You’re excited! You’ve done your research, and you’ve spent hours sifting through slick pictures and envisioning the good you’ll do with your remodeled or new church building.
And you should be excited, you should feel proud. Your planned project is ready to serve the community and the Lord.
But wait! As crazy as it sounds, church remodeling or building is the easy part. The hard part is in the years afterward, maintaining the facility and keeping it looking inviting, as well as safe.
The Money Pit of Maintenance
This is a serious concern for almost every church. Maintenance budgets have a tendency to be low-priority. After all, it’s much more important–and fun–to be putting money toward programs that further your ministry. But church maintenance can’t be ignored, both for aesthetic and safety reasons. So how will you manage it?
No worries! In our free i3 webinars, The McKnight Group covers the topic of maintenance, and shows you how we create church buildings that keep maintenance costs low.
Three Ways to Make Maintenance Count
Here’s the thing: no church has the budget for a full maintenance staff, so spending on quality materials in the right places is the way to go. There are three areas where attention up front can go a long way to providing years of low cost maintenance.
Work the walls – Select only strong, quality finishes for your walls; finishes like split face block, that will stand up to scratching, staining and chipping. Then gather the youth group for a video game, basketball, or just hanging out without the need to budget extra money or time for scrubbing down afterward, or touching up paint.
Stand up for floors – A little extra quality on the floor can go a long way to saving serious money over the years. Avoid cheap, thin industrial carpet. It shows every footprint, every spill, and every speck of dirt. Go with higher quality carpets that are attractive, and more importantly, stain resistant. So when spills happen, they are a snap to wipe up. Less time and money spent vacuuming or steam cleaning translates to more money for other church programs that benefit your community.
Light the LEDs – One of the biggest tricks for cutting maintenance costs is LED lighting. Use it in place of old-fashioned fluorescents. LED lamps provide better-quality light, have three to four times the life of fluorescents, and use less power overall. Better quality light for less money – and lower maintenance costs? There is no downside.
Start Saving by Learning for Free
Our free i3 Webinars cover these tips, and more. At The McKnight Group, we are serious about providing the best construction methods and materials for your church project. Sign up for a webinar today!