Due to concerns of the diminishing appearance of their building and active leaks through the masonry walls, in September of 2011 the board of directors for the Worthington United Methodist Church asked Utmost Renovations to inspect their building on North High Street and provide recommendations for it’s original portion of the church with a steep bell tower. Mark Huffer, the president of Utmost Renovations, spent a half day carefully inspecting the exterior masonry facade of the building and discovered several areas needing attention.
Part of the northern expansion of the capital city, the Worthington United Methodist Church was built in 1925 to meet the demands of a growing congregation. The building was neo-classical with a Gothic influenced bell tower and Gothic-shaped leaded windows. This replaced the one room church building built in 1863. The church is a brick facade with highlights of natural Indiana gray limestone. Typical for this type of architecture and quality craftsmanship for the period, this church building shows very little visual signs of damage or deterioration to the casual observer and is a beautiful contribution to the architectural history of Central Ohio. Although the building is solidly built and shows very little signs of damage, it has not received much structural maintenance since its engineering nearly a century ago.
Upon Huffer’s inspection, the foundation of the building was found to be solid – giving no reason for concern for the overall integrity of the building. However, decades of Ohio weather had subtly taken its toll on the beautiful masonry architecture requiring several repairs to the masonry facades. The repairs needed were minor brick replacement in a few areas, approximately 10% of the exterior envelope consisting of brick needed re-tuckpointed, all steel lintels above windows needed cleaned, primed, painted, and re-caulked with weep tubes so water does not get trapped causing irreversible harm to the steel, all stone to stone butt joints and stone to brick bed joints of stone coping on tower and gables needed cleaned and re-caulked, removal of efflorescence from masonry, and all chimneys needed tuckpointed, cleaned, sealed and all cracked concrete crowns replaced.
WUMC awarded Utmost’s bid over three other estimates from two local businesses and one from out of town. The directors stated “We wanted to use a local company and Utmost proved to be the most knowledgeable in the field, providing the most thorough report from their inspection and their estimate was the fairest price providing the most experience.” A member of the church who happens to know Utmost’s quality work first-hand and is an architect, Gene Milhoan, highly recommended Utmost as well. Utmost Renovations began their work in October of 2011 and completed the project on time just four weeks later.
Due to the historical age of the masonry and mortar, Utmost used a low pressure-wash to clean the facade so not to harm the original historical mortar that was still mostly sound. An historical mortar mix was used in the re-tuckpointing of all the old failed mortar joints as well. While other bidders planned to erect built-up scaffold on the rear of the bell tower, Utmost used suspended scaffolding to perform the restoration on this section of the tower saving lots of time and a significant amount of money for the church. Most of the work on the remainder of the building was with the use of a 100’ aerial lift.
The masonry repairs and tuckpointing turned out wonderful as the new brick and mortar matched the existing brick and mortar closer than anyone thought possible. All the active leaks were stopped as well making the building envelope water-tight for years to come.
Unfortunately, at the tail end of the project in late November, a cold spell hit and some of the mortar that was already pointed in the walls on the rear of the building on a chimney and a one gable flashed and turned almost white. This occurs when wet uncured mortar does not set up in time before the weather turns cold. Hence, it is never wise to make mortar repairs, tuckpoint, and/or replace brick, etc. in cold weather as Utmost never makes a practice of this and, in fact, warns customers not to do repairs and/or even re-caulk in cold weather if they can avoid doing so.
In this case, Utmost promised the board of WUMC to return in the spring of 2012 and re-tuckpoint and clean the affected mortar once it warmed back up again. The board of WUMC felt strongly that due to Utmost’s outstanding reputation, strong financials and ethical behavior they could pay Utmost in full upon completion of the project in late November 2011 and agreed to this plan of action. As promised, Utmost followed up in the spring and made the necessary repairs to the mortar to WUMC’s complete satisfaction. In the end, fate afforded another opportunity for Huffer and Utmost Renovations to prove it trustworthy enough to make the mishap right.
Utmost provided a three year workmanship warranty to WUMC and has completed a follow up inspection of the work on the building once already. All repairs are still looking very good and there are no new leaks in spite of the record amount of rain we have had this year. Once again, Utmost Renovations lives up to it’s billing and slogan of “Protecting and Restoring Property with Integrity and Quality”.
Mark Huffer, is President of Utmost Consulting and Utmost Renovations. He is a BOMA (Building Owners and Managers Association) Instructor on building envelopes and is a leading authority on Building Restoration and Historic Preservation.
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