There's probably no bigger fixer-upper than a century-old stone church building that spent several years empty and abandoned after its congregation dwindled away.

	Andy Starnes, Post-Gazette Some of the 130 stained glass windows at the Union Project provide a spectacular backdrop for a dance class at the former Baptist church. Click photo for larger image.

And for a shoestring-budgeted nonprofit such as the Union Project, a group that is turning the former Union Baptist Church into a community gathering place and artists' workshop, $1 million to restore stained-glass windows was not going to fly even in a blue-sky budget.

"About a year and a half ago, I solicited estimates from several stained-glass restoration contractors to repair the Union Project windows," said Justin Rothshank, the project's associate director. "We have about 130 windows, and the estimates came in at almost $1 million."

The problem was that the windows had to be repaired to make the building usable, but the group didn't have the resources to undertake the project, even in phases, said Rothshank, who, with Director Jessica King, worked on the problem.

The Gothic-style church at Stanton and Negley avenues, originally Second Presbyterian, is a two-towered structure, its stone now blackened, the stained glass predominately greens and blues. It became Baptist in the 1940s, when it was called East End Baptist, the name still inscribed in stone at its entrance. Its last church incarnation was as Union Baptist.

The congregation shrank to the point that the church couldn't be sustained. Its pews, organ and fixtures were sold, and the building, which sits at a corner that touches East Liberty, remained vacant for several years in the 1990s, waiting for a buyer.

A group of young Mennonites who had lived just down Stanton Avenue during their year of church service came up with the idea of acquiring the building. With anonymous benefactors underwriting the deal, they bought the building for $125,000 in August 2001. Since then, the nonprofit has recruited hundreds of volunteers who have contributed thousands of hours to help clean up the building, repair the roof and make plans for turning it into a space that could be used for theater performances, offices, artists' studios, a coffee shop and community events.

	Pam Panchak, Post-Gazette Kyle Lackey, of Mt. Washington, repairs a window from the Union Project in a stained glass restoration class at Construction Junction in Point Breeze. Click photo for larger image.

But the cost of fixing the windows was a big hurdle.

"Since there was no way we could afford that, Jessica and I brainstormed some different ideas and eventually came up with this class idea with Cathy as the instructor," Rothshank said.

Cathy is local stained-glass artist Catherine Berard. She agreed to teach a stained-glass restoration class in which students would pay a fee to cover instructor fees, tools and replacement glass. The class materials would be the Union Project windows. The idea was to give people a skill they could use in fixing up their own homes and get the stained-glass windows done in the process.

The Union Project put the word out to its e-mail list of 1,500 and quickly filled up two classes.

Students in the class do the restoration from start to finish. Each student, or pair of students, depending on the size of the window, restores a stained glass window that has been removed from the 15,000-square-foot stone church building. They are taught how to dismantle each window, clean each piece of glass, cut replacement glass for broken pieces, re-lead each window, attach reinforcement bars and prepare each window for reinstallation.

"When I told my daughter what I was doing, she said, 'Let me get this straight: You're paying them to clean their windows?' " said the Rev. Teresa Stricklen, assistant professor of homiletics at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary. But tapping into community members willing to pay to learn a skill and contribute to the project is a smart idea, she said.

"This is such an innovative win-win-win solution to the problem of the windows at the Union Project," she continued. "I learn how to restore my own stained glass, receive important knowledge that will help me go on to create my own windows with further work, and help a worthy community project at the same time. How cool is that?"

The project expects to restore 29 windows during the current term, and work on the remaining ones in future terms.

At the culmination of the class, students will watch as the windows they have restored are reinstalled.

The Union Project has to raise funds to have the windows removed and reinstalled, and to pay for protective storm windows. The costs for these are between $600 and $1,000, depending on the size of the window, Rothshank said, bringing the cost to restore all 130 windows to around $100,000, a savings of about 90 percent.

The next session will begin next month. The class will be held from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on six consecutive Saturdays beginning March 6 and ending April 10. The class fee is $175, which includes all tools and materials. The class will be held at Construction Junction, at North Lexington and Meade, North Point Breeze. The class will be open to students of any skill level. All tools and materials will be provided.

To register for the class, call 412-478-3105 or e-mail justin@unionproject.org to get a registration form. Deadline for registration is Feb. 25.