Work Day #1

We had our first real work day, yesterday, on the new ministry facilities at Herengracht 88. You may remember that our church has a history of "work days" -- not always with the most positive of connotations attached to such a phrase -- but let me tell you, at least from my personal perspective, it felt good to be in there yesterday, finally getting our hands dirty and making things happen together as a church community. The renovation project had been stalled for a little while, but things took a big jump forward yesterday -- and the situation is more optimistic than it's been for a long time.



I love the effect of sawdust on photography. From a purely technical standpoint, the tiny particles filling the air can be a hassle for getting images properly focused and properly exposed (as you can see in several of these pictures) -- but the sawdust lends such a quality of authenticity to the photographs. And to me, any such picture seems immediately nostalgic. Indeed, days such as these are significant days in the history of our church!



The above image is more or less the "standard" shot of the ministry space, and I've basically tried to take such a picture every time that we get a little bit further on the project. You can compare the image above to the picture taken on the 23rd of October and the picture taken around the middle of October. Slowly but surely, we're getting there...



While we were working yesterday, the contractors were also working to tear out the existing kitchen (with hopes of reinstallation later). It turns out, due to fire regulations, that we have to install some extra walls to seal off the kitchen and create a more divided space between the "Lounge" area and the "Studio" area. We were a bit bummed to lose the openness of the Kitchen, Lounge, and Studio being all together -- but there are some practical advantages to the new arrangement, and we kind of just had to roll with the punches. So it goes...



My personal project for yesterday was ripping out the mirrors in the Lounge. I've been looking forward to tackling this project for quite some time. There had been some squabbles with the contractor and the owner about whose responsibility it was to remove the mirrors (which we never wanted) -- but since there had never been an explicit arrangement ahead of time, and since the contractor was saying that it would be an additional €2000 to take out the mirrors, we decided that we'd do it ourselves. I decided, in fact, that I'd do it myself.



And after two hours of hard work, the mirrors were out -- and I was feeling a whole lot better about where things were going with the Herengracht 88 facilities.