Scraping, Priming & Painting

While the contractor was working on the inside of the chapel I was climbing up and down ladders on the outside of the chapel.  All of the wood trim on the building is weathered and in need of a face lift.  I started on the back of he chapel because it was the easiest to get to.  That said, the roof pitch was pretty steep, coupled with a lot of loose paint flakes, dirt, and old bird nests, it was down right scary up there.  I finally nailed 2x4's on the roof to give me better footing.  I also rigged up some scaffolding to get to some of the higher areas on the west side.  I will not be that lucky on the front, I will have to rent a forty foot ladder to reach all of that.

Anyway, first I scraped off all the old loose paint, either nailed down the loose wood trim or replace some that had fallen off and patched up several bird holes, where starlings had gotten into the rafters to make nests.  Then I used caulk for the smaller gaps between trim layers and spray in foam for the bigger ones.  Next I painted the bare spots with primer.

There are six of these little roof returns or "bird beaks" on the chapel and  vestry.  They all needed to be re-roofed as part of the process.

Finally, I was able to add the final coat of brown paint to make it look complete again.  Sort of like cleansing it from leaperacy and making it whole again.

New Trim to Look Old

With the posts all covered, we added a little trim to tie the new in with the old.

Ceiling Supports and Crown Molding

After the cement footings were poured, the actual support beams and the only real header, were put into place.  The support beams ended up being a little farther out from the window than planned because of the old log cross joists under the floor.  The large "L" brackets show where the supports are bolted to the main joists.

Because the support beams were not equally spaced on each side of the entry doors, with the suggestion of Macae's mom, two other fake beams and a fake header were put in place to balance things out and made for a grand entry look.  

You can also see that there is a heavy duty crown molding being added.  It is a 2 x 12 that is to make the walls fall straight down in an earth quake instead of falling over on people that may be in the room.

To help balance out the room left to right fake support beams and headers were added to the windows on the west side of the chapel as well.

Then all of the wood was covered with dry wall board which also helped to soften the overall look of the room.

Holes in the Floor for Support

For seismic integrity we needed to add support columns to keep the main joists from falling in case of an earthquake.  The joists in question are about 16 to 18 inches square and span the width of the chapel.   The pillars also needed to have their own cement footings separate from the old stone foundation.  So in turn holes were cut in to the floor of the chapel to pour the footings.

One interesting thing that was discovered when the holes were cut in the floor was that there are three pine logs that are partially set in the foundation that also span the width of the chapel, as the first layer of support for the floor.  The top and bottom were rough cut to give a flat surface for the floor joists but the bark was left on the other sides.  The logs each had two stone supports to keep them level.

Here you can see the old stone foundation.

The Scaffolding Came Down

The scaffolding finally came down.  The wood trim and key stoning on the corners was all painted.  The building walls looked like new.  Actually the texture of the walls looked almost too good .  It is a lot smoother than they were before.  Except now it makes the other walls, that did not need repairs, look bad.

Stucco Color & Wood Trim

First the workman masked off all the parts of the chapel that would not receive the final layer of color stucco.  They matched the color of the final stucco layer to that of the existing wall color.

They then took a mesh fabric and as it was unrolled over the wall they came over with another layer of stucco.  I had to work an afternoon shift but when I got home that evening they had already the final color coat.

Awhile later wood guys came and put up the rest of the wood fascia and trim. 

New Stucco

After the brick was done the base wood trim was put in place and then they added the stucco layers.  The problem was getting the workers to give the stucco a rough look to like that of the original pioneer texture.

Stucco

Not only did the cinder block replace the old damaged adobe, when it reached the roof line it the contractor tied or connected the roof to the new outside layer of brick so that the whole building is tied together.

On the front or north side of the building where they did not need to go all the way up with new cinder block there places where you could see how the old and new bricks all came together, where the old stucco had cut away.

I was surprised how thick the stucco layer was over the top of the brick.

You can see where a lot of the wood had been removed from under the roof, all the trim was also removed. It ended up being stored in the chapel until we had Living Home Construction & Design, come out to sort through everything.  Some of the trim was damaged when removed and some was too weather worn to reuse.  The good stuff was cleaned up and had a primer coat put on it until time for it to put back on along with the new milled pieces.

The wood trim will have to wait until the new stucco has been completed though.  The first layer of which went on last week.

On With the New

After the damaged layers of brick were removed the entire west wall had scaffolding put up around it  and then the whole thing was tented to keep out the elements and control the temperature.

To both provide a base for the new cinder block and to firm up the old stone foundation a wet slurry was poured and re-bar mounted into the foundation to reinforce the wall.  Then the new brick started  to be layered up along side the old adobe.

Every four feet there was a back fill of mortar and all the cells of the cinder block were also filled with with mortar.  So the wall went up pretty fast, four feet of brick, back fill and then repeat.  The tough part was when they got to the top and there was only enough room to squeeze in at an angle with hose from the pumper truck to get the mortar in for the back fill.

Off With the Old

The building was used as an LDS chapel until the mid 70's.  (It still has the same orange-gold carpet to prove it.)  During that time every president of the church from Brigham Young to David O. McKay spoke in the chapel.

At one time it was used as a mortuary.  Only for funerals and viewings, they did not do any embalming or body preparation there.  After that two other families owned the building and used it as a residence but no one ever did anything much with chapel.  Although all the stained glass is gone and all but one of the benches in the chapel are gone, the chapel organ is still there though.  There was a class room wing added to the chapel in either the 40's or 50's.  The Sunday school room on the east end of the wing has been turned into a two bed room apartment along with one of the class rooms.  So there has been a lot of projects started and stopped, the plumbing and electrical in the basement show the proof of that.  Yes it has a basement that goes under about 2/3 of the class room wing.  Aside from having relics left from its old coal fired boiler for heating days days like a coal room and the old plate steel and cast iron doors for the furnace, it has 10 foot ceilings.

The first project that need to be handled was and is repairing the damage to the exterior adobe brick walls of he chapel.

We checked with Utah Historical Society to find out what would be an acceptable to repair the walls and still retain its historical status.  We found that since it has a stucco finish, the damaged adobe could be replaced with cinder block and then stuccoed over as long as we retain the original look of the building.

The next problem was finding a contractor that would be willing to take on the project.  I took pictures and emailed a dozen contractors that did stuff sort of like this or said their web sites.  None of them replied back.  Finally, again the Historical Society, I got a hold of Abstract Masonry, who specialize in historic masonry restoration.  They along with Ensign Engineering started to do some exploratory work to see what they were up against.  After ward we were able to breath a little easier when they came back with their findings.  The walls are 32" thick adobe and the adobe brick is unusually hard.  The foundation is about 42" thick and 48" high with about 36" under ground and was made of hard stone that was not prone to easy deterioration.  Also the wall had already been repaired, twice we later found out, with cinder block.

Unfortunately, all the aspens along the west wall had to come down for the construction, they were also suspected in the cause of the one of the problems, too much watering and adobe/mud brick do not mix.  The engineer also wanted supports in side the chapel to hold the roof up just in case.

Then the damaged adobe and the old cinder block came down.