Sacred Heart Parish

Lower South Hill Spokane Washington

Band Construction was selected to perform various upgrades within the parish and in the attached church offices. These upgrades were mainly flooring and painting with some plaster repair and asbestos abatement.

What made this project interesting was the logistics of removing all of the pews in the parish to replace the worn carpeting. Sacred Heart Parish is a contemporary design church in-the-round built in 1968-69. The floor of the building is essentially a large slightly sloping concave cone with its center focal point a large carrera marble altar. The pews consisted of various lengths and sectioned by walkways in a radial pattern. Our team worked with Michael Phalen, the parishioner in charge of the project, to devise a plan. We were able to systematically remove and label the pews in a way that allowed us to only move them twice while removing the old carpet, patching and sealing the concrete floors, and then installing a new ultra-high wear and water proof sheet flooring made by Tandus. The new floor would be fairly impervious to wear and be easily repairable. Removing the pews was easy however replacing them was tricky. To handle this, we created a map with labels matching the pews and also placed screws into the floors in key locations to help guide us in landing the pews back in their original location. All of this makes the plaster repair and painting seem simple. It was for the most part simple however painting the inside of the cone shaped ceiling above the altar was not. We bubble wrapped the altar and placed plywood above it to prevent any paint or fallen items from striking the marble. A series of scaffolds was erected and the painting commenced. Paint Crafters Plus of Spokane, WA was contracted to perform the work. They are a top-notch painting firm and performed the work with great skill and attention to detail.