A couple years after the first building renovation, my company had grown so much that I found myself walking up and down Main Street looking for a second building.

Call me a glutton for punishment.

I looked at a few places. None worked. I consulted with the old client, the real estate developer who had taught me how to be a general contractor, for advice on what to do. He explained the game of Monopoly. He said, “you want to buy the building right next door and keep buying the buildings on the street until you own the whole block.”

It did not seem to be an option for me as there were no buildings on the street that were available. Immediately to my left was a Baptist church which had been incorporated since the late 1800s.

Time went on.

Our business was growing. We were struggling with limited space, working together in close-quarters and like magic, the Baptist church’s oldest living member died and the minister moved back home to Tennessee.

When a church un-incorporates, it becomes the property of the closest neighboring church. The minister at the closest neighboring church knew me and he knew that I was looking for more space because his son, who was employed by me since age 18, had told him.

Just like that, he sold me the church.

Newsflash: The church was in a state of disrepair.

There were trees holding up this church building.

Seriously. Big huge trees. The trees stood on a dirt floor. The dirt floor had a few different elevations. The front third was just a crawl space.

We had to put columns in place (jacks) to remove the trees, and shovel and remove the dirt by hand, placing the dirt in buckets. We cut the floorboards and set up a pulley system to get the buckets to the first floor from the basement. There were no stairs down to the dirt basement. We made a ladder to get down there each night to dig in the dirt.

All thanks again go to my friend Ricky, who is definitely going to heaven.

Our goal was to get the basement to a single elevation. There were exposed uncapped electrical wires, a leaking oil tank, dead animals, horse bits and shoes, and other interesting relics. There were also more issues than I could have known.

This time I was smart. I brought in a partner. A real estate developer and my former client helped me get through by offering advice on the first building. He would do most of the heavy lifting. What a DREAM. No more late nights with dump trucking trash out. There were guys with trucks for that.

The renovation was completed, this time without the involvement of historic preservation or the desire to chase tax credits. It was much faster, much less painful and within less than a year, we were in the space and had sublet the street-level storefront to a promising tenant, who in less than a year, closed shop.

Reviving this building and bringing it up to code was another major contribution to the township of Ellicott City.

And still no membership to the Club.