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| Official permission to start work |
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| Interior before work began |
Work started on the site May 7th. We started with
safety demonstrations and lectures on protective gear, see us all decked out in
vests, hats, gloves, and safety glasses. The priority of the week was to remove
the items of highest value, the finishes.
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| Morning meting with Brad |
First thing to go was the solid oak flooring.
Despite the age of the wood and lack of maintenance for several years the floor
was in very decent shape. If the flooring is not used in the final design it
will be sold to recoup project expenses, either way training for pulling
flooring without damaging it was required.
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| Pile of oak flooring |
Second thing to be removed was the windows. These windows are
9 feet tall and 3 feet 7 inches wide, they are large and they are heavy. The Hopewell Church folks were especially interested in keeping the windows for display in their
current worship space. That's understandable since the purple stained glass is practically the only architectural embellishment in the space, they are a major memory for a lot of people. Because the new design in anticipated to be an open air
pavilion it is unlikely we will use them anyways.
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| Carefully removing windows |
Thirdly, we tackled the walls. The chapel is finished in plaster and lathe,
we started by taking down the plaster. This task took quite some time and
created quite a mess.
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| Mid-way through plaster removal |
Lastly for the interior was the pressed tin ceiling. Most of
the tiles were rusted and falling apart, but that doesn’t mean they weren’t
sturdy. There is no definitive plan for the ceiling, at this point we are
thinking that the tiles are too damaged to be used or sold.
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| stupid tin ceiling tiles are a pain to get down |
We also had to set up the site, a roll-off
dumpster and 18’ trailer were delivered. Getting to look something like a real construction site....
In general it was a good week on the site considering we split our time between deconstruction and design work. Here is a before and after of the North facad:
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| Before |
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| After Week 1 |
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