Renovations (Installment #2)
From: Jim Lindner Date: October 19, 2009 |
We have already had a few hard decisions to make. When we removed a section of the altar that had covered up the bottom of the Jesus window we were delighted to see the bottom of the window and it's inscription, and we also had a surprise which is some of the original wall painting and color scheme.
Here you can see the detail. There was significant plaster damage around it and so we had to decide whether to cover it up or keep it exposed in some fashion. There were only 2 sections where this painting existed and with the damage we decided to cover it up. It was a hard decision but this is not a "restoration" project as we mentioned at the very beginning - if so there would have to be many other things that would be different, and because the sections were so small and damaged we chose to cover it. I believe we made the right decision - when you see the Nave now it all looks consistent.
The final coat is now on most of the room and you can see the huge difference the replastering and painting has had.
There was a lot of in painting in very small areas so the painters had to work very slowly and carefully in some areas - they did a fantastic job.
The scaffolding is coming down after this phase and you can see the finished product. The scaffolding will return during the phase where work is done on the windows, but for now it is nice to see the finished look of the walls.
The room is much brighter and the stained glass now has much more effect on the way the light looks in the room. The windows are so beautiful and the light in the room changes as the sun moves during the day - this was hard to see before, but the new paint allows the colors from the windows to "paint" the walls.
Here you can see the new paint and the way the light from the stained glass changes the way it looks. Notice the way the yellow light from the stained glass makes the paint look more yellow then in the picture above. Also note the blue and red wash near the sill. These colors were never as obvious with the former green paint.
Before we started work we never even noticed the nice red color of the window frames. The new color white/yellow makes the window frames stand out also and it looks very nice.
Some of the original doors have beautiful painted grain on them. Some repair needs to be done on this work, and some of it was unfortunately painted over long ago. If anyone knows someone skilled in this art we would appreciate hearing about them - we have some work for them to do!
On the outside the patchwork continues but there is more and more done every day. We expected that this would be a slow difficult process and we were right but everyone is working very hard and it is getting done. We are uncovering more rot as we go. Here you can see the board removed on the side of the steeple and you can see the water marks directly above it. We were not surprised to find rot here. There have been other discoveries of rot and we fix it when we find it which of course slows down the process, but when it is done it will look nice and the rot will hopefully all be gone.