Mom.

Michael & Heather hanging sound panels. 

Matt drilling the hole to hang the projector.

We held our first Sunday service on November 1st. The space was not quite finished, but it was comfortable. We realized we needed more sound panels, so we ordered more. It could still use some more, but we are just dealing with the noise as best as we can.

In February we ordered our outdoor sign for the church. It took a lot longer than what we expected at first, but the end result looks great. We are glad to have it as people stop all of the time and see what it is. We are glad to have the exposure and hope that it helps to gain some trust in the community.

Our first Sunday service. You can see the sound panels up on the wall.

Here's a picture of the wall during Kid's Club.
We can easily clear the chairs away and
have a large space for games. 

It took the whole month of February to get the sign
for our church. It was worth the wait, though,
as it turned out nice in the end. 

What looked to be a simple, straightforward project, took a lot more time than what we thought it would. We are so thankful for the friends and family that helped us with it. It could still use more work (just last week a piece of floorboard came off, the back door needs a better lock, and the drain on the kitchen sink drain pipe doesn't have a stopper on one of the openings, so if you pour a lot of water down at once it will leak, we need storage for our cabels, etc.), but as for now it works and we are happy to have it. We hope that it will be a blessing to the community.