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In 1997, I bought a house with a history. It stood on the spot where there had once been a Methodist church. History was made in Canada on June 10, 1925 when the United Church of Canada was formed from an ‘organic’ union of a few separate denominations. This was the first time that this had happened anywhere in the World. In the community where my former home still stands, there was a Presbyterian church right across the road, so the Methodist church became redundant. There were a few communities in Canada where people were bitter about the change and some churches were burned down. In my community, the bulk of people were less dramatic and more practical. They made two houses out of the old church. The house that I bought in 1997 was built in 1929 and has amazing looking but very distressed hardwood floors on the ground floor. An old gentleman just down the road had a house with even more character since his house had the former sanctuaries and other room structure that are peculiar to churches.

So this was an old house with a LOT of problems. Roof problems, plumbing problems, foundation problems…the list goes on. I am having a hard time picking out something to talk about in this post because there were so many projects, some that I did well and others…not so much.

I guess I will write about fixing the copper plumbing after I had the pipes burst because the water froze because the furnace was off because the fuel barrel was empty because the truck driver refused to fill it because he was of the opinion that it was leaking. I made a decision to use two part epoxy to hold the plumbing joints together instead of solder. I did this because I was worried about burning the house down if I tried to do the whole project with solder and a propane torch. The other reason was that I have simply never mastered the skill of soldering copper pipe together. In retrospect, I think it would have been worth it to use some scrap ends of pipe and some solder and joints and just go outside and practice. If DoItYourself.com had been available as a sounding board, I could have had a discussion about the advantages and disadvantages of epoxy versus solder.

I am much happier now to be renting a home and not being responsible for a house to the same degree that I had been. I changed a light bulb yesterday and I didn’t get any help online.