Chandler's Eagle Project

June, 2013

Well over a year ago we noticed a neighboring elementary school had their wall ball walls brightly painted.  Our school had plain, gray, boring concrete wall ball walls.  Chandler decided right away that that is what he wanted to do for his Eagle project when it rolled around.  So after he became a Life scout in March, we got to work so we could pull it off during the summer.  

The first hurdle was getting the principal to buy the idea.  We had heard from a couple of people that she was allowing very few Eagle projects because too many had given her problems in the past, but ones involving paint were definitely not going to be accepted any more.  Chandler was determined to pitch the idea even if it was rejected.  So he prepared a plan--one that involved carefully choosing helpers, mixing and pouring all paint on tarps, cleaning up with our own power washer if necessary etc. that he presented to her.  At the very last minute we decided to print off a couple of pictures of our fence to give her a vision of how it could turn out.  He also gave her a list of educational mural ideas that he could paint.  He did a great job and I think it was a pretty hard offer to refuse.  She decided to give him a chance but with very specific guidelines and deadlines. 

The guidelines were not difficult to manage because it was basically what he had already planned (no stray paint, clean up all messes, provide all materials etc.).  It was the deadline that was difficult.  She didn't want us to begin during the first week of June because of the demands already on the janitors that week and she wanted it completed by June 30.  Normally that would be plenty of time, but Chandler was scheduled for two scout camps that would occupy his time from June 17-June 30.  That basically gave us one week (with one of those days being his 13th birthday and he was fairly adamant that we didn't work that day).  Thankfully, the janitor worked with us and let us start the Thursday and Friday the first week of June to get the base coats painted.  

We didn't know how porous the walls were until we got close and actually started working.  It was a pretty tough job and took about 4 layers of paint with the last layer being brushed on with small brushes to fill in holes.  Even with that, we ended up only getting the largest holes.   We worked night and morning on the shady side of the walls for about 3 hours each session.  (because I was closely supervising and/or painting when we had helpers there, I didn't get pictures of anyone doing this process except Chandler, but we had a nice rotation of helpers these days.)  

 Then, Saturday night we headed back at dark to project the designs on the walls.  We had planned to use a converter and run the power out of our van, but after we couldn't get that to work, we realized that the converter had a limit of wattage, which was way less than the projector needed.  We couldn't figure out what to do.  With the tight time frame we HAD to get the designs up that night.  Thankfully Tom remembered someone in our ward who had a generator and he was kind enough to let us borrow it.  That was a true life saver.

 Early Monday morning Chandler and I arrived and set up and then friends started showing up for painting assignments.  He directed them and insisted on good work.  He taught them how to wash out brushes and paint well.  For the most part things went well.  We had a few hiccups, but nothing that couldn't be fixed.

 When we were almost finished, Chandler went into the school to get Mrs. Crandall to show her what we had done and to find out if there was anything else she would like us to do to complete the project. She was amazed with Chandler's work.  While she liked the murals, she was extremely grateful for the job Chandler had done.  He had done everything he promised to do.  She told him "Chandler, even though you are not 100% completed, I would be happy to sign your Eagle papers right now.  You have done such an amazing job with this project and done everything you committed to do."  Chandler was so thrilled with her accolades. He did wait until we had completely finished and cleaned up before getting her signature though. I'm pretty sure the janitor was happy with us as well because after the first couple of days, we took our own hose and faucet key so he didn't have to do that for us.  He checked on us the first few days periodically--mostly I think to just make sure paint was only where it should be.  We were very independent from his help and that was probably a good thing for him.

We knew going into it, that It would be a very time intensive project.  Chandler and I both put in about 50 hours each.  Other family members and friends combined did about that also.  It made for a very crazy, crazy week, but IT'S DONE!!  And it is something he'll see often for many years that will remind him of the things he learned about leadership and service.

He's almost finished with his paperwork and he's got to go pass off the camping merit badge then go to the board of review!  We're excited to get this checked off his list!