ROOF

A Little Retro...

By early summer, I knew I had to get the house appraisal value higher, and the most important and valuable change would be the replacement of my ancient roof. The autumn and spring storms had started leaks I never had before, and when I added the flying beams to shore the roof, I scattered an army of shallow trays where the leaks were the worst.

Trust me, they were needed.

Spring gave us some of the worst storms I'd seen since arriving here, and even last fall sent a few post-hurricane status hurricanes up this way, namely the ones that devastated the Caribbean and Florida panhandle. I had water POURING through my restored living room ceiling, and for some strange reason, I didn't like that so much.

Anticipating the roof work, I decided on a whim to check Craig's List for inexpensive roofing material. I'd done this before and had little luck; every time I'd look, there'd be a few bundles or rolls of something I didn't want. I may be frugal, but I'm not cheap or stupid. The roof needed to be high quality architectural asphalt/fiberglass shingles, and I had a certain way I wanted to build it.

I just didn't look forward to the task. I'm getting old, and the last time I roofed a house I was twenty-five. I'm well past twice that now.

To my surprise and delight, I found an offer of twelve squares (that's 1200 square feet) of Glenwood shingles on Craig's List; Glenwood is the Rolls Royce of roofing, and are the finest and most expensive shingles. I'd priced them for a job I ran in Little Rock and they were almost 300 bucks a square, three times what normal architecturals cost.

This guy in North Haven wanted a hundred  bucks a square. And he had almost twice what I needed. His roofer had over-bought, then went out of business. I can see why.

I'd planned on having a weathered-wood color, and his were a dark reddish brown. I could live with that. I liked the picture in the ad and went in my van to pick them up.

Shingles are heavy. I mean HEAVY. I knew I'd need to make two trips.

And on the way to his place, which was forty five miles away, I heard some strange noises and had my transmission do a few hiccups when I had to turn around in a driveway.

I didn't like that so much, either.

I saw his house and marveled at the roof. It was magnificent! Looked more like cedar shakes than anything I'd ever seen. Random spacing, uneven cut, and a rustic appearance I knew would look good on the house.

His place was gorgeous, surrounded by huge trees at the base of Sleeping Giant Mountain just north of New Haven. But many of his trees were snapped off halfway up the trunk due to a rare tornado that raked the area in spring. Yet his roof didn't lose a single tab.

I gave him cash for ten squares and hauled them away. He threw in the other two even though I didn't have the cash, telling me to pay him when I could. He wasn't disappointed; I paid him in due time, but it wasn't easy. The trip with the shingles was the last the van's transmission would make. The day after I got back, I unloaded them and took off for work. I got two miles before I turned around.

I SAID the tranny was making noises before I got the shingles; they just put it out of its misery.

Thus began a three month nightmare of trying to find a cheap, good car. It didn't work, but I now have a total disdain and hatred for all banks and car dealerships.

I rebuilt Red's transmission.

But I also rented a van to go get the rest of the shingles. I TOLE you I couldn't carry them all in one load.

So the rest of the summer went by. Hot and more humid than anyone could remember, I was dealing with constant leaks from the Wet Season that started in August and still hasn't let up in March 2019. My work moved inside and I began to deal with Quicken Loans for the upcoming Refinance (Hey Grant!).

Green mold grew on all the varnished wood surfaces in the house. Mildew blackened placed I didn't know it could grow. My GAS CANNISTERS were covered with mold.

THAT'S humid.

I was dreading doing the roof, but it had to be done. Maybe if I had it started, the appraiser would see my intentions and give me a good appraisal anyway...

 

Summer turned to autumn and Quicken sweetened the deal with money for SOMEONE ELSE to do the roof. But it would have to be done after the refinance; I'd get the money the first week of November.

I'd gotten a number of bids and empty promises from roofers in the area, and finally settled on one of my old friends from Early New England Restorations, the company for which I worked two years before. Ozzie and I had worked together, apart, on the same jobs, and in different counties, but he was always one of my favorite co-workers. A very good mason, his specialty was stone, but he'd do anything, and do it well.

So he gave me a bid, I accepted, and we planned to start the second week of November.

The next thing I had to do, though, was to tear down the staging frames I had erected in late spring. They were, of course, there to support my weak, fat, old ass so I could have some purchase when I stripped and installed the roof.

REAL roofers such a s Ozzie and his crew don't need such panty-waist devices of fear. THEY tie themselves to the chimney and ROOF.

NOW we're caught up from where we started.

A days' work, torn down in two hours.

And it was a good thing. The timber I used had weakened to the point of being dangerous.

Funny how things work out.



I told Ozzie how I wanted to have the decking installed, the chimney reflashed, and the gutters removed so I could use them elsewhere. I am a Rampant Reuser. Old roof looks pretty rough right here. Luckily it had only one layer. Ozzie's folks draped tarps, brought in ropes and stripping tools, and set to work.

First day, thirty five degrees. Mid November is usually in the forties and fifties, but we were told to expect an early cold snap. Snap, my ass. It went town into the single digits at night and stayed there until the last week in February 2019.

Ozzie's people are harnessed in, anchored from the other side of the roof.

These are original roofers from 1735 or so. In Arkansas, roofers are the guys that do the roofing. In New England, roofers are the wood sheathing the shingles are nailed to.

Either way, the wood was split, short, rough, and ancient. The plethora of nail holes showed that it had once sported cedar shakes. But then, before 1900, everything did.

They were told to replace the broken wood as it fell into the attic or broke upon impact. I had plenty of scarfed pieces of throw-away 3/4" plywood from Early New England Restorations (hey Brian!) to patch the bigger holes.

Hey! That's MY nail gun!

It's okay, I lent it to them. Anything to make the job go faster.

I found it interesting that there were so many butt joints on top of one another. Most carpenters would stagger the joints, which will add strength. But this house wasn't built by carpenters; it was built by farmers, or those that would become such. Still, they did a great job. It's still here after almost 300 years.

The roofers move to the back of the house.

They may be my roofers, and Ozzie may be their boss, but I'm EVERYONE'S boss. It comes from being a general contractor and project manager. Plus, it's MY frinkin' house.

My instructions were to get the front roof dried in before moving to the back; that way no water could come in if we had a nighttime rainstorm. And there were PLENTY of these. The rain came, but I had planned the thing out to a tee.

And though I could anticipate rain, I had not anticipated the cold. And brotha, did it get COLD!

This was taken at nine o'clock p.m. the night before Thanksgiving, and it kept going down. The temperature for the next week wouldn't top twenty. Not good roofing weather.

I spent all morning on Thanksgiving cooking a hot, hearty casserole for the crew at lunch. It was twenty-one degrees and the wind was HOWLING. But they went at it nonetheless. I made two huge bowls of my famous King Ranch Casserole, which has shredded chicken and cheese, tortilla strips, onion, chiles, Ro-tel, cumin, chipotle peppers, a few soups, and fresh cilantro. I hoped they'd like it; they're all Hispanic and know good food. There were nine guys in my kitchen at lunch, the most people I've ever had in here. They emptied every bowl and ate every drop of hot sauce in the house, and no one went back to work hungry.

In fact no one went back to work. It was Thanksgiving, and they all had families to go to. I just wondered how they'd eat anything after that meal.

The back of the house re-decked after a dusting of snow.

This is the Zip-System, which uses specially treated OSB (oriented strand board, many of you call it chip board) decking that has been imbued with waterproof glue as it is pressed. Then a thin coating of waterproofing material is annealed to the top side, forming a barrier so complete that felt or ice-shield is not needed. I did have ice shield installed around the perimeters of the decking, though.

What confused Ozzie when he first bid the job was that I sent back his initial bids, making him understand that I wanted the roof stripped, repaired, then set up with 1x3 purlins on sixteen inch centers. The Zip decking would be applied to those, then the joints  taped with special tape made for the purpose. But between the purlins and before the decking, a fibered mesh would need to be installed  just above the eave to keep out wasps and other bugs that might like to get into the 3/4" space between the old roofers and the new decking.

The reason for this is simple; if you create an air space between your old and new roofs and allow air to enter at the eave and exit at the continuous roof vent, it will cool your attic in summer. Not only that, but you can insulate the roof of your attic. If you insulate your roof without this air space, you will cook your roof, and in fifteen years, you will lose it. The air space is absolutely necessary. It takes longer, costs a bit more, but it is well worth it. And Ozzie's crew did it exactly as I told them, and that for the first time.

The job went a lot slower than I'd have liked, and it wasn't because of the crew or the roofing techniques. It was because of the extreme cold.

Ozzie had his crew build a small tent in which they had to heat the shingles. Cold shingles will crack and break upon merely trying to separate them, much less carry them up ladders and nail them. The nails will bust right through the shingles. So they made an Easy-Bake Oven with a kerosene heater.

I had set the bundles up in a bridge pattern for days before we even started; I knew the cold was on the way.

I knew what was coming when I experienced this sunrise. Red, red, red! We had snow that night, and the temps went into the low single digits.

Taken from inside the attic during stripping.

I'd consolidated every box and attic-stashed item and covered the lot with thin visqueen, knowing that old, moldy roofing and construction debris would soon coat it all. I could see the cracks in the roofers long before. What I DIDN"T count on was how much cold air would drift down once they opened the roof. BRRRRRR!

But when it was all done, it was magnificent. The leaning plywood was set up by me before the job to protect my highly poisonous Nightshade from being crushed by the debris. It should come in rather heavily this summer. I smell dead gophers and moles!

The fascia behind the gutters was unpainted, and it sports a single rounded bead at its base. I'll scrape, sand, prime, and topcoat it in spring. And yes, of course I had drip edge installed. I hope to install half-round gutters this year.

Thanks, Ozzie! Thanks Guys! And thanks, John Sinard, for selling me the shingles at such a great price! You've ALL contributed to the continuous and continuing restoration of The Standish House!

Guess I'll hafta take a new picture for the blog's front page now....