David Stetson drove by the small unsteepled church on Old County Road in Edgecomb “a million times,” he said, before he realized it was exactly what he was looking for.
Despite roots that date back to the late 1700s, the Free Will Baptist Church had not served a congregation for more than a decade and it had fallen into a state of grave disrepair by the time he took ownership.
A joiner by profession, Stetson had been renting a workshop in Nobleboro where he built the large windows, custom cabinetry, historically accurate molding and other projects that earned him a reputation and a living. He wasn’t happy with the rental though.
“I was looking to buy, but everything is so expensive in the commercial (real estate) world,” he said. “It’s just crazy.” He also wanted something more inspiring than the “crappy metal buildings with no character” that made up most of the commercially available space he was finding, he said.
The Edgecomb chapel had big windows, open space, and lots of sunlight. The ceiling was the perfect height – 18 feet – tall enough to allow him to stand a 16-foot board on end.
“It checked a lot of boxes for me,” Stetson said.
He took a closer look at the small white building and when he stood inside and saw how light filled the space he thought to himself “yeah, this could work.”
Stetson had been looking for the right space for two or three years, but it was clear the building needed substantial repairs. He decided to show it to his wife and she agreed that the space was, as he put it at the time, “awesome.”
Stetson bought the property in 2017. It took him a year of working nights and weekends outside his full-time job to fix the church enough to move in and he’s still not done.
The church had already been rebuilt once after being destroyed by fire in 1875. Standing empty for the last 10 years had done it no additional favors.
The floor had to be removed and a new one installed. The sills had rotted away.
“It had good bones though,” Stetson said. He was able to keep the walls and found the rest of the structure to be solid. “Three sills were completely gone and the building wasn’t even sagging.”
He spent a lot of time repairing the foundation; a number of stones had been cracked from the heat of the fire. He even found himself cleaning up century-old ashes. The church had apparently been rebuilt on top of the damage caused by the flames.
“It’s all concrete now,” he said. “It’s ready to go for another 100 years or more.”
Stetson has been slowly rebuilding the 10-foot-tall windows, removing and cleaning the glass before placing it in hand-crafted mahogany frames.
The church once had a bell tower; the seams where it was attached can still be seen in the exterior clapboards. Stetson dreams about rebuilding the tower someday, as a way to honor the historic character of the building.
When he took possession of the property he was faced with a quandary: what to do with a number of existing features that posed an impediment to his plans.
There was a drop ceiling that hid the beautiful curves where the high walls joined the original ceiling. Stetson took it out, re-hanging the church’s ornate antique chandelier in the soaring space. There was also a massive non-functioning furnace and two giant chimneys that had to come down. Then there was the piano, the altar, and the 14-foot-long pews that all had to find a home.
“I didn’t know what to do with it all,” he said. “I can’t sledgehammer all these pews. Such bad juju to do that, but who can put a 14-foot-long pew in their home? No one.”
He wound up cutting the pews down to five feet, replacing the end pieces and selling them as architectural salvage.
Stetson took out the wall that separated the vestibule from the nave, opening up the space even more. He brought in saws and planers and added an elaborate system of ducts to manage the wood dust. He rewired and replumbed the structure, put in a new propane heating system, and built a small finishing booth near the rear of the building for finer work.
He also rebuilt the choir loft, raising it about a foot and extending it to make a usable work space for ongoing projects.
He’s working on one such project now: rebuilding eight massive stained glass windows, one at a time for the Damariscotta Baptist Church. Stetson said the window units have separate arch and sidelight components so each one actually requires piecing together the glass and lead for six separate panels to make the whole.
He photographs each window and enters the digital file into AutoCAD which allows him to create a pattern to scale. He removes the colored glass from the window, cleans it and lays each piece in place on the life-sized template to be re-leaded. He places pennies under the glass to hold it up off the paper and uses small lead nails to keep the pieces in position as he works. Once the stained glass section is finished he repairs the frame and reinstalls the glass.
Building beautiful windows, made “the old way” with mortise and tenon – no nails, just two pieces of wood joined together, is only one aspect of Stetson’s business. He designs and builds doors, cabinets, furnishings, small jobs, large jobs. It doesn’t really matter what it is, although he likes jobs he describes as fussy. “The fussier the better,” he said.
Stetson grew up in Lincoln County and currently lives in Newcastle. When he was a teenager he spent several years helping his grandfather build a 21-foot catboat. He watched his grandfather, then in his 70s, cut the trees, and mill the lumber to bring his dream to life. “If he needed it, he made it,” Stetson said. “That in itself inspired me.”
Stetson joined the trades right out of high school. When he found himself showing more experienced carpenters how to cut crown molding he decided it was time to go into business for himself. A stint at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport further elevated his skills.
Stetson said he has more work than he can handle these days, particularly since COVID-19. “People came out of the woodwork,” he said of the high demand for those in the building trades.
The White Chapel Joinery is a one-man shop but Stetson said he would like to find someone to take on as an apprentice; someone for whom college may not be the right path. Someone who, like him, wants to find a passion while learning a trade.
For Stetson, seeing a project from the design stage through the building process to installation is what fulfills him. “Customers will come in and say ‘we want to do this. We have an idea,’” he said. He works with them to define and refine their vision. Then he builds it.
“It’s just like magic to me, to see my work come to life,” he said.
