Happy President’s Day folks! While most people enjoyed the day off, we were toiling away out in the country! Out at the site, lots of big things were happening. Our first accomplishment of the day was removing the dove tail beams. After this, the arch was free and able to be taken down, so we took it DOWN, BABY! Mid-takedown our ever faithful cherry picker ran out of gas leaving Walker and John stranded. John, with his monkey arms, scrambled down just fine, but Walker had a few issues. Once everyone was safely on the ground, we decided to break for a healthy lunch at the B.P. gas station… I don’t want to know how many sticks of butter are in that potato casserole. Meanwhile, the “wonder twins” and Goldparts (Golpar) were measuring the arches to prepare for building the mock-up jig. After measuring, they met with our auto-cad technician Adam to draw the arches into auto-cad and verified the measurements. Bill, Candace, Chris, and Erin spent the day in the woodshop ripping 4×4’s into 2×2’s for the mock jig. Jamie and Sarah continued to clean and repair windows, and the office continued to contact the various individuals who help make all of this possible! After the site feast at the B.P., we completed the half arch removal and took down the south wall of the chancel area! Then, ya boy dominated in a game of brick horse shoes…booyah. All in all, it was once again a pretty spectacular day.

On Friday some of us were back in Auburn to attend the internship fair. When I first walked in the conference room I was amazed on how many firms showed up of this event. There were quite a few people there that were waiting for interviews or just wanted to talk to the rep of the firm to see what there company had to offer. After the internship fair some people made there way to Dudley to visit some friends that are up there. That night back in Newbern Sarah attended a lecture given by Mr. Newman. Sarah thank you for representing our second year class at the lecture. Most of us arrived back in Newbern on Sunday sometime because we had our materials class that night. So lots of people were still working on there drawings and studying for the quiz that were due that night. Everyone showed up for the class but one person. But we had our quiz and we talked about foundation and why they are important. We also talked about the different types of piling that are used on construction sites and when they are to be used.

Thursday we were all off to a sleepy start. Our watercolor drawings were due at eight a.m. that morning, and some of us had been up all night working on them. We each have chosen a tenant house (small house built to accommodate workers back in the days of the plantations), which we have lightly drafted onto Arches paper and will soon begin to watercolor. After Natalie reviewed our drawings, we headed back to the house and pods to nap, eat, and pack. We were given Friday off to go back to Auburn for an internship fair. When Dick arrived Thursday afternoon, we caravanned out to Tuscaloosa for our architecture history class. First we visited the Gorgas House on the Alabama University campus. Built in 1829, this was the first building constructed on the campus. At first, it was the campus dining hall but, because of discipline problems, was converted to faculty residences. The Gorgas family moved into the home in 1879 and remained until 1953. The house is now used for tours and learning the history of the university. About an hour later, frozen after sketching the front elevation of the house, we traveled to the Jemison-Van de Graaff mansion, which was built around 1860. The Italianate style house, designed by John Stewart, was built for entertaining, but was also once used as a library. The house had many features that were modern for the time, including indoor plumbing and lighting and a conservatory. We ended our day in Tuscaloosa with a frantic fifteen minute drawing of the first floor plan before heading our various directions for the weekend.

February 14th began just as any other cold and damp morning in Newbern, Al, but as the day went on it progressively got better (as is to be expected with John and I at the jobsite). We had most of our office crew out at the site to detail the heavy timber frame and to finalize the foundation measurements. Christine even waddled out to the site, gimp knee and all to recount the scaffolding for a third time to make sure that we ordered the correct number for the Church’s new location in Cahawba. It turns out that Cameron CAN count and had the right number the first time. But it was nice to see her out there spending time with the rest of us. The Nicks climbed up on the shoring to measure the arches on the sanctuary so that we could design and build a jig to attach to all of the arches for when the crane comes to lift them out of place. One of the most difficult challenges about lifting out the arches is that the shoring gets in the way of building just a simple jig. We have to get our structural engineer, Joe Farruggia, to check our design so that it doesn’t fail when lifting the heavy arches. Our group of ‘LADIES!!’ (aka ‘Ground Crew’) tagged dovetails, removed the nails from their ‘customers’ (that would be their term for the boards that we remove from the church and take to them). Erin’s parents dropped by the site since they had left the great state of Texas (all Texans will inform you of how great their state is) to visit Birmingham. Surprisingly enough, Jim and Judy didn’t feel the need to discuss the greatness of Texas. I let Judy wear my construction helmet while she ventured around the site and Jim and I talked about construction, our summer plans, making a living in Canada, and how his ranch creations are similar to the hay bale art that we saw last week on Dick’s field trip to St. John’s on the Prairie Episcopal Church. Great times were had by all… I always have a good time. At some point in there we all went to go eat a five star meal at Mutt’s Pizza, “It’s some more pizza!” Cameron hit a bird with her car and it was intentional. The bird did not survive. Johnny Parker came out to help us today and went up with John in the boom lift to remove the dovetails from the alter arches. With all of the crazy antics that went on today you would think that I didn’t do a thing. Not true. John and I went up in the boom lift to remove the ridge beam from the alter area. After we had removed all of the nails from one end of the ridge beam everyone wanted to break for lunch. Reluctantly we complied, but as the lift ran out of gas and shut down right as we got to the ground we realized that this was a blessing. This is where I should have mentioned that we ate lunch at Mutt’s. During lunch the sky cleared and the sun offered some relief from the cold air. Soon after returning from lunch John and I got back into the lift and removed all of the nails from the other end of the beam and delivered another ‘customer’ to the ‘LADIES!!’ After that the next step was for Johnny to rig up a method to attach half of an alter arch to the lift bucket without anyone inside. The half arch is much larger than any of the beams that we had attempted to move up to that point so we wanted to keep things safe. I would just like to say that it was a success. Fuller and Jamie worked in the office today. They say they ordered equipment… I don’t really know. They talked on the phone a lot. Fuller claims that she is keeping the whole operation going. No one believes her. I guess we’ll see next week if the crane comes.

Finally, what would Valentine’s day be without a Rural Studio secret Valentine’s gag gift swap? As for what the gifts were, well sometimes you just have to say, “What happens at Rural Studio, stays at Rural Studio.”

It has taken about three weeks, but this is pretty much what has been going on since we started working on the site. We get out to the site for the first time, and well.. if you have seen a heavy timber frame church that was built in the 1850s and has been relocated to a place where several walls that have fallen off the foundation, if there even is a foundation, you might know how we felt. We began by mastering the art of building scaffolding to remove a wing off the south side. That was our first successful task. All of the windows and rotted frames (some were 30 feet high) had to be removed, put in cases we built, and transported 30 minutes away to the wood shop in Newbern. That was probably the most disgusting thing we have done… between the walls and above the windows, smelled awful… no body out there had seen so much rat poop in our lives. We got ahead of schedule after the first weeks and began planning for the alter wing take down. The office had to do a lot of documentation of the structural members which slowed us down a little. The past couple of days we have completed transporting window cases, removed all the roof siding on the alter wing, and finished exposing the smaller arches (which are still huge) for take down. Over all our events out on site have gone pretty good. Things are rotten, things are falling, rats are losing homes, Golpar is collecting lady bugs for paint, Van is still selling “how to” VHS videos, Nick and Nick are trying to graduate middle school, Erin is still working on her last bite, and you know LaGrange is still keeping it real.