Whatcom New Life Assembly Archive

We’re moving ahead with our siding and painting project. We’ve accomplished alot in the past few weeks. Watch the video and see what we’ve done.

 Siding_Saturday_Oct4-mp2.mp4 [4:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

After last Saturday it appears we are half way sided. The weather wasn’t pretty but the siding sure looks good. We had a lot of help from a lot of people who showed up despite the rain and uncomfortable conditions. Here are a few pictures and we’ve included a link to a video we made.

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What a day. We started our workday with 4 eager souls waiting in the parking lot before 8:00AM. That alone was exciting and probably a first in the 8 years I’ve been here. We started them out digging. Our first project was to take out our “grass garden”. Our front beds have been waiting for serious landscaping for about 2 years. In the mean time the grass grew with a vengeance. We’ve totally removed the grass about 3 times now. This time however we found the grass was not well rooted and it came out much easier than before. It seems persistance has paid off. Now we’ll lay down casseron, plastic and bark on top for a long lasting grass free bed.

Our primary goal for the day was to do siding. We did very well with that. We now have the North facing wall of the sanctuary covered in siding. It was a very good effort from a lot of people. We have pictures of several here, though not all. One of the great things about today was that 6 or 8 people now have experience siding. That should make next weeks work day even more effective as we can set up several crews and do multiple wall sections at a time.

We had a great lunch, thanks to Gabi Bailey. Unfortunately there are no pictures. The potato salad and boiled corn were fantastic with hamburgers. We’re so glad Fred came. He was able to set up chairs and tables as well as shuck the corn. One might overlook that contribution, but for those that ate it was very much a blessing.

Once the grass was dug out, we moved the diging crew on to an all important job: Skunk Abaitment. Yes, for you who have not been here on one of those odiforous Sunday mornings when a frightened skunk has taken refuge under one of the cement slabs near our doors, skunk abaitment is a very important task. We have found concrete is the best method. We especially appreciate the efforts of Jerry Holcom saw the project through to the end. As you can see in the pictures, a trench was dug. Rebar was pounded into the ground and the trench was fulled with cement. We’ve had some success with this method at the parsonage, except where the scunk burrowed out through the wet cement, and hope it will work here. Aparently some lucky little guy even got to write his name in the cement. Some kids get to do all the cool things. His dad would have never let him do that. Thank you Jerry.

All in all it was a great day. We’ll pray the scunks to try to break in or out tonight and we’ll start preping on Monday to so we can put up siding on the south side next weekend. Please join us Saturday, September 20 for our next siding party. We look forward to seeing you here.

-P. Mike

You often here the line “what a difference a day makes.” Today was the day for our facility. We now have new siding on the building. The old is gone (well, actually going) and the new has come at least in small measure.

We really appreciate Jim Fox for his long work day Saturday. I’m sure he didn’t want us taking his picture but it is here anyway. Thanks to Jim’s excellent supervision, patience and direction, we were able to start applying the siding and what a difference it makes. I don’t think these pictures do justice to the transformation that’s taking place on our building. If we had been able to do the whole church overnight, some of our people would have driven right by not knowing it was there.

Others might have panicked at the drab color. I kind of like the color myself, though with out the smudges of caulk. and the impact marks from hammer strikes. This is just the color of the siding as it comes off the pallet. We have done nothing to it and it already looks pretty good.

The new horizontal patterm is very nice. The shingles really look great under the windows. I hope everyone will be as pleased as I am. We have really been blessed to see this come about. There’s a lot of work to go still, but praise God for His provision. May we see an equal transformation in the many lives the many people we touch daily as a church.

This week we started more noticeable work. Saturday, Jim wrapped and trimmed a window on the north side of the Sanctuary. It was somewhat of a proof of concept job. It seems to have worked well. Now we need to wrap the whole building (the part being resided) and trim all the windows. It is our desire to do this in a timely manner but we want to follow quickly with the siding. We don’t want to leave the building wrapped and unsided for a long period of time. Now we have to schedule capable worker and get the job done.

This week we used expanding foam to seal the gaps created by the lapboard laying over the channel siding. It may not be very noticeable in our picture but you can see the old siding has a channel pattern that drops down behind the lapboard.  It appears there is some yellow goo that has bubbled out.  That’s the foam. If siding were installed over the channel and the gap left unsealed, it would create an inviting environment for various bugs and critters to build homes and nests.

If that explanation doesn’t make sense to you just go out and look at the white board and see the foam that fills the gaps at the bottom of the channels. Remember bugs and critters like to climb up from below so this foam will keep them out, like the cork in the top of a bottle. This will extend the life of our siding and the rest of the building.

In addition to the foam job, there was more work done on the “Z” metal flashing. This is a strip of metal that sits atop the lapboard and will eventually channel water out over the board and away from the inside of the wall structure.

None of this was highly demanding work, but it needed to be done and took about 12 hours of work.

If you are interested in volunteering for jobs of this nature, please speak with Jim Fox. He will be the one who knows what jobs are coming up and can be done with more or less training, experience or skill.

What to do about colors.  As we started this project the board and the building team all agreed, we are not the ones to pick out color options.  So we’ve recruited a few people to help us find those options.  Our first selections are in.  We’ll give a few more people the time to look.  When all the suggestions are in, we’ll get the group together to sort out 3 or 4 options.  We’ll set up some samples for everyone to see and give some input.

As I said in our recent letter, it’s amazing how color choices can become so divisive.  As we go through this process, please remember that not everyone’s preference will be selected, but we will get the church painted and it will look nice.  In the end our priorities must be that of Christ and the Kingdom of God.

It seemed our siding project was stalled a few weeks as people tried to get work done and just ran out of schedule able hours.  Rather than wait for who knows when we contacted some workers to help us get going again.  This weeks project was putting up a lap board trim at the bottom of the wall.  Jim pre marked the wall for the the placement of the boards last week.  Before leaving on vacation he explained the job to Nathan who brought some help and go the work done well.  Thank you guys.

The first picture gives a great image of the work involved.  The church was measured and lined all th way around.  This took Jim most of a Saturday.  Then a 2×8 of white wood was installed all the way around with a few 2x10s and 2x6s through in to make it a bit more complicated.  It was topped off by a piece of “Z” metal flashing.  The metal will keep the water from getting behind the boards after the siding is installed.  The seams and nail heads were all caulked and the job was done.  Sound easy, but it was a lot of work.

The last picture shows some of the detail involved in the project at the corner.  You can see the caulk in the seems and on the nail heads as well as the corner work on the metal.  Even though we had to pay for the work to be done we were very pleased to get it done.  There are a few small things that need to be finished on this phase, but then we can start moving up the wall with the siding.

One of the most important parts of a wall is the door.  We’ve had door problems for quite some time.  One of our doors at the front of the sanctuary was already down to it’s second layer and that was starting to peal away from the inner core.  It was hard to open and hard to close.  The other door had a hard time closing and would occasionally be standing wide open in the morning when a hot day was followed by a cool night.

Those two doors have been replaced by new steel doors.  These doors were not all that expensive themselves, but the added hardware costs pushed the price to almost $1400.00.  The first picture shows the first door installed.

We have at lease one other door to be replaced.  I wonder if I should even explain it’s problems, but needless to say it’s not intended as an exterior door and should never have been placed in that doorway.  You can see it here with it’s recent graffiti removal paint job next to our new door.  It will be replaced with the same type of door and will no longer open inward.

We are very pleased with the look of our doors.  They will require paint but even in their just installed state they look very good.  Thank you Jim Fox for installing our new doors.

This up date shows some of the prep work required for the siding and painting.

It’s been a great asset having Jim Fox involved int his project because of his past experience with this building. He noted that in the past we have had problems with water coming into the building when pressure washing. This prompted him to suggest we seal the tops of the walls with calk and place a stip of wood over it to protect it during preasure washing. This should also keep some heat in and limit drafts in higher wind situations.

In the first picture you can see the paint pealing away under the eaves and the strip of wood that has been installed to protect the seal made with the caulk. The second picture exhibits the same thing.
The Second Picture exibits that same thing. You may have smelled a strange odor in the church, like bad breath, for a few weeks. That wasn’t you, it was the caulk. There was a lot of caulk used because some of the gaps were so wide. That’s why the smell was there so long. It took us a few days to figure this out of course. Until we did we just held our breath thinking the smell would go away.