Today was the big day: day one of arch takedown. We got to the site around 7:30am, to prepare for our first meeting with our crane operator, Walter. We now have a crane on site, as well as a boom truck, and two man lifts. Our jig arrived yesterday and Johnny Parker and Erin spent yesterday afternoon welding it together. This morning we finished putting the jig together, and setting up the crane. While that was being done, another group started taking down the second bay of the roof. While we had a little trouble fitting the jig to the first arch, once the jig was strapped in place, the first arch came down with absolutely no trouble.

Our original hope was that it would take ten days to remove the arches, however after our first day of work (in which we removed two of the six arches), we realized that we would actually be able to get ahead of schedule.

Unfortunately, it is supposed to rain tomorrow. Fuller is getting up at 4:30am to determine whether or not we will be able to work on site at all tomorrow. If it rains, tomorrow will be devoted to paperwork, power points, and various office tasks. In that case, arches three and four will be taken down Friday and the final two arches will be down by Monday. Our hope is that the church will be completely down before we leave on our Architectural History fieldtrip to New Orleans Wednesday morning.