![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Now we're rolling
Jan. 27th, 2025 06:26 amMid week, the deeds arrived to my parents' attorney's office. My dad got them filed at the courthouse on Friday so I feel safe posting the whole story.
Back in 1895, the original owner of the farm property donated a small parcel of land for a methodist church to be built. Later, in the 1970s, the owners of that same property also donated the pine grove behind the church and another small parcel for a parsonage to be built. These two parcels had reversion clauses in their deeds that if the congregation shut down and the properties weren't going to be used for church purposes, they would revert back to the original properties owners or their heirs. The owners of the farm property died and my parents bought it from their niece who was their only remaining relative. The property came with the reversion rights.
After a pretty popular minister was moved away from the church and a very mediocre one brought in by the higher up church organization and the pandemic, the local church congregation (the regulars were about 12 people, the youngest is 67 years old) was winding down. The big organization was planning to split the parcel so they could sell off the pine grove and parsonage to make some money and just see if anyone wanted to buy the church. My great uncle mentioned off hand to my dad that he should check the deeds on those properties because there might be reversion rights. (this came up because they church owned a chunk of land across the creek that was directly next to my great uncles property that they originally thought was theirs). Dad had been trying to buy the pine grove for ages since it fit in well with the farm business group outings and it had a pavilion in it (and an outhouse lol). This was around....June or July last year.
So dad got his attorney moving on looking things over and had him start contacting the big org saying, hey, you can't split the properties and sell them to a non-church entity, otherwise they revert to us, the deed would be contested. The big org said, huh you're not wrong. Now, at this point, if the big org had gone out and found another church to buy the properties, they could have sold all the parcels no problem and my parents would have been SOL. But they didn't because there's closing churches all over the place around here. There used to be four churches (all different flavors of christian but I don't really know the differences) in this town alone and now there's one left.
Messages went back and forth, there was lots of meetings between dad and the leaders of the local congregation (one is the guy across the creek who helps my dad out and another is my grandpa's partner, it's very local), about what would happen going forward. In Sept 2024, the local congregation leaders filed to close. Once that happened, the big org started all their closing procedures, where leftover money went, there had to be notices sent out to all the congregation members, there had to be a congregation vote (18 people showed up to that), all the little stuff to be done. Then in November, dad's attorney reached out again and spoke with big org's legal people and then it all just took time.
My parents started taking care of the parsonage, making sure the heat as on and working, all that stuff even if it wasn't official. The church has a ton of people who just stop by and turn off lights and things (changing that soon), so they didn't worry too much about it. Back in the fall, some folks did rent the parsonage for a bit to live in, so it wasn't as urgent to keep an eye on at that point. In late December, someone from the big org came by to clean out the important things, mostly bibles and some other religious related things. No financial records or anything like that because it wasn't important to them (or something). There was some amount of taking things that might be valuable and stashing them away in my parents barn so the representative wasn't tempted to come back with a truck and load more things up. Not sure it was needed, but there's multiple large printers and a snowblower in my parents barn right now.
The rep said they were the president of big org (my dad thought they were a retired minister haha), and needed to meet with another person to sign the papers and then they would mail them. And thus. My parents now own a whole ass church, a house and the pine grove for the cost of the real estate transfer tax. Now to be fair, there is a lot of upkeep cost to keeping the church heated and lights on. So we're hoping to get it up and running as an events venue within two months or so. Hopefully, this is a more passive sort of income for my parents as I take over the farm business.
So I'm at my parents this week. Helping them renovate the parsonage because they are going to move in there and I'm going to move into the farm house in march or april.
I drove in Friday afternoon with a load of mostly crafting stuff boxed up. Unloaded some of it before dark but not much.
Saturday, we went over to the parsonage and formulated a plan of attack. The big things are flooring and painting. It's a house built in the 70s, it's in decent shape, no major issues. There may be big wall removing plans in the future, but for a March/April move, flooring and painting. Once we went over that, I got to work. I ripped up the carpet and padding in the living room, dining room and hallway, got the big pieces rolled up and moved to the garage onto pallets. They might use it in the basement since there are plans to make a rec room/train layout/whatever in the basement since it's mostly solid. Not finished but not a nasty basement.
I did discover there was an old leak at some point and some of the dining room particle board subfloor will need to be replaced but it's minor and means we need to look over the shower carefully.
Yesterday, I labeled and pulled all the trim from those areas, we moved the fridge out of the house, brought in a fridge candidate to be evaluated, moved the stove and I started ripping up the kitchen floor. That sucked. The carpet tear out was pretty enjoyable work. Kitchen floor is a layer of glued laminate tiling over 1/4 inch plywood over some kind of ugly plastic thin tiling (original floor) over particle board. I need to get down to the particle board and they put so many nails in the plywood. I only got a sheet and a half of the plywood up, I need to come up with a way to do it that doesn't destroy the heating unit. I might score a line along it so the plywood cracks there and I can then carefully pry it up in one long strip.
Today I need to do my actual job for part of the day (brought my work laptop) and then I will work on more renovation stuff. Stuff cleanout is going middling. The parsonage is almost empty of stuff (they had the church office in there), and tomorrow a bunch of the old local congregation will be coming to sort through stuff in the church. We are putting things out on tables and at some point, the rest of the group will come by, take things and probably throw most of the rest away.
We have a game plan for the upstairs of the church, which will be the event hall once we figure out how to get all the pews moved in and out easily and remove most of the overtly religious stuff. We did find a big old bible from 1937 that was pretty cool.
Originally we were aiming for a wedding venue, but our next door neighbors are putting up a building and know a lot about the wedding business, so we may rent our facility to them so they can do more weddings. It would be nice not to deal with the wedding stuff in particular. We'll see, much to do!
Back in 1895, the original owner of the farm property donated a small parcel of land for a methodist church to be built. Later, in the 1970s, the owners of that same property also donated the pine grove behind the church and another small parcel for a parsonage to be built. These two parcels had reversion clauses in their deeds that if the congregation shut down and the properties weren't going to be used for church purposes, they would revert back to the original properties owners or their heirs. The owners of the farm property died and my parents bought it from their niece who was their only remaining relative. The property came with the reversion rights.
After a pretty popular minister was moved away from the church and a very mediocre one brought in by the higher up church organization and the pandemic, the local church congregation (the regulars were about 12 people, the youngest is 67 years old) was winding down. The big organization was planning to split the parcel so they could sell off the pine grove and parsonage to make some money and just see if anyone wanted to buy the church. My great uncle mentioned off hand to my dad that he should check the deeds on those properties because there might be reversion rights. (this came up because they church owned a chunk of land across the creek that was directly next to my great uncles property that they originally thought was theirs). Dad had been trying to buy the pine grove for ages since it fit in well with the farm business group outings and it had a pavilion in it (and an outhouse lol). This was around....June or July last year.
So dad got his attorney moving on looking things over and had him start contacting the big org saying, hey, you can't split the properties and sell them to a non-church entity, otherwise they revert to us, the deed would be contested. The big org said, huh you're not wrong. Now, at this point, if the big org had gone out and found another church to buy the properties, they could have sold all the parcels no problem and my parents would have been SOL. But they didn't because there's closing churches all over the place around here. There used to be four churches (all different flavors of christian but I don't really know the differences) in this town alone and now there's one left.
Messages went back and forth, there was lots of meetings between dad and the leaders of the local congregation (one is the guy across the creek who helps my dad out and another is my grandpa's partner, it's very local), about what would happen going forward. In Sept 2024, the local congregation leaders filed to close. Once that happened, the big org started all their closing procedures, where leftover money went, there had to be notices sent out to all the congregation members, there had to be a congregation vote (18 people showed up to that), all the little stuff to be done. Then in November, dad's attorney reached out again and spoke with big org's legal people and then it all just took time.
My parents started taking care of the parsonage, making sure the heat as on and working, all that stuff even if it wasn't official. The church has a ton of people who just stop by and turn off lights and things (changing that soon), so they didn't worry too much about it. Back in the fall, some folks did rent the parsonage for a bit to live in, so it wasn't as urgent to keep an eye on at that point. In late December, someone from the big org came by to clean out the important things, mostly bibles and some other religious related things. No financial records or anything like that because it wasn't important to them (or something). There was some amount of taking things that might be valuable and stashing them away in my parents barn so the representative wasn't tempted to come back with a truck and load more things up. Not sure it was needed, but there's multiple large printers and a snowblower in my parents barn right now.
The rep said they were the president of big org (my dad thought they were a retired minister haha), and needed to meet with another person to sign the papers and then they would mail them. And thus. My parents now own a whole ass church, a house and the pine grove for the cost of the real estate transfer tax. Now to be fair, there is a lot of upkeep cost to keeping the church heated and lights on. So we're hoping to get it up and running as an events venue within two months or so. Hopefully, this is a more passive sort of income for my parents as I take over the farm business.
So I'm at my parents this week. Helping them renovate the parsonage because they are going to move in there and I'm going to move into the farm house in march or april.
I drove in Friday afternoon with a load of mostly crafting stuff boxed up. Unloaded some of it before dark but not much.
Saturday, we went over to the parsonage and formulated a plan of attack. The big things are flooring and painting. It's a house built in the 70s, it's in decent shape, no major issues. There may be big wall removing plans in the future, but for a March/April move, flooring and painting. Once we went over that, I got to work. I ripped up the carpet and padding in the living room, dining room and hallway, got the big pieces rolled up and moved to the garage onto pallets. They might use it in the basement since there are plans to make a rec room/train layout/whatever in the basement since it's mostly solid. Not finished but not a nasty basement.
I did discover there was an old leak at some point and some of the dining room particle board subfloor will need to be replaced but it's minor and means we need to look over the shower carefully.
Yesterday, I labeled and pulled all the trim from those areas, we moved the fridge out of the house, brought in a fridge candidate to be evaluated, moved the stove and I started ripping up the kitchen floor. That sucked. The carpet tear out was pretty enjoyable work. Kitchen floor is a layer of glued laminate tiling over 1/4 inch plywood over some kind of ugly plastic thin tiling (original floor) over particle board. I need to get down to the particle board and they put so many nails in the plywood. I only got a sheet and a half of the plywood up, I need to come up with a way to do it that doesn't destroy the heating unit. I might score a line along it so the plywood cracks there and I can then carefully pry it up in one long strip.
Today I need to do my actual job for part of the day (brought my work laptop) and then I will work on more renovation stuff. Stuff cleanout is going middling. The parsonage is almost empty of stuff (they had the church office in there), and tomorrow a bunch of the old local congregation will be coming to sort through stuff in the church. We are putting things out on tables and at some point, the rest of the group will come by, take things and probably throw most of the rest away.
We have a game plan for the upstairs of the church, which will be the event hall once we figure out how to get all the pews moved in and out easily and remove most of the overtly religious stuff. We did find a big old bible from 1937 that was pretty cool.
Originally we were aiming for a wedding venue, but our next door neighbors are putting up a building and know a lot about the wedding business, so we may rent our facility to them so they can do more weddings. It would be nice not to deal with the wedding stuff in particular. We'll see, much to do!
