Two weeks of teamwork will culminate Sunday with the grand reveal of the First Baptist Church sanctuary, which is one of several improvements underway at the church this month.
Pastor Travis Boyt and a team of church members and volunteers have worked 10- to 12-hour days since the Oct. 9 church service to get the work done on time.
“Our trustees thought we were crazy when we told them the plan,” Boyt laughed. “We’re super excited with the thought of seeing the finished product.”
The church’s 100-year-old pews have been pulled from the sanctuary, and will be refurbished and used for special occasions, such as outdoor weddings.
Replacing the pews with chairs in the sanctuary offers two benefits, Boyt said.
First, it will allow for a larger capacity.
“Before, we could seat 180 in here,” Boyt said. “Now, we’ll be able to seat 237.”
Being able to clear the room of any seating will provide more flexibility for special programs, such as the church’s annual sports camp, Boyt said.
Removing the pews, which were anchored to the concrete flooring, was quite a chore.
Once those were gone, workers discovered thick layers of glue were added both beneath the carpet and the padding beneath, making it nearly impossible to remove by hand, Boyt said.
“We had to get a mini-excavator to scrape out all the old padding,” he noted.
Then, a cleaning company came in and used 30 gallons of cleaner to remove the rest of the glue from the concrete surface, necessary to get the new flooring to stick.
Boyt credited a bit of happenstance that a couple who owned a cleaning company stopped by the church to visit their son, who was busy with another task.
“They pointed out that we really needed a clean surface before we could lay new carpet, and what we were doing wasn’t working,” Boyt said. “They scraped so long, she had blisters on her hands. I felt bad, but she said she knew it was going to be hard work. It was a blessing to have them come in. The carpet guy would have had a heart attack if he’d seen it before.”
Rather than spread out the renovations — the church had planned to replace its sound system next year, and video system not long after — members agreed to do as much as possible in the two-week period.
“Let’s just pull the Band-Aid off and get it done,” Boyt said.
In addition, crews went about doing other improvements to several classrooms and the youth room, to accommodate the church’s growing youth programs.
