The Chapel
A replica of a 14th century Irish chapel-St. MacDara's island
Mid-winter of 2018/2019 a client contacted me in Satsop Washington to ask if i did mortared work, particularly could I build him a chapel. I thought about it for a minute and realized I had a rare opportunity to realize a structure for someone that was bigger than us. Its function was a shelter for spiritual connection. I emphatically said 'YES'! He described the project, and the site on his family property they homesteaded. We setup a meeting a month later.
Arriving at the site I was awed at the old growth cedar and spruce that were growing in the driveway.
Robert and I immediately hit it off as we discussed the project and scope.
The chapel Robert wanted was to be intimate. No bigger than 19' long x 11' wide on the inside, and a single room. He wanted something that invoked humility, not ornate, felt authentic, and could be used for a wide range of events and services. He showed me a picture of St. MacDara's chapel... a pre Roman 14th century chapel that was built entirely with stone.
I fell in love with it instantly...
and then I saw the corners.
What the heck are those I asked Robert.
They are called 'antae'....they come forward about 12" on the North and South side of the chapel.
Those were going to be a fun complicated corner to build.
Then I saw the roof!
I realized we didn't have the budget to build the roof so we had to redesign that detail
with timber framing later.
It would be a dark little structure that would be cool year round.
One of my big concerns was the 70-80" of rain they get there when we walked up to the site. We would really need a solid concrete foundation. The site needed to be cleared for a staging area, mortar mixing area, chapel site, road in and out(existing road widened), and parking for machinery and trucks. There was a lot of planning and work to be done.
I had to assemble a team of skilled masons with me that wouldn't need babysitting, or a ton of direction, and would be just as ambitious as I was to realize such a unique structure.
It was about 6 months later when we finally had everything and everyone in place to start our journey... including our concrete foundation which had cured for 30 plus days.
I ran tools down in my dump trailer for our start date that summer while we waited for our stone.
For our stone we decided to use granite. We got a great deal on a giant pile of reclaimed granite cobbles from a client of Borrowed Ground. They would be great for finer detail stone coursing inside with medium stones. We chose granite from Idaho for the rest of the structure and had the quarry split the stone into medium and large blocks. The corners needed every bit of strength we could muster.
Finally our stone arrived! We spent the first day unpalletizing 30 tons of stone so we could sort and stage for where we needed it. Another 30 tons was on its way and would arrive in 2 weeks.
I brought in 5 guys to help me, plus a friend of Roberts who would mix mortar for us for the next 4 weeks. The mortar mixing and managing the mixer was a full time job for him.
This is the North end of the chapel and the entry.
On the second day we began building our bater frames and setting up string lines for the inside and outside dimensions.
The walls are 3' thick at the base, and the interior measure 19' long by 11' wide.
2 days later we had mortared in our base course!
...progress came slowly..
Bringing the structure up slowly..
You can see most of the crew in this picture-
Joe D., Steve S., James R., and Mark M.
This is about the end of week 2 of the build.
Week 3 things were really starting to take shape and we could see the batter of the outside and inside walls clearly. The inside was plumb, and the outside bater was 1" in 6". And we are getting high enough to where we cant lift the big blocks by hand any higher without our plank scaffolding.
We are about 5-6' in height here and feeling pretty strong about our progress at the end of 3 weeks.
Well after 3 weeks my first team of guys had to return home back East and i brought in two of my guys for week 4.
-Week 4-
Repeat of week 1/2/3... Gilland and Tate enter the chapel to build with me.
We finished off the week strongly by exceeding my initial projection of stone set by 10%.
We set about 40 tons of stone, and used 7 pallets of mortar.
Russ B.(me), Gilland D., Tate R. 2019
This last video sums up the project build for phase 1!
Anxiously awaiting phase 2 & 3...
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