Remodeling Our Hut Part 17: Porch Roof

  
As I write this, I have a box of Kleenex in my lap.  I've caught a doozy of a cold and everything aches.  We worked until dark tonight (which is coming earlier and earlier) and quit when the rain started to soak through our clothes.  

Gosh, remodeling is so much fun.  (I've said it before, someone needs to invent a sarcasm font.)

Anyway, back to our saga and August 12.  With the garage settled on the foundation, Carl had to do some adjustments to the fit, but for the most part, the bolts that had been placed in the new wall lined up almost perfectly.

Carl had to go back to work the next day, August 12.  My chore for the next few days was picking up and sorting through all of the lumber we had used for the move.    

 In a way, this sort of felt like cleaning up after a wild party with everything strewn all over the place.  Not that we've ever really had a wild party of this magnitude, mind you.  We're not that cool.

While I was sorting out the lumber into piles by length and owner, the chickens decided to visit me in the garage.  This whole thing has been disruptive for them, too.  I had to move all of the chicken feed into their coop for storage until the garage construction is over with so they have about the same living conditions as we do, with goat trails to get to and fro.  They spend the daylight hours outside, so at least it's only at night they have cramped quarters.

The garage had been moved back to the chicken coop and I was barely able to squeeze through to open their door.  In the picture below, the pallets and a floor jack are all that remain of the garage's temporary spot.

Our house was looking pretty dismal, too.  There have been times when this entire remodel has felt like a bad dream, as whiny as that sounds, but life hasn't been the same since we moved out in July.  
 True, we know (ok, we hope) that it will be nice when it's done, but it's October 19th now and we have a long way to go yet.

Anyway, back to August 12:  While I was picking up the lumber, Phil and Bob built the new dining nook bumpout, seen above, directly under the blue tarp blocking the chimney hole.
 

Before the garage was attached to the house, in order to get to the back yard we had to go all the way around either the front or the west side of the house which was really getting old.  Now that the two buildings were joined, we could go through the garage.

Below is the view of the new dining room nook from the inside.  My poor old stove still hadn't been able to leave the house yet as the new garage floor wasn't poured and it had nowhere to go.  

The new front porch addition was framed
on August 12, too.
 

Carl used up all of his vacation this year and has been taking many days off unpaid just to be here to work on our part in the project.  He can't be here every day, obviously, but when he is, I'm relieved.   I hate it when questions come up, or something needs fixing or moving or whatever, and I don't know the answers.   It is unnerving to see the demolition and all the mess and hard to have strangers all over the place.

Carl and I are used to doing projects on our own and it's really weird having to get out of the way and let them do their thing.    Every year there has been a garden addition or furnace install, or stonework or something of some sort to deal with, I guess we are gluttons for punishment.  

The garage was our first major project as a married couple and part of the reason I was in favor of trying to save it.  When the service door trim was removed, we found a time capsule of sorts; a few scribbles I'd written way back when we'd built the garage in 1979.  We'd been married a year by that time.  I don't recall scribbling on the 2 x 4, but I do remember having an argument up on the roof on our first anniversary.  

When most couples would have defrosted the frozen wedding cake and celebrated their first year together, we were rolling tar paper out in preparation for shingles.  We were both working full-time then, had no children yet, and it was a big, scary project for two kids to take on.  I was tired and Carl was too, but darn it, we had to get the roof on.

 Surprised, I found I had signed the door and wrote: 'This garage will be immortal, 1979 was a good year!'  

Immortal?  No.  But apparently it was built well enough to stand up to a move forty years later.

 

I must have been bored or something back then, because I found another note: 'Carl J. Vanden Heuvel built this garage in 1979 when he was 21 years old. (and I was too!)

The garage construction back then dragged on until the snow flew in December 1979, and I found yet another pair of notes: 

It is cold.

And, in case I forgot, I labeled my door. 

 Reading my 'door notes' I shook my head and smiled, I was such a kid back then.  It was time to get back to work dealing with the garage-moving lumber. 

So much lumber, who'd think it would take that much to move a building?
 

Finally, by the next day, all that was left in the garage was the hay wagon and a few odds and ends.
 

August 14, and Phil was starting to put the rafters on the mudroom.
 

Bob was on vacation, so Carl and I helped get some of the rafters up to the roof.
 

Above is the view from the west end of the new front porch.
 

The middle of the porch and below, the east end.
 

Later on in the day, the rafters arrived for the new gable addition.  
 

Walking around all that lumber, I wondered where it would all go.  It seemed like far too much to fit in our old house.
 

By the end of the day, Phil was able to put the waterproofing material on part of the mudroom roof.
 

We were in for another dousing of rain, though, and on August 16, the waterproofing paper and plethora of blue tarps didn't do much.  Below are a lineup of five gallon pails I had set up in the dining room bay windows to try to catch the rainwater as it poured into the house.

The dining room bay window was bad enough, but my heart sank when I saw rain running through the bay window ceiling in the living room, right onto my oak hardwood floor and dripping from the insulation where the closet used to be.
 

So much for protecting the floor.  Drat.  Carl and I peeled up the wet cardboard and the plastic film and dried the floor the best we could.  

We were determined to save the floor, remember? 

But alas, Mother Nature had other plans.  

Next up, more holes in the roof.