St. Mark's Lutheran Church

Middle LaHave, Nova Scotia, Canada
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Found in the Attic
 
Have you seen the picture of the original oil lamp chandelier on the Historical Pictures page? How did they manage to light all those oil lamps for a service? The answer has been found in the attic and here is the explanation from Jim Lindner.
 
This picture explains how the oil lamps in the Chandelier used to get filled - it is actually very cleverly rigged with a counterweight system between the ceiling and the roof. The Chandelier hangs from a cable and on the other end are a group of barrels which acts as a counterweight. When the Chandelier is pulled down the barrels go up, and when the chandelier is put back into place the barrels come down to their resting position shown here. We believe that they are old lamp oil barrels but have not investigated that closely at this point.

We have no intention of testing this system to see if it still works - the result might be disastrous, so we will re-rig it in the not too distant future and probably in a fixed fashion.
 
(February 22, 2010) 
 

 Renovations (Installment #5) 

 

From: Jim Lindner
Date: March 17, 2010

 

 
The rumor is that spring is coming but a great deal of work has occured during the winter. We left off right before Christmas - the church was decorated for Christmas with a tree decorated up in the bell tower - look carefully and you can see the lights.
 
You can also see the new wheel and the rigging - the bell did ring Christmas eve.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The view from below shows the tree but also some of the shingles before repair/replacement with clapboard.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
We used work lights inside the building to light up the windows for Christmas eve and you can also see some lights over the doorway.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Soon after the demolition work on the inside of the Sunday School side of the building started. This side of the building will receive the greatest repurposing including the addition of three bathrooms and a kitchen. There was a small kitchen previously but the bathrooms were out back - they will now be inside! A muli-purpose steel mezzanine will be installed in the front part of the Sunday School - this side of the building will also be insulated. All told this work required all of the plaster to be removed and the framing to be enhanced and steel beams to be added in several locations. 

As you can see from this picture on the addition or back side of the Sunday School where the former kitchen was, we really did not have much choice in terms of repair or replacing this sheetrock. The plaster on wood lath in general lasted much better than the sheetrock even though plaster was probably more than 50 years older.
 
(Left) You are looking at a wall that separated the former kitchen area from the front, and we decided that this must go to create an open space. The wall, however, did partially support the roof, so the wall came out and some steel went in. 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Here is a view of the front wall partially demolished - you can see the wood of the plaster lath, and notice that the windows have plywood over them. Many of the smaller stained glass windows have already been removed and are being worked on in Halifax - pictures of those are below. Here you can also see the plaster on the ceiling, and this had to go also.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

We saved the ventilation grate from the drop ceiling. The new ceiling will be the roof walls, there will be no drop ceiling. I am hoping we can find a use for the grate later - we'll see.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Here you can see "behind" the wall of the nave that separates the Sunday school and the Nave. You can clearly see the framing, and look at the beams - particular the one at the top of the picture!
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

A great deal of new work has been done here, insulation has been installed and a vapor barrier and chip board will provide ventilation and keep it dry. Additional framing is evident to supplement what was there, and you can see the new lath that the new sheetrock will eventually be attached to.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Looking again at the common wall between the Sunday School and the Nave you can now see the augmented roof with insulation and reinforced beams. If you look at the top, that little triangle area is a passageway to the ceiling above the wooden drop ceiling in the Nave. Where we are looking now will eventually have a metal mezzanine and we probably will have some sort of way to get to that ceiling from the mezzanine. Getting there now is less then ideal.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
A new wall is going in that separates the new bathrooms and the new kitchen - you are looking at the back wall of the Sunday School area. Notice all of the new framing in the ceiling. You can see the partition layout of the bathrooms on the floor. This was later modified a bit with the walls moving about 2 feet - a small change at this point in the construction but a huge change if we had done it later.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Back outside you can see that the shingles on the tower are now all gone and almost entirely replaced by clapboard. Notice the trim on the arch.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
You may remember how the original tower looked. We do not know when the louvers were removed but the general consensus is that it likely rotted fairly quickly. We are going to replace the louvers and restore the elegant look that they brought to the entire building. This requires some fancy carpentry, and although you can not really tell from the picture they are very large. A template was designed to match the original design and dimensions. Here it is.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
It is hard to see, but you are looking from the top or from the steeple view. You can see the little triangle which is where the louvers meet. To give you a sense of how really big this is - 
and there are 4 of them, one on each side of the tower. Careful checking has occurred to make sure that the louvered doors fit exactly in the hole in the tower.
 
 
 
 
Here is another element of the building that is being recreated.... the Newell post for the staircase. 
 
Sometimes you get lucky! Here is a close up from the picture of the women on the front stairs, and fortunately someone put their coat right behind the Newell post so that we can make out the silhouette. We had to try several times before we had the design perfect. Here is an early version.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 


I thought it could be better, and several versions later it was! These are huge posts, and are all made by hand on a lathe.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Here you can see the cutting occurring with the post spinning quite quickly. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
The final post - you can see the size! Now we just need a few more - exactly the same please......

 


 
 
 
 
 
 
  
 
 
 
Remember the windows that were removed and taken to Halifax? Here they are in the studio being restored.

 

A great deal of work has gone on in the Winter months on the windows. In addition to studying and documenting the windows, repairs have been made so that they hopefully will be strong for another 100 years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


 
Leading has been repaired where necessary, and in general the old adhesive and putty has been replaced.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

In some cases new supporting bars have been installed to support the weight of the glass so that it does not bulge - which was an issue that the windows had.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Difficult decisions are part of this entire project. Here is one of them.
 
Do we try to replace the broken pane of glass? In this case doing so would mean disassembling the entire section of the window. The original glass was "flash glass" which means that the coloration was only on the surface, and matching it exactly would be very difficult - there is also the issue of not trying to make the window look "new". So the decision was made to stabilize the window, and to leave it as you see it. 
 
 
There was some initial patch work done on the roof that had to be done just so that work inside could proceed and no more damage would occur. Since the beginning of the project, the new roof was frequently discussed and many options and issues were explored. These included the current condition of the roof and the location of the building which is very hard on the materials. Ultimately we decided on metal roofing and found a local manufacturer in Dartmouth. The color of the roof was discussed a great deal. Here you see the final 2 contestants lined up - 
 
 
 
 
We decided on the silver Galvalume for almost the entire roof, with some black accents particularly on the steeple to copy some of the original design elements that were on the steeple but lost over the years. 
 
The flat area will be black as in the original picture - and the steeple will be silver as will the rest of the roof. It is a bit hard to imagine this large an area - we are keeping our fingers crossed. This is a very large roof and the look is important. We are keeping fingers crossed.

When we bought the building the oil furnace had been moved to the church in Rose Bay (as discussed elsewhere on the web site), so that gave us an opportunity to switch to propane, which allows us to have 2 furnaces. One will supply the heat to the former Sunday School side of the building which is insulated and can be maintained at a reasonable temperature with reasonable fuel consumption. The other is for the Nave, and the first will also have a damper so that we can pump a great deal of heat into the Nave if we need to. The new furnaces have a much higher fuel efficiency then the old one and we will replace all of the duct work as well to hopefully gain some efficiency that way. Only a small amount of insulation was added to the Nave due to concerns about moisture being trapped. 
 
 
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