On the theme of Sketchup once again, I include the picture of the design (in Sketchup done in February of 2008) and a photo of the finished Church Ruins which we completed the first phase of that same year at the end of May 2008. We were pleased to see how close the dry stone folly looked to the drawing. The idea for the church with gothic windows and door was presented to me by Rick and Dale Doner. It was to be the backdrop for their son's wedding. The Doners sent me lots of pictures of walls and churches in Ireland that they had visited and liked and Rick did a rough drawing of what he envisioned.
I was new to Sketchup and played around trying to visualize it in three D and then 'locate' it (actually 'stick' it on a satellite image of the property) on Google maps. It was very gratifying not only to get the church ruins drawing as exact and pleasing looking using the Sketchup program, but also to get the structure built to match that drawing so accurately. I had to climb up a high extension ladder (in real life) on the day we finished the first phase of the ruins, in order to get the same birds-eye shot for the comparison photo, an angle which is far less difficult to achieve with a mouse, using the 'orbit tool' in Sketchup.
Thanks to the vision of the Doners and the tremendous work Joe and Evan put into it, with some great help from other wallers like Dean,Reid,Mike and Phil, the 'church ruins' dry stone project ended up looking really stunning.
The wedding, which was held later that summer apparently was a great success too. Rick and Dale sent me several pictures of the event, and while this one shot seems a little over the top, it does give an indication of how the new/old dry stone ruins fit in and how monumental a part it played in the whole marriage ceremony.
