Barbara Swart is our facilities manager, keeping the calendar of renters, collecting rents, sending out contracts, managing keys and dealing with inquiries. That's a big job.

Gary Lefebvre checks the house almost every day. He picks up mail, makes sure the heat and dehumidifier are on and just looks around to make sure everything is ok. Gary also handles our insurance policies and as Treasurer of the BSCL he takes care of the 501(C)3 Community House Fund where anyone can make a tax deductible contribution to help with BCH renovations and maintenance. (Send your contribution to his wife, Peg Lefebvre, Membership Secretary, Barcroft School and Civic League, 800 South Buchanan St, Arlington, VA 22204.)

We have weekly cleaning service from a woman who is also Gary's cleaning person. He supervises her and takes care of her Social Security paperwork and such.

One of our former Board Members, Scott Brinitzer, is a nationally known landscaper, and has taken on the Community House garden as a memorial to his partner who died young some years back. He does a lot on weekends by himself, and periodically brings in his crew to work the place over. Volunteers generally do the leaves in the fall and the mowing. A volunteer recently fixed up our picket fence, and two others--Jill Herndon, Maureen Locke and Barbara Swart--painted it. Jill also helps a lot with the gardening, and other volunteers drop in too.

Interior maintenance is mostly volunteer. Randy Swart does things like paint touchup (constant), emergency light upkeep, replacing light bulbs, installing and maintaining the automatic exterior lights and minor electrical work or plumbing. We call a plumber for anything really involved, and on occasion have an electrician come. We have painted the interior and the stage with volunteers, but have also had it done by professionals. Jim Kerr does our scary crawlspace maintenance, including bracing the floor to withstand our Bulgarian dancers and trapping out small critters. Jim has also done a lot of lock and door maintenance and cabinet maintenance in the kitchen. He changes furnace filters and deals with attic squirrels.

We have a master craftsman in the neighborhood, Bruce Atkinson, who is currently rehabilitating our windows with some sashes reconstructed recently under our last paint contract. Bruce also built the carts for our folding chairs to fit exactly in the space we had available, and was the supervising carpenter for our picket fence. Another neighborhood craftsman, Mark Trone, supervised our oak floor installation, using a crew of unskilled volunteers that he trained and doing the finish work himself. One of our dance group renters said it was the best floor she has ever danced on. Floor finishing we contract for. We have Orkin come annually for a termite inspection.

One of our Board Members, Mike Behringer, a professional heating and AC independent who mostly does work for restaurants, takes care of the furnace and air conditioner. We keep our thermostat at 60 in winter. Renters are free to turn it up, but it is set to revert to 60 every two hours. (80 in summer)

Exterior maintenance is mostly volunteer between major paint jobs. That includes some paint touchup that Barbara and Randy Swart do in the worst areas. Major paint jobs are contracted by David Michaelson, a contractor who lives in the neighborhood and gets us very good deals because he hammers the sub-contractors and knows what the going rate is for everything you can imagine. David has also served as our volunteer contractor for some of the major renovations of the interior. He gets amazing amounts of work done for us at very low prices. For our 2012 renovation of the main hall, Jim Kerr has led the charge, and we have contracted with Commonwealth Restorations to do the work, originally recommended by David.

Gary Lefebvre maintains the stock of paper products and the Approved tape for taping things on the walls. (Scotch Magic Tape--it comes off.) He also keeps cleaning products in stock including Swiffer wipes.

Snow clearance is volunteer, with Mark and Jake Wigfield in charge. Randy Swart takes the County-supplied neighborhood snowblower over when the snow hits on a workday.

We occasionally get things done for us by the Barcroft Players, our theater troupe, who painted the stage and built a storage cubby. The Girl Scouts have promised to do work in return for free rent. One repeat renter, Sue Tenenbaum, painted parts of the interior to soften the unrelieved white of the walls. Another donated a light dimmer and the installation of it.

As you can see, it takes a neighborhood to maintain and run a Community House.

More on the Community House

• Renovation!: Here is the page about our 2012 renovation of the main hall of the Community House.
• Here is the main Barcroft Community House page.

• Here is a map to help you locate the Barcroft Community House and get directions.

• You can rent the Barcroft Community House for social functions.

• Here are the dimensions of the Barcroft Community House. Additional drawings were included in the permit application for our handicapped ramp.

• Here is our log of things done to the Community House, including important stuff like what paint we used.

• Here are instructions for storing the chairs in the Community House.

• Busted! We were cited in 2005 by Arlington County for a paint problem on the north wall of the Community House. A formal Code Violation was issued to the Barcroft School and Civic League for failure to take care of our Historic District! Read all about it and how we painted the wall.

• Barcroft House - a jig written by Julie Gorka, a frequent performer in the Community House. We play it sometimes as a waltz, since the jig is tough for amateur musicians.

• You can find more about the Community House in some of the history reached through our History Page. For one of its most important uses and many more photos, see our pages on the Barcroft Fourth of July parade.
  
  
  

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  This page was revised on: January 30, 2011.