What Do You Do with an Old Baptistry?

There are many things a congregation can do when their old auditorium is no longer used for corporate worship because they have built a new one. Seven or eight years ago, the congregation to which we belong completed phase 1 of a 3-phase expansion which included a very nice multi-purpose auditorium. Due to various reasons, most of them related to the downturn in the general economy in Michigan, the money for phases 2 and 3 never materialized. The old auditorium, out-dated and in woeful need of repair to various infrastructural items (heating, electric, plumbing) has been in the process of transformation into a Youth Ministry Center for several years now.
We've spent much of the summer attempting to move further along the path of that vision, and my portion of that vision was to try to turn the old baptistry into a working closet. Since the completion of the new auditorium, the old baptistry had become superfluous; and, in fact, it had been used more as a waste receptacle for building materials and assorted odds and ends due to its superficial resemblance to a large, deep bowl. This offends my sensibilities, so I came up with the idea to build a platform which could be placed inside the baptistry to support a plywood floor, turning the "empty space" into a functional storage space.

It concerned me that some of the items being "tossed" into the baptistry might damage it to the point where it could no longer be used as it was originally intended, and it was in my mind that one day the congregation might want to use it once again for baptisms, especially if (for example) they wanted to have them performed in the Youth Center, or rent out the old auditorium to other churches if the economic situation demanded it; thus the intent was to create something that could be removed relatively easily if desired.

It might also be useful for staging puppet shows or other evangelistic presentations, in which case a solid floor would be a nice thing to have underfoot.

The baptistry is itself a fiberglass shell approximately eight feet wide by four feet deep (lip edge to lip edge), and forty-two inches deep. It lends itself easily to being covered by a standard 4x8 floor panel. The supports I constructed to support the panel consist of two 4x4 cubes formed by standard 2x4 boards, leaving (but not encouraging) some amount of storage underneath.

The stairs leading down into the baptistry will require a similiar support structure, but I haven't gotten that far yet.

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Cheryl Continues Beautifying the House

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She's on a Mission, she is, and she won't stop til the house is as pretty as a picture.She spent the weekend painting the dining room, turning the dull, drab tans into very nice shades of green. How she did it while dealing with a cold at the same time, I don't know. She's an amazing woman! She got the girls to help her unload the hutch of its treasures, and we moved it into the center of the room; then, when all that was done, we moved it back so she could do some trim work on the ceiling.While she was at it, she also painted the little alcove known as the 'butler'. She's got some plans going on for the living room while her folks are out visiting this week, something about some chair rail or decorative trim or something. I have no idea where she gets all that energy!