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.