RAZING THE ROOF
In June things got very busy around the church.
The crew from Gates Timber Frames shored up the brick walls. Even
though Scott, the owner of Gates Timber Frames, believed the walls were  strong
enough to stand on their own, no one wanted to take any chances that
the walls might be damaged during the re-roofing. So they took
the extra step of shoring up the walls before removing the roof.
The lumber will also serve as studs for the new walls inside the sanctuary.
On June 7 my family went on a trip to Pittsburgh
for a week where I attended a pastor's seminar. When we came
back, we turned the corner onto Main street, and there was NO roof
on the church. While we were gone W.S. Miller had removed all
the roofing materials, leaving just the timber frame in place.
It was a shock! Thanks to Ron Knouse for documenting with photos
the removal of the roof while we were gone.
 The
timbers revealed an interesting history of the construction of the
church. There were two roof lines. A lower, interior roof
line was formed by 4 very heavy trusses. According to Scott
the grooves on the trusses were only a foot apart suggesting that
these trusses had once supported a slate roof. However, the
pitch was not steep enough and the weight of the roof had bowed the
trusses. So the old roof was removed and the trusses were used
to support a second, higher slate roof. The timbers for this
second roof were made from tree trunks that were split in half and
put in place without any further carpentry work. It took Gates
Timber Frame about a week to remove the old roof timbers.
Pictures
of the crews removing the old roof
Pictures
of removing an old truss
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They
were also concerned about taking out the timbers from the old roof.
All the timbers were interconnected and they didn't want to cut out
one timber and have other timbers cave in. W.S. Miller hired
Gates Timber Frames to remove the timbers. This company specializes
in building timber frame homes. This time they were tearing
the framing down.
trimmed
so that when the bonding strip was completed the walls would be level
between the 4 uneven corners of the building. They also installed
the steel I-beams on which the front trusses would sit.