As promised, in this post I will go into more details about what we found at the school building and what we need to do to get ready to open.
I can’t repeat too often how God was also at work in the timing of many things, including the building purchase. There is a local church that meets in the lower part of the south wing, and we purchased the building from them. They will be meeting there for several more years, or until they find a new location. Since being sold by the local school corporation, there have been a number of interesting businesses that have used portions of the building. Some of them added things that we have had to remove, and some took out things we wish they hadn’t!
Believe it or not, at one point, the gym had a swimming pool installed in the floor, but thankfully, someone later removed it and installed a wood basketball floor. At present, there is only one basketball hoop, but a school in Ohio gave us an entire setup for a full sized gym, including a working vintage scoreboard with actual light bulbs! Although getting that all installed isn’t a priority, it is nice to have when we get further along. I’m sure the kids will enjoy it.
We are trying to get the rooms in the north wing ready for school to start this fall. We are also redoing the bathrooms in that hall, there is an office that needs to be fixed, and a small room for a library. Just doing that hall is taking a lot of work, but we have many people pitching in. Thank you all for that.
The original building has a flat cement roof. At some point that was replaced by a pitched shingled roof. We have patched that, but in the next couple years we will need a new roof, and will likely be replacing the shingles with metal. We are also replacing the old inefficient fluorescent lights with LED panels, installing a suspended ceiling, new flooring, and replacing ruined closets.
The windows in the building are a big issue in several ways. As you can see when you drive by, most of the glass in each classroom was replaced by wood. That leaves the rooms very dark. The remaining glass is broken in some places and not efficient at all. We have purchased newer and more efficient windows for that wing, but we are waiting for better weather to install them.
I’m going to take a break here so you don’t get too tired reading about all the work left to do! It’s a big job, but I think the excitement about what we are striving for is giving us the energy and vision to keep plugging away at it.
