St. Al’S Pals, From Start To Refinish They Scrape, Stain, Smooth 700 Yards Of Pews

St. Aloysius Church had a problem.

Its pews were noticeably worn with the gouges, chips and scrapes of daily use by almost 90 years’ worth of worshippers.

Professionals’ bids put an unreachable $40,000 price tag on refinishing the pews. They also would have needed to have removed the seats - a great disruption for the busy Spokane church.

So what started as a test by two parish men - just to see if the project was doable - soon became a staggering challenge: the equivalent of hand-scraping the varnish off a pew more than seven football fields long.

Using metal planes and lots of elbow grease, Marion Melius and Henry P. Garofano worked on the pews almost every day for nearly three months.

They were able to keep the pews in place and completed the project for the price of their supplies and occasional help - about $1,500.

“E casa mia - it’s my house,” Garofano explained. “That’s the way I feel about this church. I just love it.”

After morning Mass at 8, the men would start in on the pews - 72 of them 27 feet long and 40 of them 6 feet long. They’d take breaks for scheduled funerals and weddings, and stop at about 3 p.m. to clean up the day’s work so the church was tidy for the next morning’s Mass.

Garofano also had another reason to break.

“I played golf in between, but my game went to hell,” Garofano said, displaying the cramped position his hands would end up in each day.

In addition to stripping each pew seat, the men gave each whole pew two coats of stain and two coats of Verathane. Each coat was sanded or smoothed with steel wool as well.

Parish member Mike Imholt provided constant help. But of the others they tried to recruit - even offering pay - no one lasted long.

“One guy worked for a day and said, `Well, now I know how to skin a pew,”’ Garofano said. “But he never came back.”

Parish administrator Don Weber said the job was more complicated than it might seem.

“You had to scrape with the grain,” he said, hinting at Garofano’s perfectionism.

“If you don’t, you pick up the wood,” Garofano said.

Now the grain of the wood is clearly visible. And when the light passes through the stained glass windows just right, the seats are subtly shiny.

“It’s been a good challenge,” Garofano said.

A retired dental technician, Garofano, 77, has been helping around St. Als since 1993, though he’s been a member of the church for almost 50 years.

Woodworking has always been a hobby, he said. Once he offered his expertise for refinishing an oak table, the projects at the church snowballed.

“It seems like things came out of nowhere,” he said.

Around the church, Garofano’s handiwork is visible almost everywhere. He has refinished oak cabinets in the sacristy and numerous doors, chairs and tables. He’s repainted gold railings by the back altars and grill work over the confessionals, refinished the baptismal font and spruced up the porch light outside.

Many projects, though, were Garofano-Melius collaborations. The two met at St. Als where Melius has been a maintenance worker for about six years.

“He was working here a long time before I got here,” Melius said of Garofano. “One day I started on a project and Hank was there to help out.”

Before coming to Spokane, Melius, 68, worked with a crew of Jesuit brothers in Alaska for 10 years, honing his handyman skills.

The men - and others - agree they make a good team.

“These two men are awesome,” said Kay Fair, maintenance supervisor for the church. “They’re hardworking and devoted. There’s no way you could pay a crew of men to come in and do what they’ve done.”

Now the men are taking a short vacation from their work, though the next project is never far from their minds.

Walking up an aisle past the pews, Melius glances downward.

“The backs are pretty stained … maybe sometime,” he mused. “Can’t do too much at once.”