We've made it!

External View - Front


The Foyer

The Worship Area
Entrance to the meeting rooms and children's area
Children's Area

Meeting rooms

Kitchen

Rear View and Car Park

The Church!

Finished, on time and under budget!

Grand Designs, eat your heart out! At 2:00 pm yesterday, we received the keys to the building. It was finished on time and under budget. All credit to Mayway construction for this fantastic achievement. The first service is on Easter Sunday at 10:15 a.m., all welcome!
Between now and then its a case of getting all the furniture and fittings into the building from their storage spaces in various garages around the local area and setting up the PA, staging and chairs in time for Sunday.
Its difficult to describe the sense of excitement and accomplishment. The actual build time has been short, September 'til March, but the planning, praying, giving and fundraising has taken years. It is the end of a journey, but the beginning of a new chapter as St John's Church now begins to use its building to serve the local community to be a place where people find help, friendship and hope and come to have faith in Jesus Christ.

Watch this space for photographs and hopefully a video clip of the completed building.

Finishing touches

The builders have almost finished on site, so its really been the turn of church members and their friends, families and acquaintances to put in place the finishing touches.
A team of painters have been on site this week, both professional (thanks to Babic and Son) and volunteer, to finish the gloss work and touch up the walls. The kitchens are almost complete (again, thanks to all the volunteers, and particularly to Steve Sparham) and the flooring has started. Tim Lovegrove and his team at Carpetright have been fantastic.
Work around the PA and computer systems is underway with Keith Ellis on site and others due to join him.

The builders have been working externally to finish the paving and the tarmac is due to be laid this week. Work on the final internal bits of plumbing will commence and the moveable screen to sub-divide the classroom will be fitted.

We are all looking forward to the first service in the building on Easter Sunday.

Three weeks left

Since the last entry nothing worth photographing has taken place but a lot of work has been undertaken. All the plumbing is finished and the building now has heat. The electrics will be finished in the next week but all the lighting is in place and functioning. the flooring to the wet areas has been laid and the other rooms will be started next week. From the photo you can see that the porta cabins have now been removed and the ground work is well under way.

6 Weeks left

I know I've said this before but what a difference a week makes. Since the last post the scaffolding has been removed from the worship area.



Now we can see the size of the area we will have to worship in. You can also see the progress on the lights and ceiling.


The grid for the suspended ceiling is now complete in the classroom area and the rest of the ceiling areas in the building are due for completion by the end of the week.















And whilst the work inside continues at a pace the the extrerior work has started. The improved drainage is completed and the new curbing is being laid.

7 weeks left

With only seven weeks left until the end of the project drastic changes can be seen on a daily basis.

The plasterers have finished most of the building with the main worship hall being the last big phase left to complete. The painters have been in and done an outstanding job, finishing large areas in an unbelievable short time. Thanks to A Plant tool hire shops for the loan of a paint sprayer! Above are the classrooms for the playgroup.

8 weeks to go

This shows the size of the new entrance hall the scaffolding has now been removed and the back wall plastered. A lot happens here in a week. By the end of Friday most of the glass for the windows and doors will be installed.

The plasterers moved in on Monday, they have made a vast difference in a short space of time . Here is the corridor from the main foyer, fully plastered and in the foreground can be seen the window fitters installing the glass to the doors.

The floor to the classrooms for the play group are finished and the boarding of the walls is well under way. This side of the building should be plastered fully by the end of next week.

9 Weeks to go

This is the view into the corridor from the main foyer, here we can see the scree floor being laid.




























Work is progressing at a fair rate and the door and window frames are now being installed.

A new year but the work continues

Well the roof is nearly finished and the scaffolding has come down so the church is now starting to look finished from the outside. You can now feel how big the new building will be when it is completed.








Whilst the work outside is nearly completed the work inside still continues at a similar pace.


The first fix for the electrics, plumbing and carpentry is nearly finished and the plasterboarding of the worship hall ceiling is well over half done.

Lets not forget what is happening in the other parts of the building, here is the start of the scree floor being laid in the classrooms of the family centre.

Here we can see the finished floor and the piping of the soon to be gents toilet.

A Roof at Last

Well the building is starting to come together, we now have a nearly finished roof. The inside is also changing, the first fix for the electrics has taken place and a brave bunch of people from St John's installed the cabling for the PA system and Data cables.

The month of January is going to be very busy, with the roof being completed, the windows being installed, the floor being laid in the family center and the plaster boarding of the roof in the worship area.

The view from inside

As you can see, most of the internal walls are complete and 6 church members have spent a happy few days doing manly things with cat 5 cables. This will give flexible use of IT, telephony and visual comms in all the rooms in the building.

The next step is to finish the roof - hopefully by Christmas.

Roof ready for tiling

Not a lot seems to have happened but the roof covering has started to be fitted and the scaffolding has been removed from the inside, and moved to the worship area. The other side of the roof will be started in the next few days.

Roof Timbers

What a difference a couple of days make. On Friday all that could be seen were the wall plates, but come Wednesday afternoon nearly all the roof timbers are up over the family centre.

The roof timbers are in place

The finished walls are just visible under the covering, whilst the roof timbers can be seen going into place over the non-steel frame section. Praise God for fine weather and the good progress made.

The back wall is finished!

The bricks have reached full height on the back wall as the bricklayers progress at a fantastic rate. The building is really beginning to take shape!

Bricks and Mortar

After the screed and the steel frame came the bricks! Officially we are now just two days ahead of schedule because of a delay in the council approving the specific bricks we are using. But the speed of the brick-layers means that we may well be a week ahead again by the end of this week – the walls are going up at a fantastic rate.

The Church Building Project Team are being bombarded with decisions such as colour schemes for window frames and toilet cubicles, and where we want plug sockets and light switches. There is a lot of information and at times we struggle with the responsibility of knowing whatever we decide, the church has to live with it for years to come – please pray for us.

Internal walls

Great excitement as we began to see the internal layout set out in blockwork as the internal walls were constructed.

The Financial Situation

The past month has been a
miraculous time at St John’s. In the last update at the beginning of October the finances stated that we had raised £260,645. As we stand today we have now raised over £350,000. This means that over £90,000 has been received within the last month – praise the Lord! And thank you to you if you have given generously in the last few weeks.
At the moment we will run out of available cash to pay the builders at the beginning of February.

Two weeks ahead of schedule!

The builders are currently two week’s ahead of schedule! Have you ever heard of a building project being ahead of schedule? We give thanks to God for the good weather that has enabled the crucial stage of digging and filling the foundations to progress easily, for the steady building progress without complications, and for Ralph May’s positive attitude and relationship with everyone from the church.

Current position: The foundations have been completed, and the steel frame for worship space and entrance area is in place - it looks like a massive frame tent at the moment. The frame only covers half of the final building size as the children's classrooms, corridor, meeting rooms and toilet don't require a steel frame.

Next steps:
The concrete floor and drainage services will be laid week beginning 14th October.
Week beginning 28th October the outside brick and block work will start to be built.

How it all began...

“Now it seems real – now I know it is actually going to happen” is how one member of St John’s put it to me after seeing the shell of the new church building on the Coventry Road site. And I know exactly what she meant. The old building was demolished at the end of August 2007 and the site cleared, ready to start.