Remodeling Our Hut Part 19: Roof Construction

October 23, 2019 'Northern Glow' maple and forlorn Castle Aaargh in background

Let's see, where was I?  Oh yes.  

August 21, on the evening of the same day the new gable addition was added to the house, Cody and Joel had another job to do.  The mudroom addition measures 12' x 27' which also added basement space adjacent to the original house wall.  Their job was to cut a hole in the wall between the two basement rooms for a door through the ten inch thick concrete. 

  Cody had called ahead and reserved an electric German saw from a local rental company.   Carl had gone after work to pick it up, but when he arrived, he was told they had plumb run out of electric saws, sorry, here, take a gasoline-powered one instead.  

When Carl asked about the reservation Cody had made, the clerk shrugged and more or less said, "Take the gas one or leave it, fella." 

In hindsight, Carl should have said forget it, and waited until an electric saw became available, but the job had to be done that night.  The flat-work concrete crew was coming in the next few days to pour the floors in the basement and the garage. The doorway had to be cut through before the new basement floor was poured.  

Cody was willing to take on the job and Joel was willing to help, but nobody was happy about having to use a gasoline saw in an enclosed basement space.  Cody had a face mask and we hooked up some fans to try to ventilate the area, but between the dust and the gasoline motor fumes, it was terrible.  Both Joel and Cody had to take frequent breaks (I was worried about them, they should have run for the hills) and it was nearly 10PM when they were finished.  

Cody and Joel cutting hole in basement wall

When the guys had finally made the last cut through the thick cement, Carl was in the basement on the original house side and Joel, Cody and I were on the new basement side.  They were prying and pushing but the wall wasn't moving very much.

  Joel jokingly said it would be fun to come busting through the wall like the Kool-Aid man in those old commercials, so he went up the ladder out of the new basement, across the gangplank, down the original basement steps in the house and, working with Carl, they both managed to tip the extremely heavy wall section into the new basement while Cody and I stood clear.

The slab broke in two pieces, which was fine.  We would have to haul those two slabs out of the basement before the floor could be poured, and being in two hunks made it slightly lighter.  

Cody had done a tremendous amount of work, holding the heavy saw for hours and all three of the men had to put up with the dust and the fumes.  I didn't join them in the basement until the sawing was done; I'd been busy picking up the 2 x 4's from the old roof while they all worked on the basement.   

The next day after work, Thursday, August 22, Joel stopped in to help us crank the two concrete slabs out of the new basement using the old Manley wrecking crane.  We have moved so many impossibly big stones with the antique crane, it's a wonderful machine.

Joel's a wonderful son, too.

 

You can barely make out the shape of the slab coming up with the crane.  Carl is guiding the cable so the basement walls do not get marred.

 

Joel and Carl switched jobs for the second slab.

 Since all of the remodeling began, we've tried our best to stay on the time frame in our bid.  We're doing quite a bit of the work ourselves (there's that sweat equity again) but we don't want to hold up any of the timelines of the builders or the subcontractors in any way.  This means that one of us (or both of us if Carl can leave work) are at the site from early in the morning until late at night, seven days a week, doing whatever we can.  Now that the days are getting much shorter in October, it's not as bad, but when we had more daylight in July, the days were exceedingly long.

During the day, I had been busy hauling the old shingles from the house roof to Phil's dump trailer.  I worked on the side of the house the builders weren't on to avoid getting whacked in the head by flying debris.

 

Shingles, tar paper and lumber everywhere.  And nails. Lots and lots of nails.  Everyone had to be careful where they stepped.

Ann came in the morning before work to help me pick up the lawn and garden.

North side of the house (back)

While we were on the ground working, Phil and Bob were putting the sheeting on the new gable.

I'm glad to say I finally picked up the last shingle (I hope) tonight.  I don't mind shingling a house, it is fun if the roof isn't too steep and it's not too hot.  But we were going to go with a tin roof which, barring tornado/flood/fire/earthquake, shouldn't need replacing again in our lifetime.  I'll keep my fingers crossed.

South side of the house (front)

When the contractors left for the night, they said if we had time, we could remove the shingles from the old house, too.

Joel stopped in that night to tear up the last of them for me. 

While he was working on dropping the old shingles down, I went upstairs to see the view again.

Done being nosy, I'm back on the ground, picking up yet more shingles as Joel removes them.

The sky didn't look too promising, but we managed to miss the rain this time.

The front porch doesn't look like it has a very good view here, does it? 

I loaded shingles until dark while Carl worked on the new basement addition, putting in a temporary door.  

Another day of work was done.