by Bo Price
The stained glass restoration on the three west-side facing windows begins June 24!
The SiSP team selected, and the Vestry approved, Lawrence Ribbecke Studios Architectural Stained Glass, to do the restoration work. Based in Burlington, Lawrence (Larry) Ribbecke has worked in stained glass restoration for many years in the area and is well known to the State of Vermont, Division for Historic Preservation. His name had been provided to us early on in our selection process. The grant required us to submit three procurement bids, and everyone involved in the process felt that Ribbecke Studios best met our needs.
Right now, Larry is scheduled to do one window a month and will tentatively complete the project by September 27th. He will use scaffolding inside the church to take out the glass from the windows. While the restoration work is completed at his studio in Burlington, the windows will be boarded up with plywood so that no birds, rain, or individuals (!) can enter through the windows.
In addition to the actual stained glass restoration work, we also need to contract with someone to paint and do potential woodwork repair on the exterior part of the windows. This work will also be partially covered by grant funds. We are in the preliminary stages of securing three procurement bids for this work, as required by the Vermont Historic grant. It’s not clear if this work can be completed this year, but we will see. If it’s not done this year, then hopefully we can commence next spring.
Once the exterior window work is complete, we will then be able to install new protective coverings (not covered by grant funds). Out of three bids, the SiSP team selected and the Vestry has approved to use Acme Glass of Burlington for this portion of the project. The particular protective coverings they install are often used in historic preservation projects and will be sure to best display our newly restored stained glass windows! No more cloudy coverings!
One last grant application has just been submitted to the Vermont Community Foundation in an effort to secure additional funds for the project, not covered by the Vermont Historic and Diocese grants. If we are not awarded the VCF grant, we project that we will need to raise a little over 14K to complete the entire stained glass windows project. In that case, we are hoping that fundraising and congregational support can see us through to the end of this exciting project!
Kudos to the SiSP team for moving this project forward and to the Vestry for its continued support.