Window Salvage

Workers from Jacksonville Art Glass carefully remove and crate the stained glass from St. Francis Xavier Church for restoration and installation. Prayers with the people of the former St. Francis Parish!

Week 1 Friday update

Excavation for east footings. Will need to be inspected, then filled with a layer of rock, then concrete footings. 

De-watering pumps are working away! There's already a noticeable difference, but how long it will take to make the deep excavation possible is anyone's guess. Work remains focused on the east end until then.

De-watering wells

Richardsville Drilling dropping the first of three de-watering wells

Continuing excavation on the west end, where the mechanical vault will be, requires some de-watering. This is accomplished by drilling wells and pumping down the water table. We're drilling three wells today and will get that started. It's hard to predict how long it will take to dry things up enough to work, so we'll just have to wait and see.

In the meantime, excavation and foundation work can proceed on the west end of the building, which is much shallower.

While it would have been ideal to avoid the necessity of de-watering, it was a contingency we expected and planned for. There is a considerable amount of money in the budget for exactly this. The bottom line is that excavation and foundation needs remain the highest-risk phase of the project, in terms of possible complications. But the status so far is that, while we aren't exactly seeing our best-case scenario, we haven't run into anything we haven't planned for.

Excavating Lake Kateri

Trucking by Hish Farms and Payne Farms... Thank you!  We're obviously hitting some water and soft sand. Not exactly a surprise; it can be dealt with. Don't fall in though. 

We've Begun!

We've got green lights from the diocese and all the submittals needed to begin the first phase of construction. Scott Phillips et al are working today tying rebar, with excavation to follow next week.

So mark it down, May 30th, 2014, the first day of construction work on St. Kateri Church.

!!!  *clink*  !!!

Field Trip to Earthworks Quarry

Earthworks of Perryville, Missouri is providing the stone for the exterior of the church. We're delighted to have such a relatively local source for the stone, and grateful to Earthworks for being great to work with and for helping us make the finances work. We needed to pick up a sample pallet, and took the opportunity to tour one of Earthworks' quarries.

Computer-controlled (CNC) wet saws cut dimensional stone

5-9-14 Friday Update: Statements, Shops, a Sign, and some Puddles

Hello all, still watching things slowly falling into place. As of the conference call yesterday Poettker still needed shop drawings for some early work. I'm still working on Diocesan approval. And now we're getting into some weather. So I guess those three factors can race to see what ends up holding us up.

Diocesan approval is a critical step, and I'm happy about the quality of communication so far. It was frustrating that it took so long to get the documents we needed to pass on to them... but once we did, they've been responding within hours most of the time. This week I've been working hard with Jim Mroczkowski, the diocese's CFO, to get adequate financial statements and documentation on file. Yet another educational experience!

I also finally have a quarterly cash flow projection from Poettker. In combination with the documentation I've worked up for the Diocese, I think I'm in good shape to sit down with a loan executive. I'd like to make that happen early next week. We'll need to borrow short-term to bridge between the one-year construction schedule and the four years left of the pledge campaign. We'll need some slightly longer-term debt to make up the difference. If our fundraising continues to go as well as I think it will, the church will be paid for quite quickly.

Of course, if the parish still has the appetite and resources, there will always be additions possible, but after such a huge outpouring for this project, I won't be pushing anything too hard. It's okay to leave something for the next generation!

I'm meeting a second stained glass company in St. Francisville on Tuesday. With two proposals in hand we'll look to get that glass removed quickly so the parish there can move ahead with there own plans.

Swing by and see the construction sign!