Is it the end of the dream?

We decided that we would have one major attempt to sell our house. We dropped the price, we retiled the kitchen, we had a new lounge fire fitted and we spent £3500 on some new windows. More viewings took place with some interest but no firm offers.

Then came the next bombshell about a month after our sale fell through the church estate agents rang to say that the sellers could wait no more and another buyer had put an offer in and that they had no option but to accept it. It really was the end of the dream. The church was gone. Well at least we had our new windows and fire i suppose.

But by now we had convinced ourselves that we wanted to move, mentally we were all geared up for it, so just to see what our money would buy we visited all the local estate agents collecting property details of anything that we liked, we set our budget at £50,000 more than the price of the church. What did we find - absolutely nothing, we could not even buy a house of the same calibre as ours. So we widened our search area, deciding that maybe out there was another church or barn that was converted or needed converting. Our search took us in to Wales where we viewed another church but it wasnt really where we wanted to live, but at least it was in our price range - just and it came with a detached cottage, but no it was just too far away geographically, we have to also consider our 5 year old daughter's education and friends in all of this. We saw a beautiful barn conversion in the middle of nowhere, but again too far away and a bit on the small side.

We brought our search back to our home town and decided to see how much we would have to spend to get a home that we would want to own. The answer was, 2.5 times the price of the church! We just could not afford that so the search was put on the back burner, we would search the internet every week or so, but very little came up. Everything was too expensive or not what we wanted.

Every so often we would happen to be driving past 'our' church wondering 'what if' and every time we did that estate agents board would still be up outside still declaring the church was for sale. Whats going on we wondered, why is nothing happening?, when the estate agent said that the church was being sold to someone else we were told that their offer had been accepted because they could move quickly and complete within 4 weeks, it was now 2 months!. Every 2-3 weeks we would telephone the estate agents to ask if it was back on the market, but no they would say that the sale was taking slightly longer than planned but was definitely going through.

In September 2006 we made the call again, only to have the same answer. It was now 3 months since we had lost 'our church'. The very next week the estate agent rang to say that the sale HAD fallen through and were we still interested, they said they were calling all interested parties to tell them and that they had a long list to telephone. We said we were interested and that our original offer still stood and to make the offer immediately and not to call anyone else. We were back in the race!

Mortgages and Planning Permission

So there we have it, our offer is accepted on the church and we have accepted an offer on our house. As usual in these things there is a chain. The people buying our house have sold theirs, to someone who has sold theirs to someone else. We are waiting for all the buyers to be in a postion to exchange contracts. Whilst we are waiting there are two vital things for us to do

• Organise a mortgage on a church
• Set about getting the planning permission for a change of use.

The Mortgage

I decided to ask a financial advisor to organise the mortgage, which he thought should be fairly straight forward having looked at some pictures of the church and reviewing our finances. We decided that it would not take more than a week to put this in place and we would deal with it a little closer to the time, once we knew we were closer to an exchange of contracts point.

Planning Permission

This would obviously be the most important thing to deal with. It would be no good at all to have bought a church and then found out that we could not get permission to convert it. As it was it had permission for use as a place of religious service or strangely enough a childrens day care centre! Additionally we knew that once we had got the planning permission we would have to move very quikly to ensure that we werent gazumped by a property developer as the church would be much more valuable once the planning permission was granted.

The first thing we did was to telephone the local planning office at the borough council. They advised us that they were aware of the property and that one planning application had been made previously that had been rejected. They said that in principal there was not a problem but they did have some reservations that needed to be addressed, these mainly related to space for parking and access to and from the property for vehicles.

We downloaded this rejected planning decision from the council website which would give us a clue to the problems. On reading through it, it became apparent that the applicant had wanted to convert the church to a commercial office building and the plans included a row of parking spaces across the front of the church with potentially several vehicles backing on to a busy road.

i then set about drawing up rough sketches of how the building could be converted, room layouts and a stairway to a newly created first floor. drawing and redrawing until we were sure of our layout. Then we could do no more, it was back to the waiting game. Everything had to be timed perfectly, we did not want to get planning permission before everything was settled with the sale of our house. We could not risk putting all the work in to get the permission, only for someone else to snap up the church with that vital permission before we were ready to commit to a mortgage.

We spent many weeks waiting for a sign of our sale completing but there was nothing, we called the estate agents and were told that the bottom of the chain were trying to sort out their mortgage and to wait. Then in June 2006 we heard the bad news, the chain had fallen apart and our buyers were dropping out because their sale had fallen through. We actually took it reasonably well, taking the view that if it had meant to happen it would. But we werent giving up yet. We told the estate agents to get on and find another buyer for ours.

At the mercy of the Estate Agent

It was now April 2006. We decided that regardless of anything else we could do nothing without selling our current home, so the first thing to do would be to get it valued and on the market, we would be under no obligation to complete the sale if the figures did not add up. We telephoned a few local estate agents and were surprised to find that most would take up to a week to come along to value and photograph pur house. Then we found one that would come the next day, naturally this was the most expensive estate at an extortionate 2% of the sale price, where most were charging around 1.5%. Anyway we needed to move quickly if we were going to get anywhere so we arranged for them to come along. They did and also valued our property at a little more than we were expecting (which would help with the numbers). We agreed to go with them provided the property was put up for sale immediately, with no delays. We were promised that upon signing the contract they would start actively marketing the property to over 100 prospects on their books that were looking for a property just like ours. We waited for the promised flow of eager buyers, but heard nothing, it wasnt in their office window, kit wasnt in the local newspaper property pages, what was happening, and all the while we were possibly losing the church. We had made it clear to the estate agents that if we missed out on the church then the sale was off as we were staying put. We were so disappointed by the estate agent that we immediately wrote a letter to them cancelling the contract with the minimum 28 days notice and delivered it by hand.

Then a week or so later we had a couple of viewings set up, people arrived and even though they had seen the pictures and knew all about the house it was amazing the number of people that arrived with quite clearly no intention of buying this type of house. There was nothing wrong with it but we had only just reached the end of finishing the new extension and our next job would have been to tile the kitchen and replace the windows in the original part of the house. Something was putting people off and it could only have been this final detailing. Then a family arrived who we knew, from their reaction, wanted our home. sure enough a day later they made an offer, which we accepted. Happy days we thought, We decided that the only way to get some sort of hold on the church was to make an offer to the estate agents handing the sale of the church. It was a bit of a tightrope gamble but without this move we were almost certain to miss out on it. The phone call was made, a firm offer was put on the table, but of course we had to say that although our house sale was not finalised we had a firm offer and it was all systems go. The estate contacted their client, the local dioscese and we waited for the reply. A couple of days later we got the call, yes they had accepted our offer, the church was ours. We looked at each other and said together "What have we done?", it was a mixture of relief, excitement and fear all in one blast. Well we had done it, better open a good bottle of wine to celebrate and calm the nerves. We had made one very big step on the road to living in our church, but what a bumpy road it was about to become.

Time to do some research

So what should we do. There seems to be hundreds of questions in our heads with no easy answers.

• Did we really want to move?
• Did we really want to live in a church?
• Could we actually manage the conversion?
• Could we afford the conversion?
• Could we raise the money to buy the church in the first place?

However to help answer these questions we decided to find out as much as we could about the church, its history and its present status and condition.

We decided to start with the local vicar, a quick telephone call established a few facts. The last service had been in November. Shortly after the church closed thieves had got on to the roof and removed some of the lead which had resulted in the meeting room roof leaking during some bad weather, but the church had since had this replaced with new under their insurance. We asked if the church were planning to remove the pews, pulpit, organ etc?, the answer was no, whoever bought the church got these as part of the package. Apparently the organ was too heavy and complex to remove anyway so it was going to become the new owners problem (and what a problem it was! - but more of this later).

Next stop was good old Google, a few minutes of searching and a we were finding a few pictures and historic notes about 'our' church. It was built in 1835 and had been extended and added to a few times. It was chapel of ease to the main church in the town (a satelite church if you like, to service parishioners who lived too far from the main church). It had never been consecrated, it was simply licensed by the Bishop for religious services.

Then we decided to take a trip to the local library to see if any more historical information was to available. There we found a small paperback book about the history of the main church. On the back cover was an old black & white photo of 'our' church. Inside there were more anecdotes and snippets of information about the pews, the pulpit and the boy who used to ring the bell.

So historically it was interesting, its condition was excellent all we had to do now was make that big decision.

The First Viewing

The next day at the agreed time we met a lady from the estate agents who let us in. The first thing to catch our eyes as the front door opened was the stunning stained glass window. The colours brought to life by the sunlight streaming through them. We walked down the aisle, the church was pretty much as it had been left in the previous November. Only the altar had been removed. It wasn't a big a church but this made it even more attractive as a conversion prospect. The main part of the church had just 9 rows of pews with a central aisle, This room measured 5.5 metres by 12 metres and was the oldest part of the church having been built in 1835. The chancel where the altar had been and the which contained the stained glass window plus two leaded light mullioned windows was added in 1912 and measured around 5 metres by 5 metres. There were three superb arched wooden doors leading of these two areas into a single storey rear extension running the full length of the church, this extension being just over 4 metres wide and had only been added 15 years ago but built in the same style as the rest of the church. The extension consisted of a large meeting room 4m x 12m, a small kitchen, male and female toilets and the vestry. The vestry still had all the cupboards and wardrobes in place and were obviously handmade by a skilled craftsman. The meeting room also had the same style cupboards along one wall from floor to ceiling. Back in the main church a narrow staircase led up to the 1st floor, this was the organ loft complete with the fully functioning organ and the bell ringing rope. The place was full of atmosphere, you could imagine the countless people that must have filled the building over the past 170 years, attending all the important occasions, christmas, sundays, funerals, baptisms etc. The wooden floorboards between the pews were scarred and pockmarked by hundreds of high heels. The original font was sitting in the front garden and was being used to grow flowers in.

We walked around the perimeter of the building and this is where the downside of the church became apparent, the only garden was at the front and was about 4 metres deep, at the side was parking for 3 cars, at the back there was just a path 1 metre wide which went around the building and back to the front. The church sits on a fairly busy road with a petrol station opposite.

Back inside we went, the lady from the estate agents took a seat on a pew at the back of the church and we went around again by ourselves. We whispered to each other "What do you think?", We both nodded at each other and agreed that we liked it but what about the road, what about the lack of land. We needed to talk and to think but we both knew that we we were interested and deep down we knew that we really wanted it, but what should we do?, we aren't property developers with plenty of money to throw around, we are a small family living in a typical mortgaged 1930's semi-detached house with normal jobs. If we decided we wanted the church, could we raise the funds to buy it, and then convert it. Should we take the responsibilty, after all this is a building of local importance to the church, the town and the congregation.

For Sale Again!

We put the idea of the church to the back of our minds and thought nothing more about it until some 3 months later in April 2006, when I just happened to be driving by and noticed that the 'FOR SALE' sign was still up, but the 'SOLD' banner had been replaced by one reading 'FULLY AVAILABLE AGAIN'.I telephoned my wife to let her know, we immediately decided that this time we would have to, at least speak to the estate agent to see if we could arrange a viewing of the church. My wife made the call and yes it was available and yes we could have an accompanied viewing the very next day.

How it all began

We first spotted the church on the other side of the town from where we lived in January 2006. We had just about completed an extension on our current home and had no intention of moving for the foreseable future. We were happy where we were, 4 bedrooms, large garden, parking, garage, quiet cul-de-sac, friends nearby etc. Then by chance we drove past the church with a great big estate agents sign outside, 'FOR SALE' it shouted, and stuck across it was a smaller banner with the single word 'SOLD'.Thats a shame we said, converting a church or barn had always been one of those things we'd always wanted to do. But in some ways it was also a relief that any decision making was taken out of our hands as it was already sold. Let's stop and take a look and see what its like anyway we said. So stop we did, we walked around it and pointed out the good points (great size for converting - more like a chapel than a church) and the bad (busy road, small garden). We then drove off and agreed that it was a shame we had not seen it before it was sold and that it was exactly the kind of project we would love to take on.