Mother Nature Finally Cooperates

The dumpster was scheduled for pick-up on Friday, July 4, 2008. We even called to check on the Holiday, and they said that they would get it Friday. We left last weekend with 75 percent of the roof torn off, and quite a lot of that was in the dumpster. If they were going to pick up the container on Friday, we were going to get up there and finish the tear off and get everything in the dumpster.

CMV had the week off, so she drove up on Tuesday. AMV and I would drive up on Thursday after work. We had no idea of when they would arrive to get the dumpster, so we felt the need to be ready as early as possible. CMV was able to get most of the remaining shingles off of the house, so when I got there I helped her drag them over to the container. We also took the opportunity to load up all of the bagged shingles from the first weekend. It was late on Thursday, so we called it a night.

Friday morning and no early truck, so we decided to get up on the roof and remove the very last small section of old shingle. I spent time removing the old staples and nails and checking the decking for bad/ weak spots. This section of the roof was in pretty decent shape. I nailed a few loose spots and started to lay out the roofing felt. CMV finished the tear-off, and we loaded the last of the trash into the dumpster. Four o'clock in the afternoon, and we still have the dumpster in the driveway. If we had planned to load it later in the day, they would have arrived first thing in the morning to haul it away. They ended up arriving Saturday morning.

Once the roofing felt was applied, we nailed in the drip edge and laid down the starter strip. We covered the roof with the tarp and called it a night. It was after all, the 4th of July and we were going out on a friends boat to watch the fireworks over the lake.

Saturday morning and once again, we are up on the roof. I am guessing by now, you are tired of reading how we are on the roof, and I assure you, I am tired of writing it in this journal, but neither compares to how tired we were of actually climbing up the ladder for another day. If we could have done the job in consecutive days, I think it would not have been as bad. Only working on the weekends made the job stretch out over weeks, so it seemed to drag on and on.

We started applying the shingles to the northern section, and made decent time. It was clear that we were not going to have enough shingles to complete the job. When I was calculating the number of bundles we needed, I did not add in enough for the ridge caps. We were also short one piece of drip edge for the gable. CMV would drive up to Goshen in the morning and pick up the last of the materials.

We cut two holes in the roof in the locations we chose for the new roof vents. The old roof did not have any vents. The house only had two gable vents, so we felt that we needed to add some additional airflow. As we cut the holes, it was amazing how much heat came out of the attic. We attached the vents and shingled around them and stopped at the ridge.

Sunday morning, July 6, 2008. We have one last section the shingle, and the ridge caps. I got started on the ridge caps while CMV drove to the store. She arrived with the materials and we nailed in the last piece of drip edge, we shingled the last section of roof, and we finished the last row of shingles along the ridge on the main section of the house. CMV and AMV had pre-cut quite a few ridge pieces, so I was able to finish off the ridge as CMV cut away the excess shingle out of the valleys. We finished fairly late in the day, but we finished.

Next week I will go up and apply some roof cement to some of the shingles around the vents and near the chimney. I will also apply the cement to the outer edge of the shingles on the roof line, to give them some additional holding power against the prevailing wind off of the lake. I may touch up the paint on the chimney, as it still shows some light spots, especially as the sun hits it.