If past experience is a guide, praying to win the lottery will be of little help. It would come in handy, though, given how the house-repair costs are mounting. At least there are some amazing spaces where you could spend your time praying or doing the secular equivalent, if the spaces had been transformed.

Would you want to live in a house that used to be a church? Are there at least some hesitating blips in your brain before you commit to an answer? (Here are the mind boggling details…https://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/knightsbridge-church-turned-into-50m-home-with-gold-leaf-pool-room-juice-bar-and-cinema-8558159.html)

What about having the church become a bookstore (700-year-old Dominican Church, Maastricht, NL by Merkx+Girod)

or a childcare facility? Different outcome?

What if the former sacral space becomes a pub or restaurant? (The Church Bar, Dublin, Ireland)

17 Churches Creatively Converted Into Modern Homes

If you click the link above, you’ll have a virtual tour of some of the many transformations of chapels across the world. Given the scarcity of real estate it is no longer a theoretical question – people do use churches for other purposes.

Below is one of my favorites, including the arranging of kitchen gadgets behind former altar…. not sure if it makes me laugh or cry.

klaarchitectuur transforms historical belgian chapel into a collaborative design office

Yes, those are microwaves.

Photographs of buildings are from the web; photographs of the interior chapel from a recent visit in Tuscany. I stayed in a house at the foot of an abandoned castle. Ignoring the trespassing signs was worthwhile: amongst the ruined rooms was a small house chapel that had obviously served the family for daily ritual, saving them the significant schlepp into the nearest town. It was a forlorn place, my mood lifted, though, by the discovery of outside graffiti – some local kids must have found an outlet for their creative juices….