In some weeks it is easy to focus my blogging efforts on a key event, whilst in others many topics jostle for blogging space and it becomes a challenge to choose what to write about. This week it’s a mix of both with some very big milestones achieved throughout the Great Hall and Narthex. So, let’s dive right on in! Ever since the Great Hall was declared “dry” (basically means it has a roof) we have grown accustomed to the “Yuletide” like strings of yellow construction lights that festooned the rafters throughout the building. In this past week the yellow strings of lights have gone out all over the building and it is our hope we will never see their likes again (with apologies to Sir Winston Churchill) …. because it’s “switch on time” for the installed lighting! It is hard to believe, but I am told throughout the new and existing buildings It’s Electric has laid over 50 kilometers of cabling of one sort or another, much of it by the hand of Brandon who, in the past, has mostly appeared in photographs as a pair of legs atop a scissor lift, but in this blog I can feature the other half of him and face on! As they say on marketing shows, “there is more.” Last Saturday, a mere 5 days ago as I write this blog, I was helping our construction powerhouse, Scott Crumley, clean the Great Hall floor. My particular prowess has become the 24” broom with which I’m getting quite handy whilst the heavy lifting was, as always, done by Scott on the rotary floor polisher. Now here’s an interesting aside, have you ever tried to operate one of those commercial rotary floor cleaners? Can’t be too hard, I thought. How wrong could I have been! There’s a knack to this, a lever for forward, and another for back and the trick is to strike a fine balance between the two. If you are successful then the machine acts like a well-trained Labrador on a leash, get it wrong and, my friends, it’s the floor polishing equivalent of trying to ride one of those mechanical bulls when it’s set at “rodeo expert” level. So, sheepishly handing the controls back to Scott, I took up my brush and swept on! Moving forward a day, it’s now Sunday and parishioners are taking up the call to write a prayer, poem or thought for the day on the Great Hall’s concrete floor. I will forgive the parishioner I overheard, as I passed through the Hall, saying “this floor isn’t very clean …. I wish they’d cleaned the floor.” No really, you are forgiven. Unsealed concrete needs no encouragement to generate dust especially when it’s been under a building site for the past 6 months, and it is a trifle tricky to buff it to a high gloss when you only have 4 hours on a Saturday morning to get the job done. Moving forward another day, it is now Monday, and Cherry Carpet and Tiles have just arrived on site to start to lay the floor covering. Let me paint a picture, hopefully with well less than 1000 words! Scott has removed the clutter of building materials, tools, ladders, empty plastic water bottles, discarded food containers, and general debris, but the floor, even after our exhaustive sweeping, is far from “carpet tile ready.” For one thing the dust is back, maybe it never actually went away, and the blotches of hardened filler dropped from the trowels of the ladies as they patched the sheet rock must be laboriously scrapped off. Then the whole area is given the once over with a couple of commercial vacuum cleaners, putting our efforts with the broom to shame, and then the meeting between floor and wall must be chipped clean. After the scraping and cleaning it’s time to fill the expansion joints between each concrete floor section with some type of mastic that doesn’t mind getting squeezed as the concrete expands, or conversely expanding when the concrete contracts (clever stuff this mastic…but don’t get it on you’re the sole of your shoe because by comparison it makes your worst “stepping in bubble gum” experience seem like merely having to wipe water off a glass surface with an absorbent towel). Then it is time to glue, square yard by square yard of glue that’s dried off with heaters until it’s tacky and whilst that’s happening the tiling crew take the opportunity to pop down the plastic tiles in the rooms that are off the Great Hall. Just two days later and it is as if the concrete itself sprouted carpet tiles over night! The entrances are carpeted, the Great Hall is carpeted, the corridor and new library are carpeted, and the Narthex is nearly finished, including the complicated “swirl” feature where two different patterns join to make carpet harmony. Good grief this crew really know how to lay carpet! Whilst the “carpeteers” plied their trade, the main entrance to the Narthex, that is, the one facing the Church where the Great Hall and existing building meet, has been getting ceramic floor tiles, and it certainly is an interesting result. The space is like an elongated hexagon with dark tiles surrounding an inset of patterned tiles that together, with the yet to be installed light fitting, will give the Narthex main entrance its architecturally dramatic look. Before I end this “blog-a-thon” it would be remiss of me if I were not to mention the return, like swallows in summer, of the “Men’s Wednesday Breakfast” crew. There they were, tucked away in the rear wing and holding their first in person meeting since March 2020, albeit with a “bring-your-own” mandate but gathered once again in comradeship, and ready to end their meeting with a quick tour of the new building. As I wandered with them through the building, I was very much struck by the thought that I was in the company of some of the parishioners that made what we were looking at possible when they started the process all those years ago. Thank you. Stay Safe and stay healthy,
David Beach
1 Comment
Chris Randall
6/18/2021 09:40:15 am
David,
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorDavid Beach is our Building Project Manager, and has been an active part of our parish family for more than a decade. He is retired from NATO and the British Army and is a joy and blessing to all of us. Archives
July 2021
|