Greetings!
We are still hard at it, having a work day every other Saturday, in addition to other work being done all week, when someone has the time. Recently, a large whiteboard chart was made of absolutely every task, from large to very small, for every room, that has to be done to actually call the job finished. It can look intimidating, but once the big jobs are done, many of the smaller ones will be knocked off in one or 2 days.
One big job that is on the list is replacing the ceiling tiles. Along with that, we are replacing the lighting in every room, partially because it is very old, most likely original to the building, and that means it is very inefficient. We also are lowering the ceiling a bit, so the existing lights won’t work. We have LED panels installed in all the areas that we are using right away, as well as the south hallway.
The original ceiling tiles were glued right to the underside of the original cement roof. As you can imagine, the leaking roof damaged many of the tiles. In some of the rooms, a lot of them fell off on their own, and others were very stained. Of course, when removed, they all left a patch of backing and glue on the ceiling cement, so it is actually a labor saver to just replace the ceiling and not clean thousands of glue blobs off.
All the lighting and bulbs had to be removed first, and the younger boys were helpful that day, hauling old lights to the dumpster. It went pretty fast, but was still something that had to be done before installing the hanging tracks for the new ceiling panels.
The day the guys installed part of the tracks was a learning experience for most, if not all of us. After they had installed some of the tracks, some of them realized that they were getting small electric shocks in one room! My first thought was that someone might have drilled through a wire, but that turned out not to be the case. After some investigation, it was found that there was a wiring issue in one plugin, and that electricity was leaking through the concrete and jumping over to the metal tracks. Who knew electricity was able to travel through dry cement? I guess we all do now. A quick rewiring and all was OK again.
The new LED panels had to wait until the new tracks were in, because they fit right in where a tile would go. Until then, we were using extra project lighting, but it has been really great to get several of the rooms lighting all wired in. You can’t believe the difference. Still a couple rooms to get all wired in before the tiles come.
To jump ahead, as of now, all the track is installed. Our next task is to buy the actual ceiling tiles. We of course want to get as good a deal as possible, so some of us have been busy checking what various building stores and home centers will offer us. We are nearing the end of that process, unless someone gets a new idea. Hopefully by the time you read this, they will have been bought.
One more job to do before the tiles are actually installed is the installation of our heating/AC units. They are the split units that have a couple vents in the ceiling, so all that has to be run before tiles go in.
After that, it’s installing the cabinets in each room, carpet, and we’re in! Actually, it’s a bit more than that, (remember the chart I mentioned earlier), but you can tell I’m getting excited. I’m not sure why I’m getting eager to get it done, because it will mean I don’t get to go to the school a couple times a week. It has become kind of a second home for me. And please, no one suggest that I become a teacher if I want to be there once school starts! That’s way outside my skill set and comfort level. God’s going to have to provide someone else for that. As of this writing, we still need two teachers, if you know anyone who might be interested, have them check to see if there are still positions open.
If you would like to donate any work time, items or money to our project, don’t hesitate to contact us. You can go on our website, www.uccs.school, there is a Donate button there, or you can contact us for more information about what we might be needing. If you own a business and have products that you would like to donate to help, we will gladly accept them. If you would like to make a totally anonymous cash donation, there is a button on our website to go through the Anabaptist Financial group. You can direct them to send your money to us, and your identity remains private.
