Church Conversion – The Hermit Haus
This former church is now our office headquarters and a meeting center, called The Hermit Haus.
It’s a yellow church in need of cleaning and painting. Etc.
The Hermit Haus now has its own website and blog! We’re adding history notes and meeting updates there. Please visit!
The Story
Lee, Mandi, and Sue Ann wanted to find a commercial building to house the Cameron office, so they could rent out the lovely house on Travis Avenue where they worked for a year and a half.
From the side you can see where windows used to be. They probably leaked. Vacant lot is behind our cars.
What we bought is a small church building that has a nice upstairs sanctuary and a basement with offices, a large kitchen, and a big area where meals could be served, or many other things. It comes with some cool furnishings, and I hope two pianos and an organ!
Bonus: there is a vacant lot next to the church, zoned Residential.
The congregation has become too small to warrant such a big church, so they have made other plans. They just needed to sell the building.
The building had been on the market for quite some time. We put in the offer in early August, and have a signed contract and an inspection completed. It will be ours some time in September.
Very pretty and well maintained. You can see how it would be good for concerts, conferences, weddings, etc.
It’s actually on Main Street in Cameron. It’s a bit off the center of town, and is dwarfed by a much larger church across the street, and some large and “interesting” buildings next to it. But, it’s near a lot of well-kept houses in the older part of town. And close to donuts. And sno-cones.
How did this happen?
Sue Ann had seen the for sale sign in front of it many times, but Lee hadn’t noticed it until recently. When he saw it, he declared, “I’ve always wanted to buy a church!” So, Mandi and Sue Ann said, “Let’s look at it.”
This is the basement. Yes, the ceiling tiles are yellow. Bathrooms to the rear, office to the right.
We contacted the agent, who we already knew, and we looked the place over. Even though we were rather warm (the air conditioner has since been fixed) it had a good feeling to it (which is important in a building that houses a spiritual community; some do not have that feeling). It’s in pretty good shape for its age, though we dearly with there were still windows in the basement.
The more we looked at it, the more ideas we had for how we could use the building to provide services to the community. And we could afford it, once we negotiated a bit.
Big kitchen for catering. Yes, we have looked into that stain.
We are hoping that whatever we eventually settle on for the building will cover the costs of our office and such, AND provide much-needed air conditioned meeting space, event space, or something. We know there is another event center in town, but it has a different capacity and style. And if we did weddings, it would be a good alternative to the cowboy themed event centers outside of town that isn’t an official church (but can be one, when needed!).
We will post more about our plans and share photos of the renovations as we move forward. This should be a fun adventure.
Here are some of our earlier blog posts on this building:
Hermann says please like and share!