Roof (First Weekend)

I have been working on the roof of the carport for my three days of vacation. CMV and AMV drove up Friday night to help out during the weekend. I was able to get the carport tear off/ rebuild finished on Friday, so it is on to the actual roof of the house.

The plan was to tear off the balance of the eastern facing roof and replace the bad wood. The bad wood runs the entire length of the house from front to back. It is the area where the carport attaches to the house. I would guess that someone walked on the valley and cracked the shingles, which allowed water to reach the planking.



The rotten wood was all on the carport side of the roof, which was a very good thing. When I say that, I mean that any water that leaked through the damaged area would drip to the floor of the carport. The only exception was the storage shed.

With the damaged area removed and replaced, it was time to start the tearing-off the shingles on the house. It went rather well, considering the temperature and the fact that we had a few rain scares.



We had been planning to load the trash into the back of the truck and drive to the landfill for disposal. The charge for roofing scrap is $54.95 a truckload. One charge for as much or as little as you care to load. CMV bought some construction trash bags, and started loading up the bags. We soon learned how much trash we were going to have to haul. We estimated that we would need to take four trips to the landfill @ $54.95 and that does not include the gas for the trips. CMV decided to check the availability of a small dumpster. We were not sure if they would be able to maneuver anything down the lane due to the large trees and the narrow lane.

I want to post that CMV did a fantastic job of bagging all of the roof scrap. Nice job!!

We are not too busy, why not tackle the roof 6/11-6/13

One of the problems that we noticed when we say the house for the first time, was a section of rotten wood in the carport where it meets the house. We decided to use our economic stimulis money and replace the roof.

We had a couple of companies come out and give an estimate. Two estimates of $3,000-3,500 later, coupled with the fact that I hate to pay for labor, we decided to do the job ourselves (come on, you did see that coming right?).

We purchased the materials, and I scheduled some vacation time. I took Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, June 11-13, off and planned to get quite a bit accomplished. The first task was to tear off the roof over the carport. Since I was at the cottage by myself, I knew that I could only removed as much roof as I could cover in case of bad weather.

I got started around noon on Wednesday and after a couple of hours, I had most of the old shingles off of the carport. I was finally able to see the extent of the rotten wood. It was slightly worse than I had anticipated, but still manageable. I started to remove the roofing nails and the staples when the planks started to crack lenghtwise.



I decided to replace the boards with plywood sheets to reinforce the carport. We want a nice roof that will last a long time, and I wasn't willing to risk the carport cracking apart.



I drove to Goshen, IN and purchased the plywwod sheets and some additional nails. I tore out the planks roof and replaced them with the plywood. I am actually comfortable walking on the surface, now that it is solid.