Red House move now due by March

A WHITE coating on parts of the exterior of the Red House has led some observers to wonder if the whole edifice will be painted white. But Udecott head Noel Garcia has scotched that idea.

“If people are worried, the Red House will be red,” he told Newsday in an update on the state of the current renovation.

He said the white colour is a coating of mortar, but this will ultimately be painted over in red.

While the end of November had originally been set as the completion date for the upgrade, two workmen eating lunch in nearby Woodford Square flatly told Newsday such a deadline could not be met.

“Never!” said one.

“There’s too much work left to be done,” the other added.

Garcia confirmed this, telling Newsday the upgrade “should be substantially completed by the end of December.”

Parliament is expected to move back to the Red House from the International Waterfront Centre, Wrightson Road, Port of Spain by next March, he added.

At present the Red House, the oldest parts of which date from 1844, now looks like a bride with a faded complexion being adorned for her wedding day.

The edifice has many attendants, working busily from the copper crown and down. Amidst the chaos and indeed the rather dispiriting faded pink exterior, keen inspiration towards a final end can surely be drawn from a surprising and unintended source. The white coating has fortuitously highlighted one neoclassical feature, an ancient Greek architectural form, a flattened triangle known as a pediment which sits atop four pillars, also highlighted in white, best seen at the building's northeast corner.

At the worksite could be heard the heavy pounding of a jackhammer, the beep-beep-beep of a forklift reversing, a worker pounding a hammer and the whine of a circular saw high in the north block.

The main hive of activity was six men atop the rotunda. A couple hammered the copper sheeting that gleamed in the sunlight. The men’s Lilliputian size truly showed how high the rotunda is and the size of the seat of Parliament.

The two top levels of the rotunda are fitted with glass in the windows but elsewhere in the building the window frames remain empty, gaping mouths. Along the northeast corridor on the first floor, the former committee rooms remain without doors, but frames have been fitted.

A protective cover of galvanise sheeting has been removed from the south block and southern corridor, but the supporting steel-beam framework is still in place. The southern edge of the building has been bundled up protectively in tarpaulins. At the west side, a cement mixer churned and poised its extended arm. to presumably start to cast a ground-level concrete floor. Workers were climbing up and down a metal staircase that zigzags up the rotunda. Over the quiet northwest corridor a couple of sheets of bedraggled green netting hung from scaffolding.

Garcia explained that the creamy white coating is not paint but a lime mortar render used to smooth over any cracks or chips in the building’s exterior.

“Once the rains stop, we will commence the actual painting. The German manufacturers of the paint advised we don’t paint in the rain.”

He expected this to occur within days.

Meanwhile, Garcia confirmed, the temporary roof has been removed from the building’s southeast side and will soon be fully removed from the entire south side.

“We hope by month-end or the first week in December the entire temporary roof on that structure will be down.”

As in the past, separate chambers are being prepared to be occupied by each House of Parliament – the House of Representatives and the Senate – independently, he said.

“We have Colombian workers doing the decorative ceiling. We should complete the ceiling in the north chamber in the next few days and work has started on the south chamber."

The chambers used to have elaborate plasterwork known as gesso on the ceilings, but the ceiling in the south chamber was waterlogged by leaks in the roof and collapsed. After that, Senate sittings had to be held in the northern chamber, originally used only for the Lower House.

Garcia said, “It should be all be substantially complete by the end of December, and in a position to start moving sometime towards the end of March next year.”

He assured the project was within budget, adding, “We are speeding it up. In the coming weeks the public will realise how much work has gone on. It is a huge project.”