Thursday, October 25, 2012

There is a ton of activity going on right now in the new building. Some pictures were uploaded earlier this week, but the pictures shown in today's blog were taken earlier today, and there are a lot of things in and on the building that were not there three days ago!

 

A huge amount of work right now is electrical. Electrical boxes for light switches and wall receptacles have been "roughed in" everywhere.

The primary incoming electrical service panels are being installed. Just a little bigger than your circuit breaker panel at home!

 

Not very exciting, but details are filling in around the building such as piping and wall bracng in the bathrooms to support things like paper towel dispensers and support bars for people with disabilities.

The heating and air conditioning contractor is installing piping and valves to the two large air handlers under the worship space. This piping system will hook up outside to the chiller unit yet to be installed on the Mammoth Oaks side of the building.

 

Earlier this week, there was a picture of window frames being installed. Now glass is being installed. In this picture, you can see the glass with stickers on it and the blue tint in the upper half of this window frame. The two large spaces in the lower half have not gotten glass yet.

And in the lower level, some windows complete with glass have been installed.

And the two windows in the picture above are shown in the lower left side of this picture. This same picture appeared in the blog earlier this week, and you can compare the two to see the changes in three days time.

 

The roof over the main lobby is being laid. This is a flat roof behind the facade on the front of the building. In this picture, you can see some bare concrete in the lower right corner, and to the left of that is two layers of insulation (the gray colored material with white spots).

And on top of the layers of insulation is a white rubber composition membrane. The seams of this membrane are sealed with a special type of tape and adhesive.

 

In the worship space, the underside of the roof is being sprayed with a coating that seals and provides fire retardation. This picture shows untreated aluminum roof panels next to panels that have been sprayed with the black coating. This work is being done in the evening and night time because it is a somewhat messy and smelly process!

And speaking of the worship space, it would be a little tough to conduct a service right now! This picture was taken from the middle of the chancel, and as you can see, with the scaffolds and building materials, space is tight right now!

 

The brick and stone facade is starting to turn the corner from the sanctuary side of the church to the Providence Road side. And enough is complete to really give some perspective on how the exterior of the entire building will look.

This is the side facing the current sanctuary. With the steeple now in place and with so much exterior surface covered with the final materials and window frames in place, can you not help but get a little excited???

And one final note. Evidently construction in the Charlotte area has picked up to the point that good workers are becoming more difficult to acquire. But we have to worry if our contractor can't do any better with finding qualified workers than this........

 

See you next week! And it can't get much better than this........

 

 

 



Monday, October 22

Since we took a bypass on last week's blog due to vacation (hope you looked anyway and enjoyed a peak at two worship spaces in Colonial Williamsburg!), here's a quick update. We will do the regular upload sometime this Thursday.


But here's a look at some major items:














Windows......

Window frames are being installed in the upper openings of the worship center space.

And if you don't think you see glass, you are not going crazy (well, at least most of you aren't!). The glass will be installed later when the chance for breakage is less.












Roof....

The roof now has shingles that match the shingles that were installed earlier this year on the outer edges of the Children's Building roof.


Addition of the roof tiles also greatly reduces the amount of water seeping inside the building during a rainstorm! This has been a big nuisance!

Workers are working on the Ministry Center roof to tie it in with the new Worship  Center roof.














Walls (Inside and Out)

There is not much so far, but there are some interior walls that have been covered with sheetrock.

And a very few interior sheetrock walls have been painted prior to the installation of electrical panels and control boxes (easier to paint first rather than having to paint around something!).



 And outside, work is nearly complete on the upper sections of wall that are receiving a colored coating.

 Foundation walls facing the parking lot are getting their facing of stone or brick (see below).








And up on the "dance floor" high above the worship seating space...



 

And remember: the wooden floor this man is standing on is level with the seats in the balcony. He is halfway between the concrete floor on the main seating floor and the bottom of the roof trusses shown in the top of this picture!

 

 

And last but not least! I don't know his name, but he gave me great smile and a great pose when he saw that I was taking pictures. So I told him that I was going to put him on the Internet!!!

 

Thursday, October 18 - A Detour This Week!

I am on vacation this week in one of the favorite spots for my wife and me, Williamsburg, Virginia. So I don't have pictures of the new building at Christ Lutheran this week. But instead you are getting a look at two worship venues in Williamsburg, each of which is very different from the other.

The population in Williamsburg in the late 1700's included a large number of Scotch-Irish people who carried their Presbyterian roots with them. But this was prior to the independence from Great Britain, so the offical religion in Williamsburg was the Anglican Church of England. The Presbyterians in 1765 had to petition the local government to open a meeting house for worship. What was built was a very simple, spartan building.

At the other end of the spectrum is Bruton Parish Church. This church was formed in the late 1600's, and the current building has been in continous use since 1715. After independence, the congregation affiliated with the Episcopal church. The cruciform sanctuary was designed by the royal govenor of Virginia in 1711.

 

 

 Two very different styles of church, both very historic.

 

Check back early next week. Our intent is to get some current pictures of our "historic" structure on line ASAP next week!

 

David Bigham

Friday, October 12, 2012

It was just a building.....

Now it's a church!