First Congregational Church of LaGrange

The First Congregational Church of LaGrange hired Chicago Project Management to manage six very important projects for their 125th Anniversary.

Roof Replacement

A roofing assessment has been conducted by Concept 3 Architects.

Chris English documents the layers of a flat roof.

Their conclusion is that all of the existing roofs require near term replacement.

An example of a portion of a leaking roof.

A small tree grows from under the boiler room roof.

The sanctuary roof has also reached the end of its life.

Wood and brick damage from an attic leak.

An independent firm installs air monitors on the roofs.

Asbestos Roofing Removal begins.

The triple bagged asbestos is placed in a sealed and locked dumpster.

New copper gutters are installed in the Courtyardover two rows of ice & water shieldand two layers of roofing felt.

The new shingles are delivered and some are placed on the Ed Building flat roof.

An Ed Building Skylight is removed and the hole framed in.

The entire building is scaffolded and reroofed.

The finial is removed and modified to contain a lightning rod.

The finial is reinstalled by the metal workers from L Marshall Roofing.

Masonry Repairs

The properties committee has approved a pilot project to remove and repair two limestone window mullions and complete an analysis of all mortar.

One of approximately thirty limestone window mullion failures.

A close-up view of a failure with a rusty pin showing. It is suspected that the rusting pins are the cause of the failures.

Shannon of Eugene Matthews removes the pilot mullions.

Rusty carbon steel pins are found in the every failed stone. Repairs will be made with stainless steel pins.

Jeff of Spray-O-Bond finds the courtyard chimney can be disassembled by hand!

Removal of all 94 mullions requires a lot of dusty sawing.

And the church staff is adapting very well.

While the new mullions are installed.

Repairs on the boiler chimney begin.

Severe damage is found.

Many concrete blocks are found to be broken.

A crack on the south face runs down 10 courses of block.

So the chimney is capped and replaced with three steel chimneys.

Two steel lintels above the Ed Building 3rd floor windows are rusting badly and require replacement.

The rusted out lintels are replaced with coated new ones.

The walls are rebuilt.

Sanctuary Attic Insulation

Prior to insulating the attic many issues need to be addressed.

Jay of His & Her Electric removes energized knob and tube wiring.

Insulation hoses are pulled through the entire sanctuary and attic.

Then Home Energy Control drills holes in the upper ceiling and blows in cellulose insulation.

When the attic space is totally full the holes are plugged.

Sanctuary Painting

The sanctuary was fully scaffolded by International Scaffolding.

Evan Stevens and Michael FitzSimmons of FitzSimmons Decorative Arts discover the five original paint colors and select appropriate restoration colors.

The greatest surprise of all was the discovery of an original wall stencil!

The pattern was traced, digitized and laser cut onto a pattern.

Next, the walls were repaired. Bob and Bernardo of McCahill Painting tackle the dirty job of patching and sanding the damaged plaster walls.

Five new colors were applied in a sand texture finish.

Then Robert Baker of Sienna Interior Finishes carefully applies the historically correct stencil.

North Wall Repair

While the sanctuary was scaffolded for painting, it was realized that the north wall was suffering from serious deterioration of the masonry.

Upon exterior examination, the keystones of the main stained glass window were found to have dropped onto the wooden window frame and were causing the glass to fail.