Glass!!

So on Friday the 6th the glass went in. Now it really looks like the "Jewel Box" we all imagined. Very exciting. The elevator will take some time to come. No one can really explain why but everyone agrees that elevators always take a long time. You can see that there is a stair case as well as an elevator so it is not just an entrance for "disabled people" but for everyone who chooses for whatever reason to come in this way.

Someone said today that someone else had asked them why we didn't just get a ramp. The answer is that in order to make a ramp this high we'd have to fill our back yard with concrete... it takes many many yards of ramp to reach this height and I have no idea how one would ramp down to the basement... And we deliberately chose not to solve the vexed question of access by adding anything that could be seen from the FRONT of the church since our facade is so much admired, etc.

In the picture above you can see an enormous great electrical box for... some reason... I know the elevator needs a reliable new source of power and I believe that we've done something to make sure the organ blower has the power it needs as well.

Organ Progress

And in case you thought we had forgotten about it:
Juget Sinclair continue working away on the organ. Here are two recent pics, one of the console and the other of ... er... some other organ part. I think it is actually something like a pipe chest, part of the way that the winding (air under pressure) goes into the pipes to make sound. I'm sure John or someone else on the committee will correct me. If they are reading this.
And here are some pics of the "test bore" to see how thick the floor of the choir loft (or ceiling of the narthex closet, depending on your point of view is) and to make sure that there will be nothing in the way of making a larger hole for the wind supply. The blower for the organ will be in the top of the (very tall) narthex closet, leaving the closet still usable for storage, and there will be a conduit of some kind bringing the air to the organ in the gallery.

Looking a lot more like a building...

While I was in Baltimore, reading General Ordination Exams, the steel framing for the structure of the building was delivered by a giant crane and put up. Then this past week the focus of work has been electricity. The side of the church facing the alley now has huge new cabinets of... I'm not sure of what. Something electrical. As I understand it, by the time this is all done, the telephone and electricity wires for all three buildings will be buried, and the church's electrical service will be upgraded. Meanwhile the cabinets for the new vesting room/sacristy space have been delivered. It is all pretty exciting stuff!

Breaking Through

This past week, the builders broke through into the church building on the basement (or if you prefer "undercroft") and nave levels. They filled in the gaps with plywood.

This slide show shows the work from almost the beginning.

Towards the end of the slideshow you can see what they did this week. If you prefer, you can look at the Saint Mark's Construction album on Flickr. In addition to the plywood entrance places, they have dug into the AA room floor and semi-demolished the shelving down there in order to do the necessary plumbing for the new sacristy and disabled access bathroom.

In addition the contractors have been laying underground conduit for the electricity(which has been coming from an overhead line via a pole which has had to be taken down to make room for the new construction.) So pay special attention to the last sixteen slides.

Also, if you are wondering why we need to consider doing some additional work on the AA room, you can look at these pics. The asbestos flooring in the AA room and the "purple room"... soon to be the "entrance" from the elevator at undercroft level has been removed and some asbestos pipe insulation is being removed also.