Beautiful Tuesday (plus some of Wednesday) (and now Thursday, too)

Tuesday was another incredible day for working outside. While the kids and I were gone at Reu's private therapy, Matt was able to get the whole front of the house caulked (a perfect job to do when he doesn't have help because he needs the lift to do it and does NOT need another set of hands).

In the afternoon he enlisted Owen's help to keep working on the shingling that he's started on Monday. They worked out a system where Owen was in the lift bucket passing shingles to Matt who was tethered on the roof. Matt told me that night that this let him work at least twice as fast because the slowest part of the work would have been him crawling from the roof into the lift, and then back out again, and this way he always has shingles right where and when he needed them. Owen liked it because he got to maneuver the lift back and forth a little bit to be more accessible to Dad. ;) They were running four rows across at a time, and by dark had gotten to within 1.5 passes from the top, which included working around the various penetrations in the roof for plumbing vents, radon vent, etc.

Delivering shingles to Daddy

Also noteworthy is that the flat roof went on yesterday! The contractor working on that didn't have time to completely finish all the detailing of it, but enough is done that next time it rains, it won't be pouring down the interior office wall and into the basement. Very nice.

I know there's not much to see in the photo besides the big truck, but if you look carefully, you can see the man installing the flat roof membrane. This may not look exciting, but when it keeps the water from running down the interior walls of your house its very exciting.

This morning Matt and Owen were back at it hoping to get that side (which is the smaller side) of the roof finished before Chad came around 10 when Matt was going to get back to siding. Turns out when Chad got there, they had finished the side of the roof, but the siding nailer was gone! When our contractor stopped through this morning to grab tools to work on another job, his assistant accidentally grabbed the nailer, too. So no siding is happening today. BUT, in a way this is nice because it means the next more useful thing for Chad and Matt to do together is put shingles on the west side. We have two harnesses, so I'm guessing they can both be up there, and I haven't seen Owen for the last two hours, so I assume that after he blitzed math and grammar that he's out there passing shingles to both of them! With the drizzling rain predicted for the next few days Matt said last night he was tempted to work on the roof when Chad was here, but figured it was better to do siding since that requires two adults, and roofing doesn't. But the way it worked out, they can't do siding, so the roof is getting work done!

Now that I'm satisfied via web cam that Reuben is asleep, I'm going to pass the watching of him off to Leah and go out and check on the progress. ;)

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I'm adding this update on Sunday as I add photos, because this post is the most reasonable to put it in. (Even if no one reads it, I'll have record of it for myself in its proper place!)

The roof did not get DONE on Wednesday before the rains that came that night, but it was probably just the last 1/6 of the west side that wasn't done. Chad and Owen kept busy cutting (Chad) and delivering (Owen) shingles to Matt (nailing/crawling around tethered to the roof).

 

 And, to top it off, later in the afternoon our framer (Mike) showed up to work on a few little things he's still got left to do (soffits and stuff like that) and seeing Matt up on the roof, and knowing what the weather was bringing, climbed up on the roof himself and worked past when Chad had to leave and until the dark (and lightening) made it time to get off the roof. (If you remember, back in August, Mike offered to help Matt so he wouldn't have to pay someone to do the roof for him, and even though Matt got over his concern about the roof (the lift helped tremendously), it was still pretty cool to have Mike's help be a critical part of getting done before the big rains started coming!)

Working while the sun shines!!

On Thursday, in between drizzles, Matt and Owen were able to get the last of the shingles on, and then the ridge vent and cap shingles, and WE HAVE A COMPLETE ROOF!