Grapevines twined merrily through rotting window frames. Mushrooms sprouted brazenly through cracked cement floors. Rainwater seeped in mysteriously, weather permitting.
Mice scurried by day, willy-nilly. Bats flew by night, with impunity.
For most God-fearing souls, it would have been the house from hell. For Rex Weston and Cynthia Retzlaff, it was the answer to a prayer.
Now couple’s magnificently restored home–a historic church located in the heart of this picturesque hamlet just east of Madison, Wis.–is a wonder to behold.
In the nearly four years since Retzlaff and Weston took up residence in the 7,500-square-foot sanctuary, the transformation has been close to miraculous.
Weston, 37, and Retzlaff, 38, have spent more than $500,000 and moved heaven and earth and nearly everything in between in a loving, lavish, top-to-bottom restoration that has meant salvation for an edifice once perilously close to condemnation.
Praise be given:
“It’s incredible,” said the Rev. Jane Follmer Zekoff, pastor of the United Methodist Church of Lake Mills, which owned the structure until 1976. “It shows what creativity and financial resources and artistic vision can do.”
The story begins with a simple frame church, built back in 1854 by the town’s Methodist congregation. According to church historian Frances Crone, it accommodated more than 200 Sunday worshipers.
In 1868, the congregation replaced the wood building with a brick and stone sanctuary at a cost of $12,000, Crone said.
Various remodelings were undertaken over the years; the building’s lower level contained a large Sunday school room, a recreation hall, a kitchen, lavatories and a furnace room.
The upper level featured stunning stained-glass windows around the nave and transepts. The sanctuary ceiling soared to a peak more than 35 feet above the polished wood floor. Above it all rose a distinctive, four-story bell tower.
In 1970, the Lake Mills United Methodist Church congregation bought seven acres of land elsewhere to begin an expansion.
In 1976-77, church leaders sold the old building for a reported $12,500–ironically, close to the original cost of construction.
The men who bought it, Dennis Roidt and Bob Fortney, undertook sporadic restoration work while using the building as a home and studio.
It was late summer 1991, when Retzlaff and Weston spotted a photograph of the structure in an advertising flier. At the time, they were living in a quaint frame house in London, Wis.
“Rex wanted to live in the country. I wanted to live in something that wasn’t a home,” Cynthia recalled.
Both grew up in small Wisconsin towns and work from home offices.
Rex is president of Market Share Modeling Inc., a firm that writes, develops and markets software to hospitals nationwide.
Cynthia has worked in marketing and public relations, and currently operates her own interior design business.
Even for a couple who enjoyed tackling home improvement projects, the church presented formidable challenges.
Retzlaff: “One side had been vandalized. A window had fallen out and was boarded up. Rags were sticking out of holes in the broken glass.”
Weston: “It was a mess.”
Nevertheless, they loved the Gothic architecture and had faith they could transform grime into grandeur. They spent seven or eight months negotiating to buy the church and acquire financing to help with its restoration.
Weston paid $87,000 for the church and simple parish house next door. After securing a $250,000 loan to finance the start of restoration, they moved in on Easter Sunday 1992.
The first few months were a test of faith.
“We’d be trying to sleep and hear chunks of plaster crashing down above us,” Retzlaff recalled. “All the ceilings in the lower level were black sheets of vapor barrier. We’d lay in bed and watch the mice scamper along inside it. We could see their little footprints as they went.”
First, they had 42 stained-glass windows repaired, replacing darker panes with new opalescent glass. Now, on every sunny day, the magnificent windows splash rainbows of color across the broad polished wood floor.
In the sanctuary where services were held, a friend of Rex’s painted the walls aqua and mint, and the soaring ceiling a pale lavender spritzed with gold stars.
The wooden pews that once lined up in regimental rows have been removed from the nave.
A massive mahogany bank table and 12 leather and wood chairs from a church refectory now hold forth there. The huge space provides a serenely spiritual backdrop for the couple’s modern work desks.
Throughout the lower-level living quarters, the transformation is equally inspiring.
Retzlaff designed the main hallway of their living quarters in a sophisticated neoclassic motif, hiring artist Dennis Roidt to create an intricate reed-and-ribbon pattern marble floor.
She bought a black suede and cherry-wood chaise, a sleek hall table made of five exotic woods and posters of cemetery statuary.
“You start living in a church, you start looking for religious things to fill it,” Retzlaff said.
They completed the partially remodeled kitchen in an Old English style, with a new, glass-fronted corner cabinet to showcase their colorful Czechoslovakian glassware.
They hired Roidt to create a stained-glass chandelier that illuminates the room’s finest features: honey-colored antique cabinetry from an old store in Watertown, and a center island inlaid with marble, brass, rosewood and oak.
In the library, new oak bookshelves conceal a secret passageway up to the altar area, and a navy blue damask sofa provides “curl up with a book” seating.
Hunting trophies hang near a Gothic chair from a Masonic lodge.
The main bathroom was co-designed in a medieval theme by Cynthia and Vic Samaritoni, manager of Ann Sacks Tile and Stone in Kohler.
The floor is 100-year-old terra cotta tiles from France; the walk-in shower walls are Italian marble.
“They wanted something that looked really rich,” Samaritoni said. “And it’s neat looking.”
In the living room, the couple had glossy maple plank flooring installed and six hollow maple columns to conceal support posts.
Retzlaff worked six weeks sponge-painting the 800 wood panels that look like limestone and give the room’s walls a castle-like appearance.
Everywhere, her design flair shows: a crucifix collection; puffy fabric lamp shades; a cocktail table fashioned from two old wooden capitals that once adorned a Minneapolis basilica; torchiere lamps made of metal bowls perched atop a tripod of spears.
This winter, a garden room is taking shape along one end of the new garage-office building, connected to the church by an arching iron-and-brass pergola. Throughout three seasons, the couple’s lovely English gardens bloom lushly.
None of this came cheap.
“My best guess would be that the total we’ve spent on the purchase of the building and adjoining lot, landscaping the grounds, installing a new driveway, demolition of the old parish house and construction of the garage/office, all the structural improvements including exterior painting and a new heating system and rebuilding the stained-glass windows, would be between $500,000 and $600,000,” Weston said.
That doesn’t include the furniture.
But the couple believes strongly in preservation work, and the intangible value of their home in the community.
“A church is a very emotionally rich place, and I understand the emotions of the people in town have about this place,” Retzlaff said.
In the past year, Retzlaff and Weston have opened their doors several times to tours sponsored by area organizations.
Last May, they held an open house for the Lake Mills United Methodist Church congregation.
“Baptisms and marriages and Christmas pageants had taken place in the church through the years,” Zekoff said.
“The sensitivity Rex and Cynthia had to this group of people acknowledged what the building stood for, that it represented a lifetime of memories for a lot of people.”
