After being out of town and missing a week of blogging it is time to put the figurative pen to paper and catch up, and there’s quite a bit to catch up on!
It’s always nice to be able to begin by highlight a completed piece of work so let’s kick off by giving a shout out to the wall that runs along the front of our old building between the angel’s office and the day school entrance. It has been transformed from an ugly duckling of a building eyesore (who can ever forget those perpendicular, 10 inch wide, white, wooden, planks that divided the wall and gave the impression of a retro “Tudor Look*”), into a beautiful swan of a structure that's so easy on the eyes. I have to admit there are still some small issues with rainwater creeping in between "roof and brick" but soon the final trim will be installed and those leaks consigned to history. Let us stay with our old buildings by shining a light on the office corridor inhabited by Father Bob, Mother Ashley, Gretchen and the duty angel. First I need to give you a little roofing background; the new pitched roof meets the existing pitched roof somewhere above Gretchen’s office and the new flat roof meets the existing pitched roof somewhere above Father Bob’s office. I’ve looked at the roofing plans but have absolutely no ability to extrapolate a 3 dimensional roof structure from a drawing so those “roofing buffs” amongst you will have to pardon my inability to express the roofing challenge in technical terms. To the layman, and to be brief, this meeting of the old and the new is the roofing equivalent of the seas off the Cape Horn, it is a veritable maelstrom of seething shingles and flat roofing that will need some significant work and no small amount of expertise to bring harmony and calm to the clashing roof lines. Unfortunately to achieve this harmony the existing roof over Father Bob’s and Gretchen’s offices will have to come off! Now you can’t just rip off a roof and expect everything to go well (we tried that already), the weather has had more than it’s fair share of impact on our construction so it’s more than reasonable to assume there will be rain whilst the roof is off. We could just ask Father Bob and Gretchen to come to work dressed like Bering Sea fishermen but when it wasn’t raining there would be dust and noise to contend with and then there’s the office contents left exposed to the slings and arrows of outrageous weather. What do you do? Well you wait until the tree roots in the cemetery are turning an autumnal orange and the Rector is taking a short and well-earned break then you deploy a highly skilled “strike removal team” (actually Gretchen Hood, Blair Hood and your correspondent). This strike team packed up the office including its books, mementos, coffee cups, guitars and furniture and moved it all into storage (a.k.a. the kitchen, corridor, library, and Mother Ashley’s office). So my fellow parishioners, until the roofing is done, new carpets laid and a dash of paint added to the walls please spare a thought for Father Bob “the Wandering Rector of ODEC” Randall as he seeks out a place to rest his travelling iPAD! Staying with the roofing topic for the next item. Avid followers of this blog, or for that matter the occasional reader, will know the great hall and narthex concrete pad has been laid and the steel wall frames have been erected. However, unless you have recently passed by the ODEC campus you may not know that it’s “roof truss and beam time!” again. Some weeks ago, a low loader delivered the great hall and narthex roofing trusses and beams and since then their presence has been a reassuring indicator of what was to come and now that time is here. For the past few days Miguel, Juan, José (not their real names) and their team mates have been back on the site working their magic to bring order to the scattered heaps of trusses as they frame out the great hall’s roof. I have absolutely no idea how the team select the trusses so they are laid out in some (to me hidden) logical order on the temporary frame they constructed at ceiling level for this purpose – and it’s all done at lightning speed with a rather spectacular looking blue forklift machine! It’s progress on all fronts and so until my next blog stay safe and stay healthy, David Beach. Tudor Look*: Building style that pays homage to the Tudor style of building in England (1485 and 1603). A heavy wood frame supporting walls made of wattle and daub, which is a wall where vertical wooden stakes, or wattles, are woven with horizontal twigs and branches, and then daubed with clay or mud. An authentic period dwelling with its visible black beam skeleton framing white wattle and daub walls is very attractive but, at least for me, that’s not the case for buildings constructed in the Tudor look that was so popular in the UK in the 1950s and 1960s.
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It was all going so well and then it rained “cats and dogs*”!
I know we will have our share of cold, frosty, and maybe even snowy weather before we reach our construction anniversary next March but to date it’s been the rain that’s brought building progress to a near standstill. l say “near standstill” because there’s the rear wing, now watertight with its roof, walls and windows, where building work can continue safely sheltered from the rain ……. but outside it was a very different matter. Let me give a quick summary of the outside building "action" going on last week. The building’s façade from the Parish Administrator’s Office to the day school entrance had been ripped off and is being replaced by a very stylish new brick wall. The concrete floor for the great hall and narthex is finished and the steel framework for the walls are being erected. At the rear the day school’s outside classroom and little garden space had been restored with the addition of a new fence and work was focusing on giving the Historic Church’s exterior woodwork its annual “sympathetic” power wash. Yes, all was peace and progress on the ODEC campus last week and then, as the Tuesday afternoon shadows began to lengthen into dusk, the word came “prepare for rain!” (Actually, I have used a bit of “blogging license” there because by late Tuesday afternoon the skies were so grey there were no shadows). It rained, quite hard (English passion for the understatement) on Tuesday night so when I swung by the ODEC Campus around 8:00 a.m. on a rain swept and blustery Wednesday morning I was surprised to find the drive and day school drop off area wet underfoot but not flooded. My first thoughts turned to mentally thanking Ryan and his Higgerson site construction crew for our new storm water management system that was obviously doing its job. Hopping from the comfort of my car into a rain lashed maelstrom I suffered the embarrassment of “brolly blowout*,” obviously lived outside UK for too long for this would never of happened to an experienced brolly user and there simply isn’t anything you can do with a blown out brolly apart from looking slightly sheepish! So, turning back to the weather, the building site was a quagmire and one can only be impressed by the fortitude of our office staffs who risked mud and quicksand to reach the kitchen’s backdoor. Whilst wandering the site, trying to find somewhere not too conspicuous to dump the now useless brolly, I came across Mr. Scott Crumley. In a rain soaked conversation I learnt the lack of flooding on the drive was solely due to his early morning efforts to drain away the standing water, an effort that by noon that day I would come to know myself. Taking my leave of Scott I headed for home, blown out brolly in the back of the car and thoughts of a hot shower, dry clothes and a nice “cuppa*” on my mind (a Brits’ alternative to Georgia). So it was, showered, dry clothed and with cuppa in hand when text messages and phone calls started to arrive. Rainwater was leaking onto Gretchen Hood’s desk in the Parish Administrator’s office narrowly missing the Parish Register, rainwater was seeping through the wall into the day school directors’ office and rainwater was cascading into one end of a classroom. It is an unavoidable outcome if you rip off a wall, in our case the façade, and haven’t quite finished replacing it when it starts to rain really, really hard – water gets inside and it’s time for buckets and mops! Easy for me to say sitting in our kitchen, cuppa in hand watching the rain fall……then came a call to arms. It was by now 11:30 a.m. and day school pick up was approaching but the drive and surrounding grass was once again calf deep in water. Back into a second set of work shorts, shirt and donning rubber Crocs on feet it was a race back to the Church where I met none other than the redoubtable Scott Crumley soaked to the skin, doubled over and up to his elbows in standing water whilst wrestling leaves from one of the two rain water drains in the drive. So there we were, a drain each with the mission to keep the gratings clear of leaves. Let me tell you from first-hand experience, we have fallen leaves the size of dinner plates and keeping them clear of the gratings, so the standing water can drain away, is a great cardio work out and, once the water starts to drain away, very satisfying. The good news is our new storm water management systems works a treat however come the fall getting rainwater into that system in the first place maybe a leafy challenge! And some more good news, once the façade is re-built and the odd bit of masonry added the day school will be completely dry as will be the Angel’s and the Parish Administrator’s offices although there is more destruction to come their way before the end but that’s for a future blog! Stay safe and stay healthy, David Beach. “It’s raining cats and dogs”: An English idiom used to describe particularly heavy rain and is not necessarily related to a raining animals phenomenon (I learnt that it may come from the Greek expression “cata doxa” which apparently means “contrary to experience”). “Brolly”: Colloquial English for an umbrella “Brolly blowout”: The embarrassing moment when you inadvertently turn your umbrella to catch the wind and it blows inside out then followed by that awkward period when you have a blown out umbrella in your hand but can’t find anywhere to dump it! “cuppa”: Colloquial English for a cup of tea . After the boom, crash and wallop of the past two weeks with the concrete pouring, the Wellie Gang going about their concrete smoothing work with a cheerful and excessively loud demeanor and the roofing frames arriving on site, this week has been slightly more tranquil! Although, as Mr. Einstein noted, “everything is relative” so even that tranquility has to be taken in the context of steel framers attaching their metal trays to the concrete block footings with a device that fires (quite literally shoots) bolts into the concrete whilst "over yonder" the bricklayers make merry with demolishing an old brick façade.
So let’s delve a little deeper into the demolition activities. You may recall the front of the building between the Angel’s office door to the day school entrance had a Frankenstein’s monster look about it. A low flat-roof line and the 10 inch white, wooden planks that marshalled the bricks into little patches of disorder all set off by odd looking oversized windows making the whole façade look like the product of a design committee working to a very tight budget. Well this past week Frankenstein’s construction monster was laid to rest by the demolition of the whole façade and a sprinkling of some roofing and trim magic to align the now pitched roof with the rest of the building. In the next few days, the new bricks will be laid in the same look and style as the rear wing which will then blend in with the great hall and narthex. It’s going to look “cracking*.” Meanwhile the action continues as Mr. Crumley orchestrates work on multiple fronts. In the rear wing Atlantic Heating and Air are continuing to install the HVAC system, above work to build new roofing and replace old shingles continues all punctuated with various, to date successful, City inspections. I’ve already mentioned the metal trays that provided the basis for the steel web of studs, braces and beams that will trace out the external and internal walls in the great hall and narthex. You will be delighted to know that progress on erecting that steel web is well underway and most of the external walls are now picked out by the utilitarian metal work that will soon metamorphosis into a place of contemporary worship. I have been asked by a couple of parishioners (no really, I’m not just saying that as a transition to a new subject, I really have been asked) about the concrete block wall that now cocoons the end of Tucker Hall, around past the old main entrance, across what used to be Father Bob’s office windows to end by wrapping around the front of the building. What is it for, perhaps some modernistic architectural feature? No not an architectural feature, what you see is a firewall made necessary by the City’s fire code the basically states a requirement to segment the overall building into “fire zones" designed to contain a fire so it does not spread to one of the other zones. We now have three of these fire zones; the existing building, the new rear wing and the new narthex/great hall. To meet this requirement a firewall has already been built between the new rear wing and the old library, it stretches from concrete floor right up to the peak of the pitched roof, and what you see in the front of the building is the exposed firewall between the narthex and the existing structure. Both firewalls are rated as 2H meaning in the event a fire shall be contained by these self-standing walls for 2 hours, so plenty of time to evacuate the building! In the final constriction both firewalls will be concealed by the internal finish and we will forget we ever saw them. Well off to the hills for the weekend, so stay safe and stay healthy, David Beach. “Cracking:” Colloquial English for something being “very good” and can be used in several ways e.g. “It looks cracking” i.e. “looks or looking good,” “it’s a cracking game” i.e. “it’s a very good game” (a term seldom used in the same sentence as Plymouth Argyle Football Club). Not to be confused with “let us get cracking” which means “let’s make a start” or with “crack or craic” which means having a chat in the pub, usually in Ireland and usually with a wee (small) glass of whiskey or two! |
AuthorDavid Beach is our Building Project Manager, and has been an active part of our parish family for more than a decade. He is retired from NATO and the British Army and is a joy and blessing to all of us. Archives
July 2021
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