Paint Project Approved by Congregation

Washington, Connecticut: The 1741-54 Meeting House of the First Congregational Church on the Village Green – Xu Lei Photo

On Sunday, May 31st, the Business Committee presented their recommendation to have Stevenson Services, LLC do the following:

• Paint the exterior of the Church including the columns and steeple.  This includes hand sanding the entire structure, repairing any wood or trim or replacing if it is beyond repair.  After the structure surface is all prepped, two coats of a primer/paint mixture will be applied for the best results.
• Repair the steeple to prevent further leaking when it rains or snows.  This will include installing a new system behind the louver openings at the top two levels.
• Fix the face of our Church clock.
• Repaint the tin roof in our Chapel Room as it is blistering and peeling badly now.
• Remove, repair and repaint all 19 Sanctuary windows.  They will be removed 2 at a time and taken to their shop until the project is completed.
• Installing a Chimney Cricket so no more leaking into the kitchen area during hard rain storms.
• Re-seating the steeple lights that are anchored on our roof line.  They feel they were bracketed too high and the constant wind that hits our building could cause leakage from the light movement.  They caulked it up on their own time recently to ensure we would have no leaking into the Sanctuary.

We recommended Stevenson Services over the other quotes for the following reasons:

• They did an outstanding job on our roof for a fair price.
• They are offering a 4-payment plan over the course of 3 full years to help with our cash flow.
• They can get the entire job done at once.
• They are local, located in Bristol CT.
• They have a long standing relationship with one of our committee members who has had nothing but good to say about their entire operation.
• The owner has come back several times to help us understand the leaking issues and to make sure our roof install was not failing at no further cost.

There was one other competitive bid out there, but Stevenson Services has proven they can do the job right, are willing to back up their work and offered a multi-year payback option.

This paint job should look great for 8 to 10 years, but the plan is to have Stevenson Services come up every 3 to 4 years to identify any maintenance issues on the structure.  This will allow us to keep our costs down by addressing things earlier as needed, thus avoiding another large expenditure.

After much discussion both pro and con, a motion to accept the Business Committee recommendation with an overall Project Cap of $80,000 and to explore bank financing options to help with future cash flow was made by Bill Butler.  We received a 2nd to the motion and the Congregation voted 32 in Favor, 1 Against and 1 Abstained carrying the motion to approval.

It is a very large project but the leaking and harsh winters/storms have taken it’s toll on the building.  This will help preserve the integrity of the structure from the ground to the steeple.

The timing of this paint job (it is anticipated late July or August) should make our Church look fantastic and complement the nice Streetscape Project the Town of Burlington will have just completed.

In addition, we anticipate this will generate buzz in town that our church is a vibrant, active and take pride in how we present ourselves to the community.  There are plans to possibly joint venture on making our Church a wedding option with our historic New England Sanctuary and our beautiful Labyrinth as a wedding picture backdrop.

Yes, we have some creative work to do to cover this “nut” in the next few years, but Stevenson Services is allowing us the time to get mobilized and motivated to raise funds, look at alternative financing and look for grant money…in addition to possibly opening up another revenue stream.

Thank you to all who stayed for the meeting and shared their thoughts, ideas and opinions during the open discussion period.  Projects this large are often complicated and costly, but our Congregation made it known that our Church is worth the effort.

We will share information on when the project will start, the planned completion date and any news on funding over the coming months.  If you have an idea or have questions, please contact anyone on our committee so we can get on it for you.

Thank you and God Bless,

Jerry Burns
Business Committee Chair

PS – The photo used in this post was a Congregational Church painted by Stevenson Services in Washington, CT!