Roof metal is finished

This side of the roof only took us 2 days to complete, compared to 3 1/2 days for the western side of the roof. Part of our improved speed was improved skill, but it was also a little cooler, and we were motivated by predictions of storms over the weekend. It was exhausting work, and hot as anything as soon as the sun came out. All we now have left to do on the roof is: trim work on the gable edges (that's the super-tall peak), ridge cap along the center of the roof from front to back, and touch up all the paint that I scratched during installation.

After we finished the roof on Thursday afternoon, we mowed a lot of grass. Charles did the most part with the ride-on mower and I did around the septic tank with the push mower. I love seeing my lawn freshly mowed.

But it did rain a lot this weekend, a little over 2 inches, and I can confidently report that the rain no longer stays mainly in my living room. A little rain blew in through the hole where the front door will be, but not much, and definitely no rain from the direction of the roof. Yipee! Despite the rain, we did manage to do some work in the vegetable garden, planting seeds for beans, cucumbers, squash, and pumpkins.

Half-way there

When you're roofing, you never use the phrase, "It's all downhill from here," but we completed the west half of our roof yesterday evening. Now with every sheet of metal we install we're closer to the end than the beginning. To say the least, the last 9 pieces that filled in the last 7-feet of width, were difficult. Before these, we could sit on the slightly slip-proof roof wrap and use our right hands to screw the metal down. For the last 9 sheets (2 at the full 3-foot width and one piece about 1-foot wide), we had to sit on the sheet metal and use left hands a lot more.
Now, the sheet metal is very slick - all the better to shed water, snow and ice. In addition, the metal is covered with dusty, yellow tree pollen. Thank goodness I teach a yoga class. My five sticky rubber yoga mats were pressed into service, with the added benefit of padding between our bums and the hot sheet metal covered in bolt-head screws. Sorry I don't have a picture of that - I was up on the roof and needed all my hands to hold on!

What I don't want to be when I grow up

The list is long, but the most recent addition is a roofer. Charles and I spent Saturday and Sunday putting metal on our roof and we are very proud to say that one-third is complete. That's 27 sheets of ribbed metal, 36-inches wide, 12 feet long, 30 screws in every sheet. The west side of the roof has about 4 hours of work to go until it's completed.
I'm sunburned, sore, chapped and exhausted, but it does look good.

Roof Stage 2 Completed

After we installed the board on the roof of our house, we thought the house would be fairly waterproof. We were wrong. It was better than before the boards went on, but we were hoping for even less water. Stage 2 was completed this week, when we put synthetic roof felt over the boards. Charles and I spent almost 4 days up on the roof rolling out, stapling and nailing. We’re both very glad we don’t have a steeper pitched roof, because it was very hard to stay in place as it is.
Our metal for the roof may arrive this week, but we don’t have a delivery date yet. In the meantime, Charles will be working on the last four interior walls and starting to figure out how to install the windows and doors. Once the windows and doors are in, we have to put some anchoring framework under the house to close in the crawlspace. Then the exterior metal goes on the walls, along with all its associated trim work – window framing, corners, soffits and the chimney for the woodburning stove. At that point the exterior work in done. Then it’s on to plumbing, electricity, wall board and flooring. “Eventually” remains my favorite word.

Finally up to date - February 5, 2010

It snowed last night - about 2 inches. That brings us up to about 1 foot of snow this year. I suppose I shouldn't complain too much - after last year's ice storm, snow is a welcome alternative. However I have shoveled snow out of my living room THREE times in the past month. I mean, it's good exercise, but it's very demoralizing.

All of the roof rafters were finished the first week of January (before the first snow), and then we worked on the plywood wall cladding for the upstairs. Last weekend we put house wrap on most of the upstairs walls, and started installing the overhangs for the roof at the front and back of the house. I suppose that if we were being filmed, it would be a comedy. It might be R-rated, though, because there's a fair amount of swearing going on. I hope we're getting the hang of it, because we're only 40% complete, and we hope to get done tomorrow. We had to take today off because it was too cold, wet, windy and icy to work upstairs on ladders and scaffolding.

We took two trips down to visit my mother in Tennessee in January. The first was the weekend of January 15 - 17, when we combined Christmas and Charles's birthday celebrations. We ate out with friends, went shopping in Birmingham, Alabama, and played on the Wii a lot! The following weekend, we stayed with Ma and Scott while we attended the Southern Sustainable Agriculture Working Group conference in Chattanooga. It's the third time in four years that we've attended and we get something really good out of each visit. Around here, I'm known as the weird farmer - small livestock, bees, market garden, near-organic or natural practices. At the SSAWG conference, I'm way on the side of normal compared to some people!

More flooring

Did I ever mention how much I love putting in sheets of sub-floor? Well if I didn't it's because it's a terrible chore. I'm glad we only ever have to do it once. After 4 days (it rained too much on Friday), we have already installed about 70% of the upstairs subfloor. It's going quicker because we don't have to build upwards as we build outwards - on the downstairs, we could only put on upper beams once the relevant subfloor was in place.

We also put up one of the end walls and installed the first roof beam.

Most importantly, we can now sit upstairs and enjoy our view, or we can sit downstairs in the shade/rain cover!