Week of 2-2-09

This week has also been pretty interesting. We discovered another underground water pipe with our equipment! While grading the area between the church and school we hit the pipe supplying the church and the 2 first grade classrooms.

There sure is a lot of buried stuff that isn’t on the map around here. We had the water back on in an hour or two. Thanks to the folks at the school for being so understanding.

The preparation for paving is proceeding although we still have a few weeks before that will be done. Each area has to be edged, dug out and filled back in with shell rock as a bed for the new asphalt. While it’s all exposed we are installing conduit to each “island” for irrigation and electric (landscape lighting or Christmas lights).

Take a moment to look out the doors to the narthex and you can see that the block walls are complete and the fill for the floor is leveled out and near where it will be when finished. The size of the new narthex is a little easier to see now.

Don’t forget to check out the latest photos on line through the church website http://www.stjoesweb.org/ . Just click on and follow the “Make Room at the Inn” logo on the Home page and the Capital Campaign page.

Or just ask…

Peace, Ric Filer

Capital Campaign

On behalf of St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church we would like to thank each and every one of you for your generous contributions to the Capital Campaign Fund. Your time, talent and treasure will go a long way to fulfilling our mission of outreach to the community by providing the facilities that are sorely needed in these challenging times. As the parishioners that came before us many years ago , you can be especially be proud to think that future generations will benefit from all that we endeavor to build today.

In early 2009 we plan to compete the Narthex remodeling and hopefully start on the next phase of our continued expansion. As you know, the ongoing cost of our building project continues. We hope for your continued support in 2009. May God bless you and may God bless St. Joseph’s Episcopal Church.

Jeff Nurge

Second Week - January 12th

With renovation work there is almost always... Discoveries! The first week the doors and windows were removed, the wood framing was pulled off and the concrete floor removal was started. The floor was only supposed to take a couple of days, but we discovered that instead of 4 to 6 inches of concrete there was as much as 30 inches in some places! We also found the water line and one of the electrical cables with the concrete saw. As the paving people proceeded to lay out the project in detail (all those stakes and orange lines on the ground) we found that there were several questions that needed to be answered by our civil engineer. This resulted in a meeting, and some minor redrawing of the paving plan. Our General Contractor Rick Mouw needed to get involved but had the misfortune of a heart problem and is in the hospital! He and his new pacemaker are doing well, he says he'll be back at work Monday... Paving will be delayed but will not effect the completion date, shell construction is still very much on track to finish in time. Concrete floor removal work finished up and they moved on to the walls. This went more smoothly but sure looks like hard work. You can see that the roof is supported with extra beams and jacks until the wall is gone and a steel beam is installed.

Good news/Bad news. As the dissassembly work progressed we found that the roof leaks under the stained glass windows that we fixed last year had caused quite a bit of damage over the years. Also a small colony of carpenter ants had moved in. Patti Muranti's brother Tony sprayed and they moved out. All this will be fixed in the process of rebuilding - that would be the blessing part!
Please check out the pictures for this and previous weeks. Here is the link to the Week 2 pictures.

http://picasaweb.google.com/photos.sjecs/Narthex11209Week2?authkey=qI-PqRydr_Y#

Peace, Ric Filer

Week One - January 5th

Well it’s finally happened! As I’m sure you noticed we have actually started to “Make Room at the Inn”!
Monday January 5th at 7am the crew from Mouw Associates arrived with trucks and equipment and started setting up. By the end of the day the barricades were in place, scaffolding was up and St. Joseph and baby Jesus had been carefully moved from their place in the circle.
Tad Knutson’s crew transplanted several trees both large and small to make way for the new paving. During the week the front of the church was pulled apart and the old carted away in anticipation of the new. The interior was walled off to protect the rest of the church during construction. The Narthex itself will be finished in about three months.
The paving work will take only about four weeks and for a while change our driving habits since the center of the campus is completely blocked off.
On Sundays you can enter from either Seacrest or Swinton and the parking ministry folks will help you find the best spot. If you want to visit the church during the week, the Swinton entrance will be the best by far.

Take a look at the illustration below. If you enter from Seacrest and park in either the school lot or on the grass you will need to take a bit of a walk to avoid the work area. If you enter from Swinton the access is easier, the walk is shorter and there are still two handicap access areas. During the week the Seacrest gate will be open all day but closed after school is finished around 6pm.
Tami Pleasanton and her staff have done a masterful job and risen to the challenge of redirecting the school traffic mornings and afternoons and the students all day long. Thanks for being so cheerful about the whole thing!

There are colorized drawings of this phase of the work posted at the back of the church and in the parish hall that may help you visualize what the finished project will look like. Here's a link to some drawings.

http://picasaweb.google.com/photos.sjecs/109?authkey=o1jyBsVpshw#

Here's a link to the first week's photo album.

http://picasaweb.google.com/photos.sjecs/Narthex1509TheFirstWeek?authkey=lJnwwwnI8Zw#

I’ve been blessed to be part of the process of bringing our plans to reality. I’m also excited and thankful to finally get underway. Please let me know if you would like a closer look at what’s going on and I’ll be happy to provide the nickel tour…

Peace, Ric Filer

Jobsite Photo Albums

One of the duties we have taken on to save money is that of Jobsite Photos, I take hundreds every week. Here are links to all of them.

Ric

http://picasaweb.google.com/photos.sjecs/Narthex10908MeetWSchoolAboutTraffic?authkey=5MTMdP5q-yA#

http://picasaweb.google.com/photos.sjecs/Narthex121708HydrantMove?authkey=ODmKukeN1c0#

http://picasaweb.google.com/photos.sjecs/Narthex1209MovingDay?authkey=UNQhEQY1kAk#

http://picasaweb.google.com/photos.sjecs/Narthex1509TheFirstWeek?authkey=lJnwwwnI8Zw#

http://picasaweb.google.com/photos.sjecs/Narthex11209?authkey=0M2nr1VVumA#

From Small Beginnings

It may be a small thing but yesterday and today the fire hydrant out front was moved and passed inspection by the city. The water was off briefly at the school while we learned what valve did what. (Oops.) The city of Boynton Beach is a normal part of the process and their engineer gave us a set of drawings of the underground water pipes. This contained an amazing amount of important location information. We now have almost as much on paper as Harry McDaniel has in his head…

The rest of the pictures are at http://picasaweb.google.com/photos.sjecs/121708HydrantMove#

By the time you read this we will have signed or be about to sign the contract with our General Contractor Rick Mouw Associates for the narthex project. Real start date will be the first full week of January. Our contractors will be doing their best to give us as much access as possible but while parking will be a challenge for a while, our parking ministry will be on hand to ease the pain. The whole circle area in front will have to be completely blocked for 3 or 4 weeks. We’ll also be using the transepts for entering and leaving. The shell and interior construction will take a few months but we have been promised it will be done by Easter.

If you caught the bulletin last week or the Carpenter has shown up in your mailbox, you may recall that we noted how we are all experiencing difficult economic times. (We probably weren’t the first place you heard it.) The vestry is taking a pragmatic approach to the management of the church’s treasure. The plan calls for building only as much as we can reasonably afford with the funds the congregation is able to provide. While most building projects are done using bridge loans (very short term loans designed to even out the highs and lows) St. Joseph’s doesn’t have a mortgage (long term loan) on any of its property. We are in better shape than most churches in our diocese. That’s a good thing and the vestry wants to stick with pay-as-you-go, especially now.

To that end we have asked our architects to divide the narthex and parish hall building into 3 phases that will let us more easily match our building project expenditures to our financial capabilities. It is certain to take longer to complete but it would be foolish to just charge ahead before we know where the money will come from. This approach will add some extra cost overall but makes good sense in light of the times.

This also means that we will have to live with the current parish hall for longer than we originally thought. We’ll need to consider how to make what we have last a little longer and work a little better for us. We'll need to look at issues such as where to find more storage, should we paint, replace some flooring and even some of our kitchen cabinets and more.

Prayer and Patience and all will become clear…

We welcome comments and value everyone’s input.

God's Peace, Ric Filer

FINALLY!

Finally we have our PERMIT! The city of Boynton Beach ran out of questions and approved the Narthex project for us. I’ll post a copy in the Narthex for your viewing pleasure…

We have however decided to hold off on any significant disruption until after the Christmas holidays. We didn’t want to chance making it hard for people to come to Saint Joseph’s for Christmas. Not to mention that there will be a $10,000 plus savings in doing the inside and outside work together. We think careful stewardship is pretty important, especially in light of the current economy.

You may notice that some things will still be starting to happen; some trees need to be moved and will have to be root pruned well ahead. That big ficus tree south of the narthex and Tad Knutsen met and Tad won…

As we keep learning (you saw if you were at Fr. Marty’s Italian Dinner last Saturday) our kitchen is a key element in the energy we get from St. Joseph’s. Our chefs, kitchen designers and architects have been doing some final meetings to make sure we get what we need and that perhaps the cleanup crew won’t have to stay so late doing dishes.

As we develop our plans and blueprints with our design team we are able to more accurately predict the project costs. This part of the process allows us to find areas where we can build smarter and save by choosing designs and materials that meet our goals AND our budget. We will continue to welcome input from all.

I’ll keep you posted.
Peace, Ric Filer