Dec 24 2010

Roofing Day 23

Today is a day to celebrate!  Not only is it Christmas Eve, but roof 1 of 6 has been completed. 

The second story is now done.   It has 4 hips and 4 penetrations and a chimney is certainly the most dangerous and complex of house.   I did a hearty Ho Ho Ho after the last nail went in, and even had time to start on one of the storage sheds (almost finished 1/2 of it) .   I can now see can see just how quick and easy flat roofs can be covered (3 of the 6 roofs are flat).   I’ll easily be able to bang out the remaining 3 flats roofs in a day.  

You know it is kind of a shame that now that I REALLY understand roofing, hips,  valleys, vents, flashing, etc  and how quickly and easily it is to do master level work, I will never roof a house again.  Period.  I spent a LOT of time visiting websites talking to roofers to figure out the absolutely best way to accomplish this job.  

I can see how easy it would be for a “professional” roofing company to bang out a house in a day or two.  It all comes down to having a large group of workers (lots of man hours) and  grunt work.   Roofing is just repetitive manual effort.  Now I can also see how easy it is to do a substandard job and take short cuts.   All I have to do is drive around my neighborhood and look at the roofs.  Talk about poor quality workmanship.   The errors just jump right out and smacks you upside your head. 

Maybe it would be best for me to just work with Habitat and teach others what I have learned.  

After finishing another hard day, I just spent ???? amount of  time(I think it was over an hour) in the hot tub with a drink relaxing, listening to Pandora and stretching my sore muscles.   I feel great knowing that the next two days (Christmas and a Sunday is a rain day) will be a vacation for me!   LET IT RAIN!    I DONT CARE!  I’ll hit it again on Monday.

I absolutely  love the rain and I haven’t been able to enjoy it for over a month.  I even replaced the aluminum vent cap on my bathroom exhaustfan with a bigger one becuase I love to hear the first drop of rain fall in the night.  Sort of like when you used to sit at grandpa’s house in a tin metal barn on a hay bale an  listen to the rain .

I really have been freak out by this job and constantly watch the weather shows check the weather website many times a day.  What is the temps doing?  When is it going to rain?  What is the wind direction?  Cloudy/Sunny?   How many layers do I need to wear for the cold?  I guess that’s what happens when your freezing your ass off and have water dripping from every light and vent opening in ones ceiling. 

I even used my cordless drill to drill holes in my plaster ceilings to let the water out.   I figured if you could let the water out immediately there would be less possible damage.   Besides it easier to put the buckets, pans and plastic containers under the holes to collect the water.

At night I couldnt hardly get a good sleep at because if ONE drop of rain hit the roof I would wake up.  Weird sounds like the traps flapping in high winds would keep me up.  Most nights the earplugs would go in and when I woke up, check for damages, and move on.

All that being said, the end is in sight and the job is everything I had hoped for.   I just love the color and texture of the roof.    The new roof line over the front porch exactly what I wanted.  The porch looks straight for the first time ever.  I think I’ll paint the trim a deep maroon color to match the brick and roof.   Would I do it again…..hell ya.  I would certainly have been smarter about buying LOTS of tarps and choosing a different month to work in, but yes, I am very pleased.

Strangely, I am already looking forward to doing the porch.  Cant wait but have a plane to complete first.   I am planning to engineer the entire porch design in ACad so I know visualize exactly how it will look and what needs to be done.  Good planning makes for fast work.    I can even render the design and print it out on the color printer to have a photo of the finished product.  

The pouch will be lots of brick and I’ll expressly use Hardiplank (concrete board) and cast concrete.  I want NO maintence and the materials will totally eliminate rot and deterioration.    Hardipank is actually very soft (but extremely durable) so I can cut thin sheets of it into anything I want (decals, reliefs, house numbers) and use construction adhesive to permantely bond it in place.  How cool is that. 

The tooling has already been imagined for casting the concrete.  I am sure there is a lot of information on the Internet for casting concrete kitchen counter tops, so I’ll be able to easily learn the basic casting process. 

Well it is time to eat.  I must have lost a lot of weight these last 3 weeks.  I bought some new jeans at a right (maybe a bit snug) size of 32 inches before I started this odyssey from hell and now when I put the jeans on they are WAY too big.  I must be a 31 or a 30 waist now (the same as my 1971 High School wrestling team) .   It will be nice to start going to the gym again where I can check my weight on their scale.   As Tony said, “roofing a house is better than going to a gym”.   He was right, I am am positive I’m in better shape and can work much harder than I could a month ago.

The good news is I can eat whatever I want, whenever I want and as much as I want.  Won’t last long, but am enjoying the teenage boy eating pattern while I can. I am hungry and have no guilt about stuffing myself till I explode..

Let the Christmas dinner feasting begin!