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Old Saybrook Youth & Family Services Executive Director Heather McNeil said the new narrower table and smaller chairs in this meeting room will make it more functional than the old room with its wide and heavy dark furniture.

No more sounds of mice skittering above the office ceilings during the day. No more pulling on a plastic coin at the end of a chain to turn on the attic light. Climbing the old steep stairs with narrow treads to the second floor no longer requires one’s undivided attention. And those changes don’t even address the main reason the Youth & Family Services (YFS) building on Main Street was evacuated: black mold in the basement, mold-embedded carpet and furnishings, and musty wallpaper that was peeling off the walls.

“The staircase was removed and rebuilt to the proper rise and tread width. Connecticut Water Company replaced three old toilets with new ones. Heavy, dark furniture from before has been replaced with new lighter, better-sized [commercial-grade], furniture,” said YFS Director Heather McNeil as she toured the nearly finished Kirtland House last week. “Instead of a sink in the reception office, the sink has been moved to a small kitchenette area. A storage room upstairs was converted into a dedicated family counseling space.

“Overall, the functionality of our building has been improved too,” said McNeil.

The agency staff was relocated from the Kirtland House to the lower levels of the Town Hall after an independent inspector in November 2015 confirmed the presence of black mold in the basement and higher levels of other mold elsewhere. It has taken various contractors three months to complete the building remediation, restoration, code-compliance work, and to install the new furniture and workstations. Last week, the agency staff moved back in.

As McNeil toured the building on March 9, her excitement about what the clean-up, renovations, and space reconfiguration will mean to the agency staff and to its clients was palpable.

Sometimes it can be just the simple things that thrill, like the reversal of the hinge on a bathroom door so users no longer have to maneuver around the inward-opening door to enter the space and close the door behind them. Or being able to use an electric wall switch to turn on the attic stairs light instead of a long pull-chain with a plastic coin on the end. And the light that now streams into every room, thanks to the fresh light-colored wall paint and the new lighter, less bulky, furniture arranged in the spaces.

Perhaps even more important is what is missing: the musty smell that used to permeate every room in the building. Water leaks—and mice—no longer enter the building through holes around the chimneys or in the building’s foundation wall. The chimneys have been removed and were capped in the attic; their base remains visible in the basement. The roof area where the chimney tops rested was patched and repaired.

In February, the town voters approved spending $48,000 on various tasks needed to bring the building up to code and to replace the residential-grade furnishings with commercial grade ones. In November 2015, the Town Meeting also approved more than $14,000 to replace the structure’s old furnace with a new efficient natural gas boiler.

Work to remediate the Kirtland House’s mold deposits, including removal and disposal of moldy carpet, wallpaper, and furnishings, was paid for by the town’s insurance carrier CIRMA. That work was deemed a covered and insured incident when it was connected to two water leak incidents tied to the building boiler’s failure.

McNeil said that since the building had to be emptied for the renovation and clean-up work, it provided her and her team the perfect opportunity to reconfigure and reassign the spaces to improve functionality.

Upstairs, one office was arranged with two new workstations for the two program coordinators to use as shared workspace. A storage room next door was re-purposed into a dedicated family counseling space. A larger office assigned to the full-time clinician was furnished with new chairs and will now comfortably support group sessions for parent education and of support groups. Another small office upstairs also was re-purposed into a dedicated counseling space.

Downstairs the functionality of the main conference and meeting room has been improved with new lighter furniture, a narrower conference table, and a wall-mounted television for support staff training and community work.

Movers returned the staff’s boxes of supplies and materials from the parking lot storage unit to the building March 10.

With fresh paint, new carpeting, and small desks, this office’s functionality is improved.

In the Youth & Family Services building’s basement, the base that supported an old chimney, now capped, remains. Holes where the former chimney rested on the roof and in the building’s foundation are now plugged to prevent water and animals from entering.

In January 2016, the building got a new efficient natural gas furnace and water heater.

With new more efficient work station furniture, program coordinators Wendy Mill (shown here) and Jodi Kelly will share an office. A storage room located next door to this office has been re-purposed as a dedicated family counseling room.

Old Saybrook Youth & Family Services Executive Director Heather McNeil examines a new first-floor training and meeting room.

A key element of the building updating was to remove and rebuild the central staircase. Now the rise is not too high on each step and the treads not too narrow. A new staircase railing and emergency lights address code requirements.

Old Saybrook Youth & Family Services Executive Director Heather McNeil stands at the base of rebuilt central staircase. The training/conference room is on her left and the reception room on her right.