Don’t you love church renovations?

My son is part of the tech crew at church and spent his day off from school on Monday helping redo the sound system in our sanctuary.  And he come back with stories to tell.

Now, the church leadership was not crazy.  As much as one person thought it could be done by the tech crew alone the Session said that they would spend the money not just for the new equipment and supplies, but also for a professional to coordinate the project and hire competent sub-contractors to do the more difficult work.  I will leave it as an exercise for the reader to figure out what might have happened if we left this as an inside job, but let’s just say that it is getting done mostly on schedule and we are all still friends.

However, there are a lot of details and minor jobs the tech crew did.  So my son spent the day assembling equipment racks, taking down old ceiling speakers (each one mounted differently), and helping snake wires through walls.  I stopped by a couple of times to cause trouble:  Asking about the integrity of the worship space, commenting on the color clash between exposed audio wiring and the stained glass windows, joshing them about the number of holes they were putting in the walls.

All-in-all it went well.  It was not a “Murphy’s Law” kind of day although it did have its moments, according to my son.  One was when he and another member of the tech crew were taking down the speakers and one was particularly stubborn.  A few hits with a hammer and it was out, but not before covering them and the choir loft with debris.

The title of the post is from my son telling about the biggest problem of the day.  One of the contractors was on a lift opening up the speaker enclosure above the chancel.  It was a three hand job for one guy on the lift requiring a hand on the sledge hammer, one on the bracing, and one on the cover being removed.  Well, the contractor missed on one swing, put the sledge hammer into the chancel ceiling raining paint chips and plaster down on the chancel.  We’ll see if it gets patched by Sunday and if not how many people notice.