Removing Vinyl Wallpaper

Ridgebury Congregational Church attends to its inner beauty

RIDGEFIELD -- Take any 160-year-old building. Over the years, don't insulate it. Don't air-condition it. When its plaster starts to flake, try to remedy it by installing vinyl wallpaper.

Then cross your fingers and hope whole walls don't fall down.

At the Ridgebury Congregational Church , the church interior has been spared that fate.

In the first part of a three-phase restoration, crews stripped off the offending wallpaper, re-plastered the walls and repaired the cracked ceiling.

More important, they insulated the walls to prevent humidity from building up behind the plaster again.

"It's work that's needed to be done, literally for decades," said the Rev. John Heeckt , the church's pastor.

By mid-July, the painters will be gone, the drop clothes pulled off the pews and the space open again for worship.

"We will be back as quickly as we can," said Nancy Boersma , the church's historian and member of the board of trustees.

When the first phase is complete at a cost of about $25,000, the church will move on with the next two phases of restoring a historical treasure -- the oldest church in town and the only one on the National Register of Historic Places .

That will include installing new windows in the church to replace the aged, energy-leaking windows. That will cost about $64,000.

The final phase will involve rewiring the church's electrical system and installing a heating, air-conditioning and dehumidifying system. That will cost $65,000.

The restoration has proceeded in a logical order. Heeckt said. It made no sense to buy a new heating and air-conditioning system for a building that defined energy inefficiency.

"Otherwise, we'd be dehumidifying all of Ridgebury," he said.

Ridgebury Congregational Church has been meeting in the Ridgebury section of town since 1762. It's Greek Revival building, circa 1851, has long been in the been in the center of the Ridgebury community.

But while historic, the church was starting to creep into disrepair.

"We realized to restore the interior, we had to remove that vinyl wallpaper and do it right," said Marty Ollinger , the church's moderator.

Thanks to a generous bequest from the estate of Hugh Shields -- the church's pastor from 1923 to 1962 -- the church was able to hire Paul Bailey of New Haven, an architect who specializes in historic renovations.

Bailey found that while the interior walls needed a lot of attention, the building itself was sound.

tahastclicin: removing vinyl wallpaper

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