Sunnyhill New Home

This survivor of grading has earned the right to be rescued and planted in one of our gardens. 





Within the next few weeks, our property will be regraded, top soil will be spread, lawn seed will be sown and the front of our building will be landscaped with a variety of new plantings. Landscaping serves two purposes. First, it's like adding a string of pearls to the perfect little black dress -- it's the finishing touch. Second, and more mundane, the township requires it. In fact, we've had to post a bond to ensure we will landscape to Mt. Lebanon's satisfaction.

Margaret Hamstead and Beth Hedin collaborated on the preliminary design shown here. Their goal is to create a deer resistant, low maintenance garden that will look beautiful throughout the growing season. The drawing is hard to read, so below are photos and names of just some of the plants (with apologies to the gardening experts in advance for any errors). Remember, clicking on a photo will enlarge it.








Coreopsis lanceolata

















Amelanchier canadensis

Bouteloua curtipendula

 Coreopsis rosea

Echinacea purpurea

Fothergilla gardenii "Jane Platt"

Galium odoratum

Helleborus "Winter Rose"

Liatris spicata

Sporobolus heterolepis

Asarum canadense "Wild Ginger" 














In addition to landscaping, we will be re-paving our driveway and parking lot, which was in sad condition before construction and has been all but destroyed in places from the heavy equipment and trucks coming and going on our site. The construction oversight team put together a request for proposal (RFP) and will send it out to five paving companies tomorrow to get competitive bids. 




Inside the new addition painting continues. Most of the steel in the sanctuary has had both coats of paint, and it looks beautiful against the wood of the ceiling. The exterior steel is yet to be done. When finished, painting the steel will have used about 12 gallons of paint.

The walls will soon get a final coat of paint over the tinted primer seen here. The topcoat will be an eggshell finish, which has a very slight shine. 

 The next two photos are significant because they show the new and old buildings coming together. The light trough in the old building has been expertly finished where it meets the new square archway into the building.

In this photo, the rear wall of the old fellowship hall is being patched to meet the new. The baseboard, chair rail and lighting trough will soon be extended to meet the corner as if they had always been there.













One of the congregation's biggest challenges is going to be turning this area into the new RE library. With all the pipes, conduits and exposed wires running across the ceiling and walls of different materials and shapes, we will have to be creative to make it a cheerful place for the religious education of our youth.