Over the past decade and more, the people of St. Augustine’s-in-the-Woods have been discussing and praying about how we might better fulfill our mission to serve the growing communities on Whidbey Island. We came to the conclusion more than ten years ago that, in order both to serve more people in our parish and also to provide a facility that the wider community around us could use, we needed to undertake a major expansion of our church facilities. In Spring 2010, we committed to a building project that would dramatically enlarge our parish hall, church office and narthex. We engaged a noted local architect to design a structure that will appropriately on our wooded site near Holmes Harbor. Groundbreaking occurred in April 2010. This new facility provides us with 9,000 sq. ft. of new space.
This is what St. Augustine’s looked like in June, 2010. The central part of the campus contained offices, the building to the right was the original church, then our education building.
Which means, of course, that the building to the left is our worship space. For a faith community a construction project is a challenge in so many different ways. There are different opinions as to whether or not to build, what to build, how to raise the money, how much in hand is enough to proceed, what about gaps in funding……and the list goes on! One of the things that is often hardest for those who have been around the longest is to see the building that for so long acted as an incubator and container for their their lives of faith be demolished.
the old church, later the education building, is demolished
Here are some pictures that tell of the journey that begins on July 6, 2010, with the demolition of 2/3 of the St. Augustine’s physical plant. There are, of course, hundreds – possibly thousands – of pictures of this journey. It’s possible to show only a few here. Hopefully these pictures will help you understand and, perhaps, share in, our journey, with the great hope it promises for us and for our local, south Whidbey community.
Our project is now nearing completion, and we plan to celebrate and dedicate our beautiful new building at on the Day of Pentecost, June 12,2011, at 4:00 p.m. Please check our web site regularly for updates on our progress.
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"The Grinder". The grinder was rented for the sole purpose of literally reducing all the wood products to the pile of wood chips in the background. We saw this as good environmental stewardship - recycling our church! We also gave away metal roofing to be reused - in fact the buildings were stripped of almost everything that could be recycled or reused before being demolished.
Just dirt - well, maybe not! Holy dirt! Now we were ready to start with the new construction (after we put in a french drain across the front edge of the asphalt).
Foundation work. This is quite a difference from the previous picture! It's September 2010, and the concrete foundation is complete and awaiting framing.
The basement walls and hall support beam are installed. The basement will remain unfinished - it has plumbing 'stubbed in', but awaits the future. By spending a few thousand dollars we have an extra 3,000 sq. ft. of usable space for any future use.
By October the framing of the office complex was complete. Our wonderful construction company, Pearson Construction of Bellingham, 'staged' the overall construction into sequenced parts. Next came the parish hall.
The walls of the parish hall go up quickly - November has come - and the sun shines. Little did we know we were in for the wettest, greyest winter and spring on record!
The parish hall is framed. Framing for the hall was safer as the second stage since the initially free-standing walls could be anchored to the office complex.
A month later and it looks like our architect's drawling (well, if you ignore the roof, and the siding, and the......!
Inside, the parish hall is taking shape - it's now mid-December
And the Narthex is coming along.
Almost new year, and with the snow come the windows - now it's really beginning to look like a parish hall!
Mid-January, and it's time for insulation.
By mid-March the walls were insulated, dry-walled, and painted, and the spectacular light pendants installed.
- The exterior is mostly finished, and painters add the finishing touches. We had so much rain that the area in front of them is close to “swimming pool” quality!
The new main entrance, with light tower, and pendant lights.
The new construction from above (almost done!)
It's Holy Week, and the building exterior is virtually complete (and quite breath-taking!).
May 13 2011 proves to be a lucky day for us! Our building is complete! Woohoo!!