Winter Hiatus

 I found something out about the church over the Martin Luther King Day long weekend. When the temperature dips to single digits, there's just no way to keep the house above 55 degrees. The 10 huge original windows are rattling in their sashes. I'm going to have to price out custom storm windows for 10 approximately 40" x 80" windows. Can you hear my intake of breath? I'll have one more gasp for the invoice I'm going to receive when I can finally save up enough money to paint the exterior.
I've been working on the interior as the weather got colder. Here's the finished bookcase that adds a privacy screen to the staircase up to my bedroom.
Here's the before:

And here's the after:

I can pull out the two middle verticals (they are on casters) and there's further storage behind the bookcase. Like where you put the kind of stuff you need to get to twice a year.

Here's my new office. I bought two old doors at the local junk store. They had a nice patina so I cleaned and polished them up, fixed the aluminum edges and David made them into desktops.
The two chairs cost a total of $7 at various yard sales. I have to save wherever I can so I can keep striving for those custom storms!
Here's the approach to the steeple. I'm designing a safer and easier approach but this will have to do for now.

Here's the view from the steeple:

So you can see that it's totally worth risking your life to climb up into this view. I love when the tugboats come down the river.

Also, I was sooooo happy to have the main staircase finally finished. I remember how much I hated, hated, hated it when I first bought the church:

And now here it is. New balusters and handrail, sanded, stained, varnished, repeat 4X.

I made a metal mat for the woodstove with plumbing parts from Lowe's, black flat finishing nails and 1/4" plywood. Total cost $47. Now, I won't set Sparky's bed on fire like I did with his old one and when summer comes, I can just put it down in the basement.

Also, the music room is really shaping up. I found an old Hammond Church organ at Leisure Time in Ravena. Bob fired it up and once the tubes warmed it sounded great. Some dude in a ponytail came out to look at it. I asked him if he could play. He started the opening notes of "Summer In The City". I said "SOLD!" Bob dropped it off the next day and it nestled into its new home perfectly.

I'm so happy with the way the church is coming along. Here she stands proudly with new steeple and weathervane:

Finally, I'm having the first open house for my NYC apartment on the UES tomorrow. I'm going to look for a studio in the village or Chelsea. One of the first spaces I saw was a complete and total gut renovation. Here's a photo of that west village studio.

 I'm seriously considering it.  I have nerves of steel.