Been roofing again. Not fun.
The last two pie-shaped roof panels on the turret needed to be replaced. The roof wore a bum’s jacket of every layer of roofing that was ever put on the house — four or five layers. A Rosetta Stone of bad roofing practice. It’s way more work to strip roofing off than putting on new shingles, so everyone tends to go over what’s there and get themselves outside a beer that much sooner. I have a defective nature and can’t bring myself to nail another layer over the mattress of existing layers, so I ended up stripping off roofing from when McKinley was president.
The two panels are only about two squares of roofing (a square is 100 square feet). That’s about 6 bundles of shingles. I was able to shingle the front oblique panel right off the ladder you see there. No such luck on the last panel. I assembled a roofing mousetrap game to finish the job. You climb out the window, or up the ladder if you’re feeling spry. From the metal roof, you ascend a wooden stepladder that’s screwed to the sidewall to keep it from slipping. I installed a big metal grab handle on the roof opposite the chimney to assist in getting up on the planks to be named later. Once I roofed three courses or so while standing on the metal roof, I installed roof brackets (roof jacks) and a plank. I worked off that for a while. Then I installed another set of brackets and a second plank about six feet further up the slope. I screwed another wooden stepladder to the first plank. I climb up that to get as near to heaven as I’m likely to get.
The rope trailing down is for a fall protection harness. You wear an agglomeration of straps all over your torso and legs, with a big metal ring in the small of your back. You affix a big metal ring to the heaviest framing you can find on the roof, way up high, and you attach the rope to it. There’s a strap that attaches to the big metal ring in the middle of your back to a dongle that slides up and down the rope as you ascend. There’s a brake/clutch in the dongle, similar to the retraction mechanism in your seat belts. You pinch it to free it and slide it along the rope, but when you release it, it won’t slip. In theory. I’m a curious sort of fellow, but I’ve never tested it. The rope and harness and the strap is the safety equivalent of a spider’s web. You get so tangled up in it, just trying to get your hammer out of its holster, that you don’t care if you fall off the roof and die. That’s a form of safety, I guess.
Maine has a switch somewhere that gets thrown by nature and turns from winter to spring in about fifteen minutes. One day there are miserable patches of snow everywhere, and the trees look dead, and the next day the lawn needs mowing. Nothing just grows here. It explodes out of the ground.
I can only roof from about 7AM to 10AM. The roof goes from warming tray to broiler in about ten minutes when the sun clears the trees. So I have to spend three days doing a one day job. Oh well. It’s a good excuse to sit on the porch and wave to the neighbors passing by with prams and doggies.
I know it’s not possible, but I swear I could hear the begonias growing.
6 Responses
It’s not impossible. I’ve sat in the middle of a corn field on a still summer’s night in MN and listened to the corn grow. You can actually hear it pushing skyward and expanding in diameter; a little spooky until you figure out what it is.
You’re a braver man than me. When we needed a new roof, on a 45* pitch, I called professionals (who turned out to be from Guatemala) who were willing to work on that slope. The original bottom of 3 layers were the original cedar shakes from 1901. Ripped off the whole thing, put new OSB over the rough-sawn widely-spaced roofing boards, and had a roof that might come off in a tornado, but only in one piece.
Hi Blackwing- Thanks for reading and commenting.
Roofing ain’t hard, exactly, but then again, I’ve never met an old roofer.
Speaking of Latin Laborers….
Yesterday my wife grabbed me away from the computer saying there was some kind of fiesta going on in the neighborhood with loud cumbia music and fireworks. We looked over the back fence to see a handful of hardy fellows shingling a neighbors roof with rapid-fire pneumatic nailers while listening to their favorite radio station. One that, unusual for San Antonio, was playing cumbias (smooth Mexican polkas) instead of the more traditional rancheras and corridas. My wife shoulda known, there was no smell of anything being barbecued.
I once agreed to help a guy I worked with re shingle a 2nd floor mansard over a 4 day weekend.
I was expecting scaffolds and move the stack every couple of hours. I got there early, expecting to try to beat the sun. He showed up with a trailer and a JLG boom lift he’d ‘borrowed’ from work.
Easiest job I ever did. We even put up an awning on top of the cage, and used it to lift the bundles. Had an envious bunch of guys from the neighborhood, wanting to know if they could use it next.
I truly hated to see that machine go back to where we worked.
You might be interested in this book. A House Restored: The Tragedies and Triumphs of Saving a New England Colonial
Back in the oughts, my HOA got insurance money for a new roof, courtesy of a hail storm. The guy who ran the place, courtesy of owning 34% of the units, decided that some money could be saved- and thus not increase the monthly payment- by installing a metal roof. After all, everyone knows metal roofs are cheaper than asphalt roofs. Or so the son of the Board President- a President that Mr. 34% had hand-picked- told him. The son owned a storage unit company. The crew that installed his storage units could also install roofs, he said. The crew neglected to cover holes in the roof (taking off AC units) when they left for the weekend, a time when anyone could tell from the sky that rain was coming. Monday morning the rain came, and ruined a number of ceilings.
The City failed the roof. Mr. 34% sold out at a cut rate, for about half of what his units were appraised for. The HOA recovered some in a lawsuit against the storage unit company. The rest of the roof money came from a special assessment. No insurance company is going to pay twice. It was worth it to get rid of Mr. 34%, who must groan when he realizes the units he had are now appraised at many times what he sold them for- and also many times what they were appraised at when he sold them.
My fall arrest rope will have a measuring tape cable tied to it – in case