It is a beautiful spring day at Calvary Presbyterian church. The flowers out front are in full bloom.
Once again, the previous week at Calvary was quite busy because of the relaxing of the rules by New York State. Belfor continued working in the sanctuary and in fact completed all of their cleaning work that required the scaffolding. The painters will soon take the “platform” and completely paint all painted surfaces of the walls over the next couple of weeks. The plans are that the scaffolding will be taken down at the end of June, this is a full month before it was scheduled.
Because the scaffolding will be removed earlier than we plan, the fire committee had to take some quick actions to be sure the other contractors that need to use it were contacted and able to complete their jobs. To keep the scaffolding for an additional month would cost us $10,000 so we had to act fast! We were able to sign the contract with CDR Electronics, our alarm company in time for them to order the necessary special equipment for the smoke and heat detection to be installed in the peak of the sanctuary. It can take up to 3 weeks to obtain these items. Charlie of CDR will be running the necessary wiring and plans on having the installation completed by the time the scaffolding is removed. They have also been contracted to complete the update needed to the alarm system in fellowship hall, though the pressure is not on for that portion of the work.
We were also able to get Lamb Stained Glass Studios to come last week and complete the cleaning of the windows accessible from the scaffolding. They also constructed their own scaffolding to clean the rose window and the window in the organ loft. They were really responsive. I contacted them on Friday and they were there Monday to start working. They will clean the lower windows after the scaffolding is removed and the cleanup and painting is completed by Belfor. Check out how dirty the cloth is in this picture – not sure all of that is smoke, but I am sure some of it is!
American Eagle Electric continues to work diligently on the lighting that needs to be completed from the scaffolding also. They have a lot of work to do!
As you already know, the fire committee met with Geoff of Belfor the previous week to obtain the plans provided by the architect of the existing layout of fellowship hall. During this past week Jim F and John C worked hard to sketch out possible solutions to make our fellowship hall a more user-friendly place for not only us but the use of the community in the future. The fire committee met again to discuss these plans. On Friday we had a zoom meeting with the session and trustees on Friday to discuss all of the happenings at the buildings as well as the possible layouts for the hall. The session approved the work and now the suggested plans will be given to Geoff for the architect to consider and draw up.
All of this work is exciting to see move forward and I can’t wait until this is all complete and we can step back into our new buildings!
Have a safe and wonderful week!