Saint Peter's Point- The Catholic Blog of Saint Peter Parish, Stevens Point Wisconsin

It's good to be back in the church. Here are a couple of pictures from 10 AM Mass today.

The adult schola cantorum:


Becky and Nick Scherer's twins were baptized today:




The Schola Cantorum sang Michael Lawrence's O Sacrum Convivium at Communion:





Father Louis's homily focused on the Year for Priests on the day after the ordination of Father Letona:

Labels: church-floor-project, Homilies, Schola Cantorum

The volunteer cleaning crew came to the rescue once again to get the church ready for Masses this weekend, even though construction is not quite finished. Scrubbing of tiles and wiping down of pews and cleaning every possible surface started Friday evening in the sacristy and continued Saturday morning into the afternoon in the church.







The Loaves and Fishes medallion on the sanctuary floor was clean enough to snap a photo.


The new floor and refinished pews (well most of them anyway) had their debut at the 4 PM Mass.

Here's a closer look at the sanctuary set up for Mass tomorrow AM:

In the meantime Saturday night finds the crew busily installing the pews that just arrived this evening, as well as the book racks. Modesty panels will be coming next week to go in front of the first row of pews. The first row will be shorter, allowing a wheelchair area on the inside ends of the first row.

This week the crew will finish installing floors in the choir loft and on the stairways, put a carpet runner on the main choir loft stairway, install shoe molding around the baseboards in the church, and fix up some uneven tiles and other odds and ends.

Because of the ongoing work, Wednesday Eucharistic adoration will be held in Kolbe Hall from 8:30 - 5 PM. Hopefully the regular 24 hour schedule will resume the following week.

Labels: church-floor-project

Today the crew reassembled the newly refinished pews.

In the evening floor committee members Mark Krutza and Gary Glodoski assist Church Interiors foreman Patrick Blank in marking the locations for the pews to be reinstalled.

Reassembly was still in progress, with installation about to begin. The next (and final) shipment of pews is due in any time now. The crew hopes to have everything completed by the end of the day Friday.

Labels: church-floor-project

The first shipment of our refinished pews arrived yesterday afternoon.





You can now really see the detail in the carvings on the ends of the pews. You can also see that these used to be painted.




The waterjet medallions in the aisles got a once-over with the scrubber, so you can see their clean faces for the first time since they were installed.




From the choir loft:




One last look at the tile floor before the pews are installed:

Labels: church-floor-project

The medallions are all installed and grouted, and Monday the tile installers were cutting the interesting pieces of tile that were needed to fill in the aisle around the medallions. The grout color for the medallions is gold toned, which picks up the color of the lettering and the tile used for the borders in the medallions. It almost looks as though the pieces of tile were outlined with brass. The photos don't quite capture this effect... you'll have to see it in real life.




Pews will start arriving today (Tuesday) along with more workers to install them, and Thursday the second load of pews will arrive. Baseboards are stained (as seen above on the left) and ready to be nailed in. Once the main church's tile and pews are finished, the carpet in the confessional is next. Last on the list is the hardwood floor for the choir loft and stairways. The end is in sight!

Labels: church-floor-project

The pews are being refinished in Ohio at Ridgeton Restoration (which is also a division of Church Interiors).

Below you see the process of stripping off the old finish. The stripper comes through a hose that has a brush on the end.

Pew ends after the stripping process:


New stain is applied to the pews:

Pew ends stained and waiting to be sprayed with clear coat:

Labels: church-floor-project

Saturday began with an army of volunteers giving it their all to clean the church. The layers of dirt were thick, some of it dating back to before this project began. The summer of road construction could not have helped either.

Some repairs were done on the sanctuary tile to even it out with the gold tile, the borders were almost finished in the vestibules, but most of all it was all about medallions for the PM part of the day.







Sunday work continues, including the last three medallions. There is still a good deal of work to be done, but the plan is still to be back in the church by next weekend.

Labels: church-floor-project

The church is quite a mess right now, with the grout-smeared tiles adding to the already impressive coat of dust that covers everything, and which is still suspended in the air. The cleaning volunteers are scheduled to come Saturday though!

The polished tiles have now been set on the tabernacle steps. These are not grouted yet.


The medallions also were delivered today. They are in a stack of boards on a pallet. Below you can see some parts of the Duc in Altum (aka boat) waterjet medallion. Though the pieces are grouped together in sections, they are not attached to each other or anything. Each individual tile is loose, and will be installed one piece at a time.




The lettering was sandblasted into the tiles, and painted with an industrial paint to match the gold tiles used in the borders. Here you see a little of the Polish and English wording.

Labels: church-floor-project

Here are some pics taken today of work done Friday-Saturday. Here you will see the sanctuary now has many of the polished tiles in place on the top level.


A few from the choir loft. The overall look of the sanctuary is starting to come clear.


More of the gold tiles were laid in the central parts of the vestibule. The border is not completed, waiting on more beige tiles.

Labels: church-floor-project

Photos from today...

The border in the vestibule:



Tiles being installed on the steps leading to the sanctuary:

A view from the choir loft:

Hardwood installation in the choir loft continues:

Labels: church-floor-project

Far, far away from St. Peter's, in Green Isle MN, the medallions are being cut from porcelain tile at JIT Waterjet. Yesterday this work began, starting with the Mary Medallion.

Those big rectangular machines on the right are three water jet cutters. They use high-pressure filtered water (soft water) directed in a narrow stream to cut through anything you want to cut. Steel several inches thick is not a problem for them, and you could even carve a pumpkin with them! In our case, they work great for cutting porcelain tile.

However some designs are too small or fine detailed to be cut with the waterjet, because the pieces created would be too fragile for the floor. In these cases, the tiles are etched using sandblasting, and the impression is painted with super-durable industrial paint. This is an example of how that will look, for instance on the crosses and lettering for the St. Peter's Keys medallion:

Starting with the original design, the images are fine-tuned using Auto Cad, dividing the drawing into the individual pieces of tile that need to be cut to form the medallion. Here are some of the pieces after they are cut out from pieces of tile by the water jet:


Then it's time to set the jigsaw puzzle. All the pieces have to be put together in the right position to create the medallion.



It looks something like this when assembled. The white background tiles for the triangles had to be put in the kiln overnight because they were cracking when the intricate Immaculate Heart and crown designs were cut out of them. Hopefully re-firing them will do the trick. The gold border pieces of the quatrefoil were also giving the puzzle-setters some trouble, so those were not in when this picture was taken.


Below is a look at the medallion with one of the Carriage Gold tiles next to it. Carriage Gold is the color of the tiles in the center aisle, so this gives a little sneak peek of how it will look when set in place.


It took most of the day to get the Mary medallion to this point. Once all the medallions are cut, they will be placed in sections on a board, shrink-wrapped, and brought to St. Peter's where they will be installed piece by piece.

Labels: church-floor-project

Not to be daunted by trifling problems like a broken saw blade, a lumpy spot in the floor or re-doing some tiles in the vestibule, our workers pressed on and still got a lot accomplished.

Today's progress included finishing the aisles left and right, getting started on the risers of the stairs leading to the sanctuary, and putting in border tiles around the vestibules.






Even more wood was placed on the platform, and beyond progress was made on the structure for the opposite side of the organ and the piano area.

Labels: church-floor-project

The side aisles started being put in yesterday, and the pew bank tiles were taken all the way to the back on the right side, and almost all the way to the back on the left (just leaving a walkway temporarily on the left side since it is important not to step on tiles that have just been laid - need at least 24 hours to set).




By Friday we should have pictures and/or video of the medallions being cut on the water jet machine... road trip to Minneapolis!

Labels: church-floor-project

The tile installers were busy yesterday! Both sides of the pew area were finished up to the point where the choir loft begins.




The Building and Grounds Committee members stopped by to check on the progress:

In the choir loft, we get a peek at how the platform will look with the hard wood flooring on top next to the bull nose trim.

Labels: church-floor-project

Tile installation continued over the weekend. With the center aisle in place (leaving the tiles loose in the spots the medallions will be), the workers moved on to the front of the church, starting to lay some of the tiles for the pew bank on the Mary side.


The vestibule will be mainly gold tile, with a border around the walls.

The choir loft floor now reaches all the way to the back wall on the left side, and the carpenter started putting the bull nose on the platforms. It's going to look gorgeous.

Labels: church-floor-project

Even though it's the weekend, the floor installers are hard at work. Today they were laying the aisle tiles. There will be medallions in the aisle so they placed tiles temporarily in those spaces in order to make everything else square. Those tiles will be lifted out when it's time to install the medallions.






Turns out the servers sacristy was not tiled yet, but the backer board is in place.


Today the carpet was taken off the main choir loft stairs.


Hardwood floor installation continued in the loft.

Mark Sommers who is kindly building a platform for the choir risers, was working on the opposite side of the loft to get it ready for floor installation. This side will include space for the piano.

Labels: church-floor-project

With much of the preparation work done, by this afternoon the new flooring installation was able to begin. Here is a view of the hardwood being installed in the choir loft:

Tile was installed in the sacristies. Here are some views of the priests' sacristy. The tile is in place but no grout yet.




One of the features in the main church in addition to the water jet medallions will be the word "SANCTUS" (Latin for "Holy") engraved in the risers of the three steps leading to the sanctuary, the holiest part of the church. Today a mock-up was viewed to check the sizing and look of the words.

Chalk lines were snapped to mark the borders around the pew banks, and the location of the medallions was marked on the cement backer board installation surface. The few remaining pews in church were used to help spot the location of the borders, then they were broken down to be taken off to Ohio and refinished like the rest of the pews.




The crew will work through the weekend, getting a good start on the tile installation in the main church.

Labels: church-floor-project

This week the hardwood floors were covered with the cement backer board for the porcelain tiles. The tiles will begin to be installed on Friday.

Labels: church-floor-project

Monday the crew was back at work. The dumpster was filled with sanctuary carpeting, and pallets with mortar and hardwood flooring, as well as stacks of cement backer board were in the staging area outside the northwest door.


The carpet came out of the sanctuary, revealing a linoleum floor beneath, and exposing the areas where the original sanctuary was added on to.




The cement backer board was being installed, by floating the pieces in a bed of mortar to insure a secure and level surface for tile installation.



Meanwhile in the choir loft the pews were being taken out, and boxes of hardwood flooring were being brought upstairs.



Things are moving right along! More pictures tomorrow.

Labels: church-floor-project

All the doors were sealed, but the camera was snapping pictures every minute as the work went on. Now you can see what transpired as the rest of the carpet was removed from the nave and the asbestos removal crew came in and did their job. You can even catch a glimpse of the pattern of the old asbestos tile floor before it is taken away. At the bottom of everything is the original hardwood floor, a good solid surface for the tile backer board to be installed upon, creating an ideal surface for the porcelain tile.

Labels: church-floor-project

Here's the scene at St. Peter's this week:

Deep down underneath the many layers of flooring was a circa 1920s asbestos tile floor. Though they didn't present a hazard under all those layers, it was determined to go ahead and remove the tiles, taking the floor down to the original wood. This helps to provide a more stable surface for the installation of the new porcelain tile, plus takes care of the asbestos so it will not have a chance to cause problems in the future.


The hazardous material is loaded directly onto this white truck, and taken away. While it's being removed, there is access to the church basement for adoration and Mass. Adorers report the building vibrating and the sound of debris falling on the suspended ceiling tiles overhead during asbestos removal. But we've been assured by the structural engineer that the building will not collapse on our heads!

Labels: church-floor-project

Here is a video of the first two days of the Church Floor Replacement Project:

Labels: church-floor-project

The Church Interiors two-man crew spent the day dismantling pews. The big truck arrived, had to have the tile unloaded from it into another truck, then was re-loaded with pews. However the pews had a multitude of screws holding them together, with many varieties of screw heads (requiring a trip to Frank's Hardware to find the right bits for the electric screwdrivers), and a lot of the screws were stripped and had other screws put in right next to them, making even more work.








By sunset only a little over half the church's pews were dismantled. Gary Glodoski called in his parish volunteer crew to the rescue, and between them, the Church Interiors crew, and the husband-wife truck driver team, the pews were all on the truck by 11 PM.








Then it was time for the carpet to come out! The photographer bailed at 12:45 AM, when maybe 1/3 of the carpet on the main floor was out. Those guys were in for a long night.




Asbestos removal is Wednesday - Friday so there will be no more interior pictures until that's finished. But stay tuned for more updates!

Labels: church-floor-project

Today marks the first official work day of the church floor replacement project. Although much work has already been put in on the project, today was the first day of the parish being "displaced" from the church proper. Daily Mass (or today a Communion service) is now being held in the church basement (Kolbe Hall), and confessions and Eucharistic adoration will be there as well. Weekend Masses will be held in the gym.

Here are some pictures from today's work:

First thing this morning St. Peter volunteers could be found climbing ladders, wrapping bags and shrink wrap around the many statues and Stations of the Cross in Church.




How would you like to have been the guys draping plastic way up on top of the reredos?


The organ had been wrapped in plastic the day before. In this picture you can also see the numbers written on the pews:


Besides installing porcelain tile, Church Interiors also has the job of refinishin the pews. Today's job was to "tear down" the pews. Here you see the book holders have been removed:


Here's one last look at the pew that was completely refinished as a sample. It will be taken out with the rest of the pews to make sure they all match in the end.


Church Interiors rep Joel and foreman Pat lean on the modesty panel (just brought up from the basement) and contemplate the proposed handicapped seating in the front row. There will be space for 1-2 wheelchairs on the center-aisle ends of the front row on both the left and right sides.


Another view of the modesty panels. Anyone remember these?

Check back for more updates on the church floor project!

Labels: church-floor-project