My buddy and I bought this small, gutted out country church frame at an auction last month with the crazy idea of turning the sanctuary into a workspace. The place has been empty since the late nineties, so we knew there would be some structural issues, but the roof leak was way worse than the listing let on. The entire plaster ceiling above the old altar section was sagging down like a giant wet paper bag.
We went in there with hard hats and long demo poles to drop the damaged panels before the whole roof deck caved in on its own. The second my pole punctured the center seam, about forty years of loose cellulose insulation, dead bats, and wet plaster chunks dropped straight down in a massive avalanche. I couldn’t see a single thing through my safety glasses because the air turned into a solid gray fog of dust instantly. We had to literally sprint out the double doors just to breathe.
The real structural nightmare came when we inspected the exposed rafters underneath. The main load bearing oak beam had a massive split running right down the middle from where the rainwater had been pooling under the shingles. You can’t just slap a basic 2 by 4 against an old church truss and call it good. We had to rent two heavy duty twenty-ton hydraulic bottle jacks, hoist the entire center roofline up three inches in the dark, and bolt a massive steel flitch plate straight through the heart of the timber.
The roofline is finally holding flat on its own now and the jacks are back at the rental yard. There is still a massive gap where the plaster used to be, which lets you see all the way up to the bare tongue and groove pine roof slats. It makes the acoustics in the room sound completely echoey and weird when you talk, but the stained glass windows along the side walls are still totally intact.