Page 17 - Demo

Slippery Rock Gazette
January 2024 | 17
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Maintenance Corner
Maintenance Corner
Restoring the First Baptist Church of Knoxville, Tennessee
Pink Tennessee and some other stones too, such as Belgian Black Marble (which is actually a limestone). I suspect that these marbles were in fact quarried or imported locally at one of the quarries that eventu- ally were all grouped under the one com- pany, The Candoro Marble Company. These Tennessee pink marbles were
(Left: Belgian Black stringers on the staircases had been coated with an acrylic. (Below:) The coating was laboriously removed and Tenax Ager applied.
quarried, fabricated, shipped, and installed all across the country in government build- ings, museums, hospitals, churches, and was even very popular with residential windowsills for many, many years. The Candoro Marble Company also became a very large importer of foreign marbles (like the Black Belgian Marble), and gran- ites from all over the world.
The biggest issue with the marble floors, stairs, bases and other surfaces was that over the last 100 years, they had been coated with many applications of both paste wax and acrylic. I don’t know if these mainte- nance chemicals had ever been stripped or removed previously, as the coatings were very thick. It was so thick that a fresh black pad might last a couple of hundred square feet (at best) before it was blinded on that side of the pad. Even the stringers of Belgian Black were coated in some sort of acrylic, like, old Mop & Glo, Super Shine- All, or similar. All of the marble surfaces were a streaked, scuffed, dingy, yellowed plastic-looking mess. Initially, there was no clue as to the actual condition of the mar- ble surfaces beneath all those many layers of coatings.
Happy New Year! I love being associated with the restoration of historical buildings. Bringing an old marble (in this particular case) instal- lation back to its original, as-installed beauty, gives me great satisfaction. One of the oldest churches in Knoxville is First Baptist Church, Knoxville. It was estab- lished in 1843-1845. The current historic church building was built in 1923 and was the third and final building of the church assembly. The architect was Dougherty & Gardner and the church was built in the Neoclassical or Classical Revival design with an octagonal sanctuary. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.
So, 100 years later and with count- less coats of everything from paste wax to acrylic, it is now time to restore all of the – and you guessed it – Pink Tennessee Marble. There are a couple varieties of the
Bob Murrell
M3 Technologies
Photos by Bob Murrell
The Neo-Classical First Baptist Church, Knoxville building is 100 years old this year.
Top: The stripping process removed decades of coatings.
Above: Black floor pads blinded by the coatings removal process.
The church agreed that the original intent of the marble floors and stairs was to be honed. After the coatings had been suf- ficiently removed and the stone could be evaluated, there was no evidence of any originally polished marble on the horizon- tal surfaces (floors or stairs). The only pol- ished surfaces were the Belgian Black stair stringers and baseboards.
A restoration plan and procedure was eventually decided. Several heavy high-al- kaline strippers were to be used: Majestic Ultra Strip and AcryliStrip. One worked better on the floor finish and the other worked better on the acrylics. This was a very tedious process. Note that it is prefer- able to use warm water with the strippers, to help increase efficacy.
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