“You see him here, you see him there, you see Scott Crumley everywhere!”*
Scott’s presence on the construction site is a great barometer for judging progress and in this past week he has been everywhere; Tucker Hall – he is there, kindergarten class room – he is there, out the front with Higgerson, the site contractors, and there he is again! It has definitely been a very busy week around the construction site. So, what's been going on? I'll start by shining the “blog spotlight” into the bowels of the day school wing where the kindergarten classroom is getting a makeover. Why a makeover? Well with the advent of a rear wing much of the classroom’s external wall has become an internal wall and with that windows and through wall air-conditioning units have had to be removed. I am rapidly learning remodeling is all about cause and effect, take out the windows so you need better lighting, take out the through wall air-conditioning units and you need to demolish the old ceiling to put in a new one so air-con ducts can be installed and central air brought to the room. The ceiling demolition was something to behold, no flashy machines or fancy tools for this man and woman team as they took down what turned out to be over 7000 pounds of ceiling structure, each pound removed by hand, loaded into a wheel barrow and wheeled to the waiting skip*. With demo “done and dusted”* the team installing the new drop ceiling did their thing each, quite literally, a giant of their profession as they worked around the room on stilts (I’m told this is quite normal for ceiling work so I must have had a sheltered life because I have never seen such a thing before)! With day school starting in September the race is on to install new lights, replace the missing window and the wall painted. Meanwhile Higgerson have been very busy connecting the new storm water retention tank to the new drainage system so although the rain may fall ODEC’s temporary pleasure lake is now, hopefully, a thing of the past. And it hasn’t all been about the drainage system, to my great delight the big yellow machines, warning buzzers chirping away like a bunch of cicadas, have been rumbling around the site gradually raising the sand pad that will, in time, be the base for the Great Hall and Narthex concrete floors. Readers of this blog may have picked up a slight vibe from me about the very large, heavy roller. In a nutshell I’d very much like to have a go at driving the machine and even more so now I’ve discovered the roller actually vibrates to better compress the sand. If you happen to be sitting in the office wing, as I was, and the roller goes into vibration mode when it’s just outside Father Bob’ office then then you could be very easily be fooled into thinking N. Witchduck Road had just become an earthquake zone! Of course, I speak as a Brit with little earthquake experience! There is much to look forward to in the coming weeks, footings and concrete floor for the Great Hall/Narthex and roof trusses for the back wing but in the meantime.... Stay safe and stay healthy, David Beach. “You see him here, you see him there….”: adapted by me from “The Scarlet Pimpernel” by Baroness Emma Orczy “Skip”: English terminology for a “dumpster” “done and dusted”: English colloquial slang for finishing something
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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
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