Project: reconstruct the foyer

One of the projects we started on Monday was to modify the entrance to the Ristee church. This consists of removing the existing front entrance to the church (more on that later) and modifying the existing foyer to create a more spacious interior that reflects the design of the main part of the sanctuary. The main part of the sanctuary has an exposed ceiling that makes the most of the available space (and for me is reminiscent of downtown Atlanta lofts and North Point Community Church).

Before we started modifying the foyer, it was a simple, traditional (and clean) room, but with a fairly low ceiling that made the room seem smaller than it actually is. Looking at the room from one end you can see to bathrooms (labeled WC) at the far end. The front entrance is to the left and the entrance to the sanctuary is through the double doors on the right. There are a large number of coat hooks arranged around the room's walls.

On the first day we completed all of the deconstruction. We removed the sheet rock from the ceiling as well as multiple generations of construction (some Soviet and some Estonian) and wiring. The walls are either Soviet-era cement stucco on a hard white brick or modern metal 2X4 and sheet rock. In the picture below, you can see the room partially deconstructed. All of the sheet rock in the ceiling  has been removed as well as about 90% of the wiring (most of which was no longer used.) The next to go were the wooden support beams anchored to the wall with a variety of methods. At one extreme the beams were anchored to a wooden strip resting on a thin aluminum (aluminium?) L-bracket cut down from a U-channel bracket that was nailed into the concrete wall. The bracket itself came apart as we were trying to remove the nails. At the other extreme, thick steel straps were used to anchor the beams.

In this next picture you see Tomor(sp?) in the room with the partially deconstructed ceiling. Tomor is a member of the Ristee church and an electrician. He worked alongside us and rewired the room while we tore it apart. Tomor speaks very good English and so it was very enjoyable to talk to him all day while we worked.

Here you see Chris (our fearless leader) cutting through some impressively thick steel straps used to support the center part of the ceiling with a grinding wheel. These straps took a few minutes to cut through each and there were about a dozen of them. 

Here you see Neal helping Chris begin to put up new sheet rock on the newly exposed walls above the level of the former ceiling. We were not able to complete the project on Monday as the church hosted visitors in the sanctuary on Tuesday and so we would not be able to hang the rest of the sheet rock without disturbing their activities.

By the end of the day Monday, we had completed all of the deconstruction in the room and were starting on the construction. We were also coated in dust. Even our respirator masks were not completely effective against it. All in all, we were pleased with our progress.

The work remaining is to add sheet rock all the way around the room above the old ceiling line, add a cable tray at the ceiling line down one way to hide all of the exposed cables, mud it and paint it. There are still some challenges. At one end of the room, there are large holes in the upper corners of the brick wall that need to be covered over and we haven't identified how we will successfully anchor the rock to hold it in place. There is also a challenge of how we will make an aesthetically pleasing transition from the sheet rock above the ceiling line to the stucco on brick below it (the sheet rock is much thicker than the stucco).