{"id":3848,"date":"2026-08-12T22:43:53","date_gmt":"2026-08-12T22:43:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/?p=3848"},"modified":"2026-08-12T22:47:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T22:47:15","slug":"converting-a-church-to-a-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/converting-a-church-to-a-home\/","title":{"rendered":"Converting a church to a home?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve seen the topic of old churches, especially in rural areas, going up for sale and getting converted to single family homes. Of course it takes a certain type of person to want to live in a former church, but I think it could be pretty interesting. I saw one in person in New York State, and I need to get around to posting about that, but today I saw something online which got my ideas flowing again, and I’ll write about this one first.<\/p>\n

The price is the first thing that caught my attention: $35,000. It’s almost 2,000 square feet, has a big attached garage, and appears to have a new roof. But it’s a long way from NJ … try on Knoxville, Iowa for size! Speaking of size, Knoxville has a population of approximately 7,500, and virtually “walking around” on street view, it definitely has Midwestern small town feel written all over it.<\/p>\n

I know I should immediately re-read my post about a house in Lincoln, Iowa, titled “Location, Location, Location<\/a>!” What am I going to do in Knoxville, Iowa, other than hang out in my church and paint? Granted, that could be nice, and at the price of $35,000, I’d have plenty of financial freedom to travel extensively and just use this as an inexpensive home base. The nearest airport is in Des Moines, about 45 minutes away, so it could be easy enough to fly off to other destinations, especially during the cold Midwestern winters.<\/p>\n

With a property like this, the square footage is dominated by the nave and sanctuary, so it’s one big open space, and in this case, with stained glass windows. If you want to see original pictures, go over to the listing here<\/a>, but I wanted to try to visualize how I might make this one big open space a comfortable home, and the first result seen above is what A.I. helped me create.<\/p>\n

But my first response to this one above was that the bed is out in the open in the main room. I guess one could call this “loft-style” living, or a “studio” home, but I would want some privacy for my bedroom, so I came up with another conceptual idea here below:<\/p>\n

\"Church
A conceptual draft of how to convert a large space within a church to a residential home.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I like this one better, as the walls around the bedroom only go up about ten feet, leaving the open-air space above to retain the large open-space feel of the room. The frosted glass on the windows of the bedroom provide an element of privacy, and there’s still plenty of open space. What do you think? I like this quite a bit.<\/p>\n

The original listing also showed what could be a kitchen space, as it had a small sink already there. I wanted to reimagine that space as a full-fledged kitchen, and came up with this concept below (including one of my paintings on the wall). I could enjoy a kitchen like this.<\/p>\n

\"renovated
Concept image for a renovated kitchen in a church turned residential home.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Just for the heck of it, I contacted the realtor and mentioned that while I’m in NJ, I have Midwestern roots, including family in Iowa, and my father having grown up in Des Moines. My question was whether this will go in a matter of days at this price, or whether it would ever be worth my while to go check it out? I know this sounds far-fetched, and it is … but again, one has to think at this price point, even if I put $100,000 into fixing it up, I’d still pocket a decent amount of money from the sale of my NJ home to give me all sorts of financial freedom, especially to travel. And the property tax savings annually would be significant. This whole concept of having a low-key home base and traveling extensively has been a long held thought. Does anyone else see the logic in this?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve seen the topic of old churches, especially in rural areas, going up for sale and getting converted to single family homes. Of course it takes a certain type of person to want to live in a former church, but I think it could be pretty interesting. I saw one in person in New York … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3851,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,830],"tags":[203,929,394,930],"class_list":["post-3848","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home-living","category-real-estate","tag-church","tag-home-conversion","tag-iowa","tag-scheming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3848","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3848"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3848\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3855,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3848\/revisions\/3855"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3848"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3848"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mckinneyarts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3848"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}