Sept 28th last scaffold and more plywood up

For the last time we set up the roof access scaffold. This good news as it signals the closing act of the roof plywood project.  This time we add the added entertainment of working over the holes we dug for the new footings.  I’m not sure who came up with the idea of digging holes then putting scaffold up over them, oops – that was me !.

Dave 1 ripped off the remainder of the shingles in short order, keeping Dave 2, Al, Jerry and Curtis busy with the clean up. 

Jerry and Dave 2 also helped push up a couple sheets of plywood to me where it was scribed and send back down for a haircut prior to placement.  The roof is amazingly out of square. We wanted to avoid having to trim the second and third rows of plywood so laid the first row factory butt to butt along the eve in a straight line. This meant cutting 10″ off the side of the last sheet – that’s how much the roof went out of straight over its length.

There’s quite a sag in the roof near the north end on the west side. It became really apparent when the plywood for the east side was put on – it extended beyond the ridge by about 2″ in one stretch. The solution was to add tapered strapping to the shiplap to raise up the new plywood – effectively filling in the low area.  The strapping is about 1 1/2″ thick at one end, tapering to nothing about 8′ away.  Thanks to Jerry and Dave 2 who endured about 48 lineal feet of ripping with a noisy guideless hand held circular saw.

Thanks to Spockets for coffee and muffins and Blind Bay Village Grocer for lunch. It’s always looked forward to. We have started watching for Louise’s car coming with lunch now – we can see her about a half kilometer away on the road. Oops I hope she doen’t read this.

here are some more pictures:

 

Sept 21 Excavation and Beams

Holes roughed in and Beams placed.

Well that was a productive day !   We started at 7am – that was an early start.  Won’t do that again.  Thanks to Bernie and Gerry with a skid steer and mini hoe the long awaited hydro pole beams got installed.  At  the same time the foundation holes got roughed in – ready for cleaning up and eventual concrete footings and risers.

Curtis and Al made good progress cutting up wainscotting  inside on a jig – see the photo below. I think that Curtis likes that saw…. We plan to put the old ceiling t/g wood on the walls as wainscotting, replacing that which was missing with the same old wood. We will use new wood up in the ceiling where its harder to tell that its new….

Mmmm lunch from Blind Bay Village Grocer was great – on a cool and sometimes rainy fall day.  Coffee from Sprockets also a real treat to the large crew – 8 people I think – wow !.

It was too wet to paint up top but we can always hope for next saturday…..

Dave 1 and Dave 2 swam around in the dirt under the building removing 90 odd years of detritis – nothing special found.  Thanks guys for this – it wasn’t the cleanest of jobs to do.

I hear from one of our most knowledgeable volunteers that the back room may not be a “sacristy”…..I think this will take may posts/saturdays to sort out. 

Tim ( that’s who is writing this) had to leave a few hours early so left with the knowledge that the second “bay” under the building was not to get a log – thus the need for only five logs. I didn’t tell everyone this….oops !  With a bit of maneuvering we can roll that log over to the next bay where it is needed. Feel free to choose appropriate punishment for me next saturday.

We need to organize the roof for shingles, and organize the shingles for the roof too come to think of it.  That remains the hightest item on the list. Having a look at the photos below tells me that the all important ground crew has a full slate of work do to now !.

September 14th Painting and structure

Just look at that, cool air, the scent of grass, all in a state of ready for the day.  ( Nice Tent Dave  – thanks )

We had a good warm fall day this last saturday.  Dave 2 and Curtis installed cross ties over the sacristy ( I am told this is the name of the back room) to hold the wall tops together. Slow work with cramped quarters above the old ceiling at the base of the roof rafters.  Thanks Dave 2 and Curtis !

Tim and Dave 1 cleaned the trim up on the bell tower and started painting it.  Dave 1 donned fall arrest gear and stood on a little platform and installed the cross bar on the cross. This new permanent cross bar was made with three days notice by Phil – our awesome local wood working volunteer. Nice clear fir stock laminated up to the 3 1/4″ by 5  1/4″ size of the old wood. Phil gave Dave 1 careful instruction on how to countersink the bold heads and use epoxy thickened with wood flour for bonding and filling.  Each of us brings something to this – that is very clear ! .  Dave 2 tells us that the cross bar is to be 33% of the height of the vertical part of the cross……so we have done this !

Al – of the ground crew worked on some items on the east wall – the one that was barely there two years ago. He peeled off the old siding and refastened the shiplap to the new/old studs beneath. That wall needs some help yet but its way better now.

We are going to paint again September 21 and continue work on tower base structural ties.  We continue to look forward to a mini excavator coming to excavate the footing holes and place the floor beams.

Here are some pictures of Dave 1…..he surely likes the view up there:

 

OK Dave1, we are done with that …here’s the cross bar in Phil’s hands:

 

Al’s work refastening the shiplap, looks better and better !!

here’s a before shot of that wall:

 

 

Sept 7th progress

Dave 1 and Tim worked on the bell tower this last weekend.  They finished the plywood and added the dormers back on. They took the dormers off after bracing them so they stayed together.  They then added in a vent and fillet strip in each dormer location to allow venting and to facilitate re-attachment.  The bees remain a force to be reckoned with, Dave 1 slapped his leg and said something unrepeatable several times  – I think it was bees but I have no proof.   Louise brought some bee spray on short notice – great. Dave 1 proceeded to do a mass hit on a gathering of bees….Below is a picture of the vent and fillet strip:

We also re-set the barge board on each dormer  a bit higher to account for the thickness of the new plywood.

Dave 2 and Curtis worked on the cutting of plywood and 2×4 tension struts for the attic space at the back of the church. This will improve the strength of the building – we want to tie the bottom of each rafter to its opposite on the far side of the building.  The trick with the struts is getting them up into the attic space in one piece. Dave 2 did it, he told me how but I still think he bent them each into a 19′ pretzel, popped them in , then let them go again.

We are looking forward to paint (!!) next week weather permitting – on the wood of the bell tower. We will also be working on the tower floor with bracing rods and plywood and roofing materials already on site awaiting our attention. Dave 2 looks forward (!!) to assembling those cross struts. We all hope that the volunteer excavator can come next week to excavate the footings.  I know footings and roof work don’t seem to mesh on one worksite – how can you not have footings while you are working on the roof?  The answer is that Dave 2 has arranged the temp building supports so they are placed out of the way of the permanent footing locations. This frees up the space for the excavator to work.

Here is another photo of plywood progress on the steeple. The church steeple spire is at left top:

That grass in the photo is about 50′ away….down. You can also see in the photo that there was a bit of trim around the spire set about 6″ above the roof terminus.  We took it off. We think that was a sort of water deflector trim that deflected water on the spire away from the sensitive roof – spire joint.  Alternately, the trim may have set the cross dimensions so that the cross piece of the cross had the required 33% of the length of the vertical spire?…… The roof -spire joint has nothing in the way of waterproofing……we need to remedy that as coming up to fix the tower is as you can see not easy. We plan a set in strip of flashing…..

Speaking of which , to get to the roof you have to do the front steps, a tall ladder, a walkway, an access hatch, then a roof top ladder, then a bit of a scramble ( The jungle gym stretch -hmmm that needs work) then another ladder … then you are on the bell tower scaffold……. now what was it I came to measure anyway?

Thanks again to Sprokets for coffee and Blind Bay Market for lunch.  Nothing like food to make you happy.

Coming up this week:

-excavator for footings, footing prep work – form fabrication.

-paint the trim in the upper bell tower.

-work on bell tower base structural (why do we always start up top anyway?) rods and compression struts

-tension struts over the back room

-yummy coffee and  lunch, and the return of the burn barrel.

 

 

 

 

Aug 24th 2013 update – tower straightened

The crew – six of us worked on re-arranging the foundation supports to recieve the permanent beams.  Dave , fearless leader of the all important ground crew sacked that task with Albert and Curtis’s help. The beams are donated telephone pole segments which will carry the inside floor areas to the outside edges of the building. This fall we will be pouring concrete foundation columns and pads- we hope. The tower itself has a two storey scaffold surrounding it perched on the roof. More than a little exciting when you are working up there and the ubiquitous bees decide you are it.  Thanks to Len we were able to use his hydraulic ram mounted in a wood frame to push the tower up to straight – about a foot horizontally at the eve level on the tower.  Jerry and Dave did nost of the assembly of the ram mount – a sort of ridge mounted rocket launcher for a built up post that pushed on the tower in “just the right spot.” – well it turned out that way.      Next Saturday we are onto the repairs to the tower itself – new roof plywood, reconnection of beams and internal cross bracing.  The bracing will likley be a cross of ready rod with stiff legs – to bind the four corner posts together without messing with the looks of the structure. Sure like the donated coffee and lunch ! g