Flag on a Barn's Roof Is a Beacon to Local Resident

by KRISTEN ARMSTRONG, Staff Writer

(Monday, April 9, 2007 7:43 AM EDT)

Decorative painter Enid McConnel is always up for a challenge, but her most recent project took her work to new heights - literally.

Commissioned to paint a 30-by -15-foot American flag on the roof of a run-in shed at a horse field farm in Upperville, McConnel had to work on scaffolding and walk boards that were about 20 feet in the air.

(The highest point of the steep-pitch roof is actually about 35 feet, but McConnel enlisted the help of painters Tom Eggers and Andrew Murfitt to work at the more dizzying heights.)

“We were all crazy to do it,” she said in a recent interview. “The farm manager, Steve Timko, called me knowing I'd do any kind of decorative painting.”

But why paint a giant flag on the roof?

The farm's owner, Sergio Pino, owns a home in Miami, as well as his farm in Upperville, and wanted to be able to identify his property aerially when flying from Florida to Winchester Regional Airport.

“He wanted to see the flag,” McConnel said. “And he's also a patriotic American.”

McConnel used a total of five gallons of paint (three white, one red and one blue) for the project, and with Eggers' and Murfitt's help, completed it in about a week.

Now that she's completed the project, McConnel said she is ready to take on something equally unusual.

“This is the first time I've done something like this, but I'm not sure it will be the last,” she said. “It turned out just beautiful. I'm very happy with the results.”

Enid McConnel, Andrew Eggers and Andrew Murfitt put the finishing touches on an American flag on the roof of a run-in shed in Upperville.
(Photo by Karen Buckley)

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