HARPSWELL

After two years of careful planning and preparation, the Elijah Kellogg Church in Harpswell is finally getting the facelift it desperately needs.

Since June, work has begun on the beloved community church, which includes renovating the steeple and the exterior of the sanctuary to preserve the historic structure built in 1843.

“We’re not restoring it. We’re preserving it and there is a difference,” said church preservation committee member George Patterson. “It was there in 1843 and we think we want it there for another 170 years.”

Only the exterior of the original building, which was constructed as a Greek revival church, will be undergoing renovations. Due to lack of written history on the church, Patterson said they had to do some improvising to accurately preserve the building.

“We think we have captured, pretty much, what it was back then,” he said. “There’s bits and pieces of history, but they don’t often pull together.”

The fellowship hall, which was added to the original building in 2000, will not be undergoing any changes. Committee member Bill Greenwood said the space is often used for public dinners, community meetings and activities, and is also open for nonprofit use.

He added that “it was wonderful” to finally see the project come into fruition.

In 2013, Patterson and Greenwood had formed a committee to map out a plan to preserve the building. After estimating the price of preservation work, the church helped raise money for the project before hiring a contractor, Restoration Resources, who specializes in repairing and preserving old buildings.

After examining the wear and tear of the building, Patterson said they would mostly focus on improving the exterior of the church.

“We’re really focusing on the parts that have been damaged by long-term weather and wear and just the normal difficulties of the building,” Greenwood said. “This includes all the walls, windows, shutters and the doors.”

He added that one of the big hurdles of the project was safely removing the lead paint from the building and saving the wood that was underneath, identified as “old growth” spruce tree wood.

“Once wood is exposed, it deteriorates exponentially,” said Greenwood. “And five years from now, it might have been impossible. It might have deteriorated to the point that it would have had to be totally rebuilt. This way, we’re saving the original construction and all that good workmanship and not replacing it.”

The shutters and windows of the church were also shipped off to the contractor to be salvaged, though Greenwood expected that they would have to be rebuilt because of the damage.

This also includes a unique weather vane on the steeple that was made of wood and gold leaves and deemed beyond repair when it was removed from the building. Patterson said a replica would be created through the contractor.

Greenwood also said they are saving a section of the exterior of the church, marked off by a square, which he described as a “time capsule.”

He said they are not removing the paint or changing that particular area to preserve it for future architects and others interested in the construction of the building to “save them an example of what the siding and the paint had looked as it was applied in 1843.”

Both Patterson and Greenwood, who have been members of the church for more than 10 years, agreed that preserving the church was important to the community.

“We just have a long history and tradition of being a community church. Not only serving members, which we do, but we also see our responsibility and mission in serving the community. We make our church open and welcoming and available,” said Greenwood. “It was a real critical point in the church that we decided, almost unanimously, that the church is so valuable and the history is so important to us that we wanted to preserve it.”

Not including summer visitors, Patterson said there were approximately 230 to 250 members at the church.

The project will also include improvements to parsonage building, which will begin next spring.

The current renovations are expected to be completed by October.

dkim@timesrecord.com