She bought an abandoned church for $45,000 to turn it into her dream home

Sometimes, Whitney Anderson says she can’t believe her life.

For the past two years, she’s been tinkering with the construction of her dream “house” in Michigan — that’s what she calls the 128-year-old abandoned church she’s turning into her home.

It’s a lifelong dream, dating back to when she was a child and went to church with her grandparents, marveling at its architecture and its power of summoning.

“I’ve been obsessed with stained glass ever since,” Anderson, 45, told CNBC Make It, “and I love the idea of ​​living in a place where so many people come together.”

A decade of research has now culminated in several years of hard work, including non-stop months of renovations under the watchful eyes of television producers and online subscribers. She worked on a design budget of about $200,000 and has big plans to transform the building into a new gathering space.

“It’s still the biggest bet I’ve ever made in my life,” Anderson says. “It’s always 50/50 whether this house is going to be sustainable…or whether that’s what’s going to bankrupt me. But I have this inner feeling of peace every time I’m here.”

This feeling is “what motivates me,” she adds. “I won’t let anything or anyone stop me from achieving this dream, even if it takes me 30 years.”

About 10 years ago, the New York-based stylist and interior designer launched a nationwide search to find a church she could afford, renovate and transform into her personal home.

She says she spent about three to four years aggressively saving her income. and hid approximately $250,000 in his house fund. She made offers on a few properties in several states, but nothing really came to fruition.

In the spring of 2024, his housing search ended – somewhat surprisingly – on Zillow.

As Anderson learned in the process, churches are typically listed on commercial real estate sites or even Facebook Marketplace, she says, but not typically on residential real estate sites like Zillow. But one day, she found an ad online for a parsonage, or a small dwelling owned and maintained by a church where its leader lives with his or her family. The rectory, located in Michigan, was listed for $125,000 and came with a free church.

Originally built as a Methodist church in 1898, the building was in disrepair, Anderson says, with “human-sized holes” in the roof and extensive water damage that required him to sign a waiver and wear a respirator mask just to tour the property.

Opening the front doors “was like smacking mold in the face,” Anderson says. “But when I walked through the driveway and turned the corner and saw these windows, I ran outside and pulled my real estate agent away and said, ‘This will be mine.'”

Where most people might see a large empty room, Anderson says she imagined a huge library wall, an open kitchen, a meeting room, artfully restored stained glass windows and her own personal residence.

“I just got goosebumps because it was everything my brain had imagined, literally in the same place,” Anderson says. “I definitely fell in love with it at first sight, despite all the problems it had.”

Anderson closed a deal on the property in June 2024. After aggressive negotiations, she paid $45,000 for the 3,500-square-foot church, rectory and an adjacent empty grass lot of about 10,000 square feet.

The church currently has one bedroom and two bathrooms; the adjacent presbytery has four bedrooms and two bathrooms.

Anderson paid for the property in cash and she has spent about $194,000 on renovations so far. She began living in the rectory house (or “camping” there given its own state of disrepair) and set to work on the biggest problems in her new home, starting with repairing the roof and gutters, waterproofing the buildings, and tackling long-standing mold and mildew. water damage.

Anderson, who has lived in New York for more than 30 years and made a career renovating old homes, says she is “no stranger” to old, abandoned or condemned homes. “I kind of looked at it as a house on steroids,” she says.

But her house project is bigger, more expensive and “crazier” given that she uprooted her life to live in a new city where she doesn’t know anyone. This makes it more difficult to find the right professionals and resources to bring your ideas to life, she says.

To keep costs down, Anderson says she did most of the demolition work herself, installed floor joists, hung drywall and overcame her fear of heights by hand painting exterior walls as well as some interiors.

“I rented an 80-foot cherry picker, strapped myself up and got in this bucket,” Anderson says. “It was horrible. But the blue is so beautiful and it made such a difference.”

She adds that “it was extremely important to me to honor and retain as much of the original character” of the church as possible, such as retaining the original stained glass windows and some ceiling lights installed in the 1940s. Anderson also reused some pews (not original to the church) in the wall of the large library lining the main room, as well as in its dining table and chairs. One of the kitchen islands is made up of a front door and an old communion table.

Anderson began documenting her home renovation project on Instagram with the encouragement of a few friends. Then, in early March 2025, a 30-second video went viral (it now has up to 16 million views and nearly 3,700 comments) and caught the attention of producers at the Magnolia Network. At the end of the month, Anderson was hired to appear on their renovation show “Home Reimagined,” hosted by legendary interior designer Vern Yip.

This opportunity accelerated Anderson’s timeline for restoring the house, which until then had only involved roof repairs.

“When they found me, I had done almost nothing,” Anderson says. While she had initially planned to spend four or five years slowly renovating the church, working with the television crew’s schedule meant speeding up everything. “I spent almost eight months working 24 hours a day here” and living off her savings because she couldn’t work.

“It was chaos,” she said.

Anderson says she wasn’t paid to appear on the show, but her participation helped her secure sponsorships and free materials and labor, including her kitchen cabinets, appliances and countertop tiles; floor covering; and carpenters who built her library wall at no cost to her.

“I’ll be perfectly honest: There’s no way I would have gotten this far without the support of social media,” she says.

Moving from New York to a small town in Michigan was a culture shock for Anderson. Not everyone in town is happy that she is turning the old church into a private residence. Others ask if Anderson thinks his new house is haunted. (Anderson doesn’t think there are any ghosts, but if there are, “We’re all going to hang out together,” she says.)

Overall, Anderson said she feels the community has “embraced” the project and sees its intent in saving the old building and bringing some life back to the neighborhood.

In total, Anderson hopes to stay under $400,000 in renovation costs

She still has a lot of work ahead of her. His next “aggressive goal” is to restart his interior design business in Michigan, working and making as much money as possible over the next six to eight months, in order to complete an approximately $40,000 excavation project on the rectory by next winter. She also hopes to become savvier by monetizing her social media and courting partnerships with brands.

“The last year has been so crazy that it’s been so nice to live here and focus on building my life here now,” Anderson says.

“I don’t know if I’ll ever be completely done with it, because I love tinkering and changing things,” she says. As for the bigger tasks — adding insulation, landscaping, converting the steeple into a porch and replacing its bell — she hopes to have the bulk of it done by the end of 2028.

She has another reason to meet this deadline. Looking ahead, Anderson hopes to turn his land into a bed and breakfast, where guests will sleep in the rectory and then eat and gather in the house (where Anderson will also maintain his private quarters).

But beyond furnishing your home or launching future business plans, Anderson says embarking on such an ambitious life project has a deeper meaning.

“My ultimate goal in sharing all of this is to inspire other people to pursue their dream,” she says. “I don’t mean that in a woo woo way. I mean that in a ‘buckle up, figure it out (kind of) way. Even if you don’t have all the money you need, if you believe in yourself and stay committed to this plan, this dream, it will work. »