Work to restore Antrim’s Grange Hall is continuing, with a new fundraiser underway to help support roof repair.
The effort is to match a grant from the Land and Community Heritage Investment Program, or L-CHIP, for $10,000. In order to be eligible for the money, the Grange has to raise a matching amount.
Beth Merrill, who serves as secretary for Antrim Grange, said the group heard about their receiving of the L-CHIP grant in November.
“We applied for just the minimum that they would do, based on the quote that we could get in time to submit our application,” she said. “We’re looking at raising more than just $10,000 to have enough to do the roof project.”
The fundraiser is a “buy a bundle” campaign, an idea that Merrill said she came up with when she was told that roofing shingles come in bundles.
“It just popped into my brain and fermented for a while,” she said.
Those wishing to support the Grange’s efforts to rehabilitate the building can donate in increments equal to certain amounts of materials. Options include $60 for a bundle of shingles, $200 for a bundle plus underlayment materials and $600 for a square, which equals to 100 square feet of completed roof.
Outside of these options, any donation amount will be “received gratefully,” Merrill said. She added that she did slightly increase the costs from the quote on the roof, since it was done in the fall before inflation and economic volatility became rampant.
The roof was last quoted as needing $17,000 for the work. Merrill said the Grange hopes to raise $15,000 in the campaign to match the L-CHIP fund, with the goal of using any leftover funds to supplement other important work on the building.
The project to refurbish the building has been underway since 2017, and the amount that needs to be done is overwhelming, according to Merrill. It includes intense stonework that needs to be done on the foundation, repairs to the paint and plaster of the interior due to being exposed to moisture and much more.
Next steps, she said, will include getting a follow-up quote on the roof repair and finalizing everything with L-CHIP. This needs to be done soon, in order to get started on the work by fall, which is the goal.
Other work will also be continuing in the meantime, including work on the foundation, which had to be paused throughout the winter and will resume when the ground is dry enough to do so.
Merrill said that while the roof is a big part of the project, she’s trying to take it one step at a time.
“It’s exciting, but it’s just one little step in a very big project that we’re facing,” she said.