11.30.2015

It was a divide and conquer morning - I headed off to the roofing company to pick up more roof membrane and to the post office to send back Jim's driver for repair. 

Jim headed out to the site to do roof details.  He finished up all the screws in the new sheathing we were working on, put the rest of the caps on the front roof section, and then actually did some delicate surgery on the underlayment over the valley rafter.  Because of the two different pitches, he just wasn't happy with the way the membrane fit.  So he carefully cut the membrane out of the middle, which took quite awhile.

After lunch, it was back to installing membrane and titanium underlayment.  Again for this section of roof, Jim wanted to use the membrane on both sides and the titanium over top.

To make the valley membrane lay flatter, Jim used smaller pieces and was much happier with the results.

Not too many pictures of the installation since I was inside cutting all the pieces for Jim.  Here he is rappelling back down the roof after the last piece is put up. 

It was back up to the top putting in all the cap staples on the titanium underlayment.

Last step was the drip edge along the outer edge so it's back up to the top carrying drip edge and stapler...

Last piece installed and this section of roof is now waterproof!

 

Jim must have rappelled up and down the roof 40 times today.  By the time the sun set, he was really fatigued and the cold weather didn't help.  He wanted to stay and make another rafter but I insisted that he come home and recover a bit.  Another good day of progress in the books!

 

High 36/Low 19

 

11.29.2015

This morning was all about getting ready for sheathing on the main rafters on the east side of the building. 

Jim went out after church and had to deal with freezing steel but he made and installed blocking on the rafters.  All the standing water on the deck from the rain the previous night froze and we had some pretty slick areas up on the deck.

He had a few more details to finish up - one was putting the really big bolts through the plates he made for the ends of the valley rafters.  This requires the impact driver and a lot of force to drive the screws through all the different layers.  In fact, Jim's newest driver (the one that was supposed to be more rugged) stopped working while he was working on these screws.  So that will go back for repair - good thing we have 3 in circulation now because he sure is burning through them!

Then he had to cut off the ends of the front sheathing on both the front and side walls.

Attaching the temporary blocking to hold the first piece of sheathing...

And the first piece is up and in place!

Fastening the sheathing down (no wonder Jim's body is tired when he gets home with all the crazy positions he has to be in during the day!).

Cutting the next piece...

...and putting it up into place.

We got a pretty good assembly line going - Jim would give me measurements and while he was finishing fastening down a piece of sheathing, I would mark the next piece and get it all ready for him to cut.



Making good progress!

 

Putting another piece up...

Putting the last piece of the night into position...

...and fastening it down in the waning light.

It's so amazing to see another big section of roofing done!

 

Jim stayed after dark and got another rafter made - so that's one installed and two made for the remaining valley rafter section.  It's nice that he can work a little on making the rafters so that when we're ready for that section, the rafters will be ready to go.

 

As soon as the sun starts to set, the temperatures drop pretty dramatically.  After working with the cold steel, Jim was really chilled and anxious to get home!

 

High 38/Low 15

 

 

 

 

 

11.28.2015

Jim got a late voice mail last night from the guy who wanted to buy the pool table.  When Jim called him back this morning, he told Jim that his sons would be there to help him unload but we needed to be there before 11:00!  The timing wasn't bad - it had rained lightly overnight and was still a little drizzly, plus the roofing company was still closed for the holiday so we couldn't pick up any more membrane.

Unfortunately, there was still quite a bit to do before we could deliver the pool table.  As luck would have it, we had just picked up 28 pieces of sheathing in the truck last night.  So the first thing Jim had to do was offload all of the sheathing into the yard.

Then we had to unload all of the tools in the truck into the shop and then get the pool table ready for its trip.  Jim had it strapped down well but we wanted to wrap it, put foam in between the slate pieces, and find and package all of the miscellaneous parts.  But we got on the road and actually got to the guy's house right at 11:00.  Everything went well, even though we held our breaths a couple times watching the sons carry the 200 pound pieces of slate down into an outside cellar door. 

Even though it had been a drizzly night and morning, we were very happy to see that our roof is making an impact on the amount of water on the deck.  You can see that there are standing puddles on the floor where there is no roof but it's totally dry underneath.  That continued downstairs - there were very few puddles in the shop.

Poor Jim has certainly moved these pieces of sheathing around a lot in a day - first, loading up at Lowe's, unloading this morning which required first putting them on the Bobcat and then on the ground, and then this afternoon it was loading back up on the Bobcat and moving them up on the deck.

We brought 16 pieces up and got them all tucked under the roof and covered just in case.

The sun never really materialized this afternoon as promised and the roof was still wet, so after loading all of the tools back onto the truck and bringing it back up the top driveway, it was time to think about scaffolding for the next phase.  The problem was to get another tower built up and level with the existing scaffolding without having to totally excavate the hill. 

Jim's solution was to first build a 3' section of scaffolding a section away.

It did require Jim to dig about 6" or 7" of dirt away underneath the top frame to try and get it level.

You can see the excavated dirt away was enough for us to be able to set the frame and get it level.  Then Jim was able to position it exactly so that it lined up with the other scaffolding.

Then came the fun part of moving platforms and dismantling the first tower pieces to use for the new section.  The very top frames he carried along the top of the scaffolding; the next level he was able to put the frame in the window and carry them around.

Everything lined up well and Jim was able to build the new section of tower so that he can reach the other side of the roof. 

Once it was built, Jim had to replace some of the cross braces that he and Kyle had to use on the far tower so that everything was secure.

It was great to get this scaffolding tower figured out and built.  However, it really wasn't the best day to do this.  Everything was wet which made all the steel extra slippery to work on plus your gloves got all wet, which with the cold temperatures made for some uncomfortable hands! 

Now that there is scaffolding on this side, Jim put it to work.  He had to cut a flange off the valley rafter on this side so that the end angle would fit. 

Installing the end angle...

 

We managed to get a lot accomplished today despite the delivery trip and weather.  We are thrilled to have sold the pool table at our asking price - no more worries about storing it and moving it on/off the truck.  Plus, it's huge that our scaffolding is all in place so that we can continue our roof work.

 

High 43/Low 19

 

 

 

 

11.27.2015

I missed my chance of getting an end-of-the-day picture last night because it got dark so quickly...so here it is!

Jim headed out this morning anxious to finish the sheathing and get some underlayment down on this portion of the roof.  However, it was a foggy morning because warm air was moving in, so everything was wet - especially the roof.  Which meant no working on it until it dried up.

He worked down in the shop and got more drip edge made and got things all set up and prepared to work on the roof.

I had to chuckle when I got to the land - Jim and I had just been saying that we hadn't seen our wild turkeys in quite awhile.  As I pulled into the driveway, the whole flock of turkeys was in the yard.  I guess they felt safe since Thanksgiving was over!

 

Once Jim started work up on top, the first thing he did was to make a couple of support cleats for these corners - just wanted a little extra support for the valley connection.  He fastened them temporarily from underneath and then went on top of the roof and fastened them down.  Then he was able to take the screws out from the bottom.

The next task was to use smaller screws and connect the bottom of the sheathing at an angle down through the valley rafter.  This was tough work to get the right angle and the right leverage.  You can see Jim has to have one foot on each side of the roof!

More details to finish up...putting in the rest of the fasteners on the rafters, which required Jim to perch on top of the sheathing!

Finally time for sheathing - but Jim had to drag these pieces over the top of the ridge to get them in place.

Again, this roof section is very steep - and Jim is up with no harness wrestling with this piece of sheathing.

But it's in place and ready to be fastened.

Jim finally had to confront an issue that's been on the back burner for awhile.  When he measured the length of this gable ridge, he was standing on scaffolding at the other ridge beam.  However, when he cut the beam and we installed it, you can see that it was too long.  He couldn't figure out what happened - until he was able to reconstruct the situation now that there is scaffolding there.  When he extended his tape measure to measure the distance, the rivet on the tape measure got caught on the end of the wall instead of the very tip of the tape measure; hence, it was just that distance too long.  No matter what the cause, now Jim had to fix it.

He got up on the outside of the roof, again perching on the sheathing, and used his Sawzall tool to cut through the metal.  He had to keep taking out screws so that he wouldn't cut through them and then put them back in once he passed that point.  So this took awhile!

That job finished, it was time to cut the last piece of sheathing for this section.

Putting it into place...

Fastening the last piece...

Time to move onto the underlayment.

Jim let me come out onto the scaffolding to check out the valley connection - looks amazing!

The plan was to go all the way up the outside wall with the ice guard membrane, as well as over the valley, and then to put the titanium over top.  However, as I was cutting the membrane, we realized that we didn't have another roll.  Jim was sure that he had one but it was nowhere to be found, so we must have lost track with all the membrane work.  So that was a bit discouraging, but I'll head to the roofing company in the morning to pick up another roll. 

 

With our last piece, Jim started up the valley.  This was another difficult section to work with - you're going from two different pitched surfaces and trying to get it totally flat.

Smoothing out the valley membrane...

With our last remaining daylight, Jim temporarily stapled pieces of the titanium underlayment over the ridge vent to keep water out, similar to what we did over the ridge vent on the auto bay.  He worked with manageable-sized pieces since he had to straddle the roof and try and get the pieces stapled down.

End of the day...at least for the site work.   

 

We had to spend time cleaning up, then offloading tools from the truck into the shop for a trip to Lowe's to pick up more sheathing.  By the time we got back to the site, it was pitch dark and late - we left everything on the truck and headed home!

 

High 59/Low 38