Can You Name This Building? (We roofed it!) Hint: 3,200 People Go There Every Sunday

This historic building on Atlanta’s north side has welcomed hundreds of thousands of people for over five generations. Originally founded in 1910 as a Sunday school, it was chartered as a church in 1919 and has been in its present location since 1960. The facility has grown over time to include extensions, out buildings and a completely separate building across the street — Sentry installed many of these roofs.

In all, the 26-acre campus includes 444,000 square feet of facilities on both sides of Roswell Road. It also has one of the largest congregations (if not THE largest) for its denomination in the U.S. In addition to the church, the facility has classrooms, meeting rooms, basketball courts, a preschool, a chapel, a cafe — and its parishioners have built more than 150 homes with Habitat for Humanity. It even has a book written about it.

Did you guess the building? It’s…

Peachtree Presbyterian Church

If you’ve spent much time in the Buckhead area of Atlanta, you’re probably familiar with the famous structure at 3434 Roswell Road, even though chances are you’ve only seen it from street level until now! From this vantage point, you can see the enormity of the property — there’s far more to it than the portions easily visible from Roswell Road. In all, the facility has more than a dozen different roofs. They were installed and re-roofed at different times as the property was expanded, and Sentry roofed many of them beginning in 1998.

Extensions on the main building

Sentry installed new roofs and did quite a bit of re-roofing work between 1998 and 2000. During this time we installed new roofs on two extensions and a new chapel, re-roofed about of third of the existing roofs, and subcontracted to get rid of asbestos over the main corridor — a delicate (and important) job because of all the people who use the corridor each day.

One of the new extensions was for a large welcome center. We used asphalt shingles and adhered EPDM roofing, although on a small portion of the roof we used something different — modified bitumen with a surfacing of imported rock chosen by the architect. That portion of the roof can be seen through windows inside the building so the roof needed to be especially attractive. On the second extension, which houses the recreation center and two basketball courts, we used the same asphalt shingles and adhered EPDM roofing. No imported rock was needed for that one.

Insulation and ventilation for temperature control

The new chapel was different. The church was putting mechanical systems in the attic so instead of a standard roof system we installed a ventilated, insulated shingle roof system. Regulating temperature so that it’s consistent in an attic space isn’t easy and requires a specialized roof design. We installed thick plywood-clad foam boards with ventilation strips on top of a metal roof deck, and then installed the shingle roof over that — it did the trick.

Our many thanks to Hardin Construction for having brought us in for these projects.

Outgrowing the west side of Roswell Road: the East Campus

In 2007, Peachtree Presbyterian Church expanded across the street. This new building is used for a variety of things, including The Lodge Cafe, which is like a cozy coffee shop. Sentry installed a 20-year, modified bitumen system on this building, as well as a 40-year, decorative architectural Grand Manor shingles on the mansard roof, which is a steep-sloped roof that’s with an extreme angle. This project with New South Construction took about a year to complete, including construction, from start to finish.

Roofing projects that involve working alongside companies from many different trades for extended periods of time are one of Sentry’s specialties. And so is working on properties that continue to operate in full swing while the work is being done! Whether it’s a church, school, office building, apartment building, airport or any other property, we schedule our work at our client’s convenience and operate in ways that cause the least possible disturbances.

Here are some more details about this project.