Piddler on the Roof

     Never say “never”.  Some months ago, I said I’d never do another roof.  It’s time I start acting my age.

 

 

 Load up the scaffold, drive out into the country, and there I am up on a roof with two layers of old wooden shingles and several pounds of dust.  

 

      The millions of small-headed nails used to fasten the old shingles to the roof outweighed the shingles themselves.  When you get to this point, you still have to deal with the nails.

 

 

  You can hammer the nails in.  We pulled most of them.  They have to be out of the way before applying the fabric.

 

    Day one wasn’t too bad.  We got the shingles off and the “paper” on.  Day two was another story, with 30+ mph winds stirring the dirt up into our faces.  We had a truck to catch the falling leaves, but the wind sailed half of them to the horizon.

 

    The wind also made laying the fabric a challenge.  We persevered.  The wrinkles on the lower right of the roof are due to the wind making it difficult to stretch the stuff tight. 

 

 

    Day three was still windy and unsuitable for handling thirteen-by-three feet sheets of metal. 

    We spent half of day four gathering shingles that had been sowed to the winds (south on day 2 and north on day 3) and picking up the big pile we created when we did not have a truck available.  A front end loader on a tractor helped immensely.

 

 

    And then it was all clean.

 

     We had a pretty good truckload for no bigger than the roof was.

 

 

    Up went the metal.  It took a little over two hours to get the metal on this side.  The only cutting was for the chimney.

     The next day was back to wind again.  It took nearly five hours to do what we had done in two the day before.  Again we persevered and the roof blushed for us.

 

    Mother Nature added a little snow and ice to go with the wind for the next two days.  Just a few pieces of trim remain.  But, the chimney took a lot of time, with flashing and replacing mortar between bricks, etc.

 

     Sorry, the photographer was a brick short of a full row.

 

 

   Another hour and a half loading up tools and running the nail magnet brought the project to a close.  Or so I thought.

       Come Saturday morning, the old truck refused to hoist the bed, so the load of shingles had to be removed by hand, shovel, and pitchfork.  But the wind was light and gravity was on my side this time.  Maybe I am done now.