The Paint and Finishing Shop

Though the campus has grown 22% over the past decade, the Saint John’s Paint and Finishing Shop staff has been reduced (through non replaced retirements) from three (3) full-time painters to one (1) full-time painter (Rob Stoeckel) who is assisted by a corps of student employees.  The shop is responsible not only for interior finishes and exterior painting or staining, but it also provides finishing (and sometimes delivery) of furnishings constructed by the Abbey’s Woodworking Shop.

Our painter responded wholeheartedly to the call for re-engineering when that call was first made some eight or nine years ago.  The reduction in full-time staffing noted above was made possible by the introduction of new painting techniques, and through the identification and adoption of three standard colors – red brick white; Breuer white; and Flynntown white.  While always allowing for unique accent colors, the adoption of a standard palette means more time is spent applying paint to walls and surfaces and less time is spent in “tinting to match” dozens of colors which had appeared over the past decades.

A skillful negotiator, the painter has also leveraged the adoption of standard colors to secure attractive pricing – oftentimes paying less for materials than we did twelve years ago for the bulk of our supplies.

Always open to a challenge, the Paint Shop student employees undertook the painting subcontract during the renovation of the Peter Engel Science Center – eliminating a $148,000 outside contract.  Likewise, they did the painting for the recent renovations of Benet Hall, Luke Hall, Wimmer Hall, and First Quad.  More recently, the student employees have taken on the restriping of parking lots and crosswalks – which had previously been outsourced.

At the same time, the “other half” of the student work crew oiled, varnished, sanded, varnished, sanded, and varnished yet again, all of the home-crafted loft units – beds, desks, wardrobes, bookcases, chairs, and ladders – for Benet Hall, Vincent Court, Maur & Placid Houses, and, most recently, the Annex.

Because our facilities are fully occupied for the vast majority of the year – the windows for maintenance painting are very limited.  The reduction in year-round personnel allows for strategic outsourcing during those limited periods of vacancy.

Our Paint and Finishing Shop is also safety conscious.  The full-time painter serves on the Corporate Safety Committee.  The shop has an explosion proof vault for flammable paints and supplies.  The shop has a spray hood, which accommodates the finishing of furniture, and we have appropriate spray and paint application technologies.