Pennies from TT

When he asked at the local lumberyard how much it would cost to cover a cupola in copper, he was told $25 per square foot.

“That would have cost me about $3,000,” he said.

Later, he had an idea.

“I had this thought — pennies, they’re made of copper,” which appealed to his innate cheapness, he admitted.

He bought $5 in penny rolls from his local bank, and figured out that covering that same square foot of surface in pennies could be done for $2.40.

A neighbourhood conversation piece was born.

Corriveau has spent hundreds of hours, using silicone, painstakingly sticking 20,000 pennies to the cupola. He eventually plans to place the cupola on the barn’s roof.

“I’d do it as I had time. Usually, I’d go out there and listen to a Red Sox game while I was working on it,” he said. “Better than sitting on my butt on the couch.”

Corriveau made a large “C” for Corriveau out of nickels and dimes, and “2008”, to mark the year of its completion.

“I would have done it in pennies, but the pennies lie in straight lines. I needed to make (the letters and numbers) curve,” he said.

He glued quarters to the edges of the cupola, then sealed the whole thing with three coats of the same kind of epoxy used to seal fiberglass boats.

“Otherwise, water would get behind them and they’d be popping off,” he said.

He got a few surprises in those 20,000 pennies.

The coins weren’t all American. There were pennies from Canada, Holland, Japan and Trinidad mixed in. He joyfully included them in his creation, always heads up, face out.

One of the Canadian coins in the vast pile of pennies was minted in 1941, marking the country and the year of his birth.

“I put that one at the very top, facing the house,” he said.

One penny he did not stick to his cupola was a 1902 Indian head penny.

“I kept that one. I figure that one is worth more than a penny,” he said.

As he’s been working on it, people have been popping by his home on Providence Road to check out the progress.

“I’ve had all kinds of strangers knocking on my door,” he said.

One “little old lady” came by with 18 pennies in a film canister. Others have literally given him their two cents on his creation.

“It’s an oddity. It’s a work of art,” he said.

Sometime soon, Corriveau said, he’ll have a cupola-raising party, where he’ll invite some friends, grill some burgers, and use a crane to place the cupola gently on the roof of his barn.

“We’re having fun with it,” he said.