Surrounded by Water: The Restoration of Virginia's New Point Comfort Lighthouse
Last year, Athens Building Corp. sent their masonry crew up to our Hanover, Maryland headquarters to attend one of our JAHN Certification in Masonry Restoration Workshops. This is our workshop for professional masons, and, upon completion, graduates are certified to properly use and purchase Jahn Mortars.
I spent a good amount of time with one of the crew, Ulysses Avgeros. He told me about an upcoming project for Athens--the restoration of a lighthouse. This got everyone's attention. Athens was getting ready to start a restoration project on the New Point Comfort Lighthouse.
The New Point Comfort Lighthouse is located in Mathews County, Virginia. When it was first built (commissioned by Thomas Jefferson), the lighthouse was at the southern-most point of New Point Comfort. In the wake of a 1933 hurricane, the lighthouse was permanently cutoff from the peninsula and left on its own on a tiny island.
The more I learned about the project, the more I understood that the lighthouse's location was going to be the biggest challenge.
The Athens restoration project would be using our complete Restoration System, including M70 Mortar, Potassium Silicate, Natural Adhesive, and Injection Grout. This was going to be a complete restoration.
We've been wanting to do more with video--especially short-form documentary style video, and we all thought that this would be a great subject for that kind of project. So we made this short film. Enjoy!
