Sunnyhill New Home

This will probably be the last entry in the Sunnyhill New Home blog. Starting Sunday, the continuing work in the new and historical sections of Sunnyhill will be visible to all who come. While most of the work on the church was done by contractors, we assumed the responsibility for a lot of work in our historical building and on the grounds. The only rooms untouched upstairs were the dining room and kitchen. The kitchen is a project that remains -- it needs a new exit door before winter (you can see daylight around it) and it needs to be painted. We did, however tackle the dining room. We changed all the switches and outlets and put LED bulbs in the overhead light. We painted the walls and most of the white woodwork and hired a company to refinish the floor.

The dining room looks much better. The marble on the fireplace needs to be glued with epoxy and could use a good cleaning, but that can be done once we are back in the building. In the 36 years I've been affiliated with Sunnyhill, I never noticed that the two finials don't match perfectly. It seems completely appropriate. Today, Elk, our HVAC company, installed a new sensor in the dining room to the left of the fireplace. That sensor will control the radiators in all rooms in the historical building except for the fellowship hall and possibly the large RE room in the basement. We'll have to do some research once the system is set up to determine which rooms it controls. There will a sensor in the fellowship hall for the second loop of the hot water heating system.

We've done a lot of work in the small RE room in the basement, formerly the fish room, and there is still more to do. A new wall was installed to cover up a lot of plumbing and subsequently we had a French drain installed behind it. We have new LED lights and the bathroom has new tile on the floor. Once it is grouted on Thursday, the toilet will be re-installed and it should not wobble like the old one. The bathroom also has a new LED light fixture and on Friday will get a new towel dispenser, soap dispenser and mirror. Then it will be ready for use.

Jen has already added some RE furniture, and the room is looking much more like a real RE space.

The collapsed wall has been replaced and carpet Juniper has been  planted on the hillside above it.

Here is another view of the wall taken from the west end of the driveway to the garage. It sure makes the remaining parts of the old wall look shabby.

Beth Hedin, Margaret Hamstead and a band of volunteers tackled the landscaping beds along the front of the church. They moved 40 cubic yards of topsoil, a whole lot of mulch and about a ton of rock to get the planting beds ready for planting.

The walkway to the kitchen foyer that served as our temporary entrance now has a beautiful walkway made of stone instead of rescued concrete pads. The plants that will complete the landscaping will be shipped on September 12. If you look at the roof, you can see the snow guards that have been installed to control the movement of snow and ice on our roof. They are primarily there to prevent our gutters from being sheared off by ice.

The new grass is beginning to come up. Watering the new lawn, which should be constant for the first two weeks, has been a challenge due to the low water pressure. There are areas we just can't water. It would be a full time job for someone. So we are getting the big areas and hoping the smaller areas will fend for themselves. After a rainy summer, of course we are entering a dryer spell.

Signs for the four reserved parking spaces went up today. Three are for Sunday visitors and the fourth is for our music director.

The correct doors for the sanctuary arrived today -- there are three sets of two. The windows of the original doors were too high and a person in a wheelchair would not have been able to see through them. We knew they were wrong the day they arrived, but it's taken a few months to get the replacements.

Finally, the new Kawai 5'-11" grand piano arrived last week.

It took three strong men to assemble it and set it up.

It is absolutely beautiful -- a work of art.

And when Carol played Chopin we didn't want her to stop.

The piano was moved from stage left to stage right so the lid could face the audience when the piano is played.

On Sunday, August 20, we will all get to enjoy it.

Thank you to everyone who has followed the blog. It was a labor or love, and I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I've enjoyed writing it. Signing off for now, Dolph John Armstrong (Grandolph).