Inside a renovated church by the sea – Macleans.ca

For a long time, Greenspond, Newfoundland, was separated from the Rock. In the 1690s, English settlers landed on the island, which lies a kilometer off the coast of Bonavista Bay, and lived off the bounty of the sea. Three centuries later, in 1983, a causeway was built connecting the island community with the mainland.

Walk along the two-kilometre-long island and you’ll find tombstones of Catholic and Protestant parishioners, evidence of demolished churches. Overlooking the coast on United Church Hill is a single-story gray and white building topped with a steeple and a cross.

Tracey Kelly, a stained glass and driftwood artist who flips houses, saw the former Greenspond United Church on a real estate website in the fall of 2017. It was deconsecrated in June of that year and put up for sale. Kelly has always dreamed of remodeling a church, so she drove an hour south of her Gambo home on a whim. She had visited Greenspond when she was a child, when the only way to get there was by boat. “I just thought, I’m going to stop by and see what it does to my heart and mind, and if I have flutters,” she says.

The doors were locked, so he looked for the town administrator, who had the key. Your first reaction to him? “Wow, I really still is a church,” he says. There were the pulpit, the organ, the pews and the Bibles. “It was like someone had just left a church service and closed the door.” He immediately saw promise in the high ceilings, historic charm and high-quality wood materials that comprised the altar. That flutter was there. Kelly made an offer immediately and, $25,000 later, it was his.

Then came the hard part: sorting it all out. “What was I going to do with 25 banks?” she says. She discovered treasures, such as old stained glass windows from the Methodist church that was also on the site. She dismantled the altar and saved the wood for future projects. “I found five or six packs of cigarettes under the altar. I have determined that there were four or five smokers, a couple of tobacco chewers and one who liked chocolate,” she says.

At first, Kelly used the 1,600-square-foot church as a cabin, a place to hang out in the summer and scavenge for driftwood to turn into art. But after that first summer, he realized how enormous the space really was, and in 2019, he decided to renovate it into three living units: a master suite in the back of the church, equipped with a bedroom, kitchen and laundry , where I could stay, and two small units on either side for rent, with one bedroom and one bathroom each. The three would share a terrace with views of the Atlantic. “I always wanted to own a church and I always wanted to make a small house, so it was a win-win,” she says.

Kelly did much of the renovation work herself: her practical skills were inherited from her mother, a seamstress and craftswoman, and her father, a mechanic. She stripped the church down to the studs, installed new insulation and put up drywall. She then hired local plumbers, electricians and contractors, including her brother Mark, to handle the wiring and plumbing. She looked for ways to reuse original features and honor the building’s past.

The result is a functional and modern design with a lot of coastal charm. Kelly’s wooden artwork can be found in all three units, along with church pews and bookshelves made from 16-inch pine boards she found in the basement. The open concept living room connects to an updated kitchen with repurposed wood accents from the church. A loft overlooks the former sanctuary, and the church hallway now leads to the front of the house and the terrace.

It was essential for Kelly to make the two tiny house units functional. She had experience living in a cramped space (a seven-by-14-foot trailer) for four months while she renovated two remote cabins in Gambo, so she knew what to do. Kelly and her brother first worked on the right-side unit, strategically placing beds in a lofted corner beneath windows that let in plenty of natural light, and opting for stand-up showers and mini refrigerators. Then they took all the lessons they learned the first time and applied them to the left side unit, which has even better sight lines.

In March, after three years of renovations, Kelly put the converted church up for sale for $289,900. It was located an hour from her home in Gambo and he didn’t have the time or desire to run it as a rental property. Daily trips up the coast also didn’t fit with her most recent project: renovating another church. This time it is Pentecostal with an attached residence in Gambo. She lives in it, which earned her the reputation of being a lover of the church. “Now, every time there is a church for sale, people joke and send me links to the listing,” she says. “But I think I’m burned out on churches.”