The original roof over the main part of my house was wood shingles, over which were disintegrating asphalt shingles. The roof was pretty much a disaster. After every storm—or even after a strong breeze—pieces of rotted wood and shingle would litter the ground. (See pic, check out rotten wood, woohoo.) A great many of my pots and pans were occupied in various parts of the house catching leaks, and most of my buckets are either in the garage or the attic, for the same purpose. (Actually, we had a rummage sale in the garage during a storm once, and it was a toss up whether it was damper to stand outside or sit inside.) Anyway, my father got tired of listening to my chronic complaints about the general sogginess of life, and decided to pull a landlord on me and take matters into his own hands...
So. Enter the Roofer.
You can have up to three rooves here (it's my personal plural of "roof"—deal with my weirdness). So number three went on over the top of rooves one and two. The garage add-on had a rusty corrugated metal roof; there were various globs of cloth and tar and stuff—the philosophy there seems to have been if you have a leak, stuff an old shirt in it, and pour some tar on top. (Not that my own solution to leaks differed much, as will be more than obvious in the attic.) The roofers are Dave Hoskins and his crew, and the new roof is standing-seam metal, painted light gray.
Click on an image to see a larger version throughout.
The Attic
Despite the county assessor's insistence that, at some point, my house miraculously became two stories tall, it was only 1 1/2 when I moved in (ooo! the inequities of Indiana's property tax system, a whole other rant). My brother took this picture a number of years ago, and nothing's changed—it's just as fugly now as it ever was, but, hey, it's my fugly. The upper part has windows, but it's just an unfinished attic where the furnace lives (accompanied by my wet laundry in the wintertime). Oh, and lots of dust, dirt, and dead and not-dead bugs. Yum. 
The door to the attic is in the corner of one of the rooms. You can see the (very) narrow stairs take an abrupt turn and go up. Roofer tools in foreground, as this is the room that had the air compressor and stuff in it while guys frolicked on the rooftops. Also nice, shiny metal-foil wallpaper, circa early 1970s, in the process of being viciously ripped off (y'know, whenever I'm feeling a bit irritated with life). 
The scary view upward from the attic stairs. On the left is the railing and the chimney (the furnace sits on the floor on the other side of the chimney). There are various clotheslines strung about. You can see a shirt wrapped around a rafter up there—one of my futile attempts to redirect the water into a pan underneath (mostly, it just runs down the rafter and drips into the bathroom). 
Another view of the attic. I'm leaning against the back window (as seen in shots of the back of the house). The odd-looking arrangement of padded ducts and such is part of the furnace. And there are openings in that side wall into the crawlspaces above the porch and bathroom. 
Closeup of the underside of the roof. This is the point of the attic trip: you can see that the house's original roof was wood shingles over shims. You can see the bark on the underside of the rafter on the right. I love that. Before and AfterHere we go, views of before, during, and after.
Miscellaneous Pics of RoofI took various pictures with ye elde borrowed camera, 'cause it was sort of fun. 
Back view of the house when only the drip edge was in place on the kitchen. The remains of the former garage/back room roof are in a big pile on the right; the new plywood decking on this addition is now covered with tar paper. Note the metal for the new roof on the grass; the burned spots will be evident in the out-the-window pictures. The owner of the camera is pulling bindweed out of the sage plant on the left, 'cause he's that sort of person. I took a couple "work in progress" pictures from the attic view. The line is the hose for the air compressor. The roof here is over the kitchen and the back room. 
Looking out the attic window, over the kitchen. The pieces of roofing sat in the backyard for a few days, and the grass got burned. (It does get pretty toasty here in the summer.) My raspberry bushes are waaay down there on the left. 
Leaning out the window. It's clear where the new roof (metal) has been placed over the old roof (asphalt); this gap is now covered with flashing. The little squares on the seam are the cleats that hold the new roof on. Miscellaneous Rambling"It'll take two days." And, 'natch, it didn't (heh). Been there, done that with my own stuff, so I kinda figured. Anyway, for a while, my house was getting cruised constantly by rubberneckers—I mean, I counted three times around the block in as many minutes for that one car. The neighbors' opinions seem to consist of variations on "that's quite a roof!"...well, no one seems ticked off, at least. This is good, 'cause they're the ones who have to look at it, not me. From the work-at-home perspective, it wasn't really a great time. It's just not possible to get much done when there's an air compressor roaring away in the next room and lots of steady hammering overhead. The whole house shakes its groove thang. Also, the PC was on the same line as the compressor for a fair while, and the circuit was getting tripped constantly ("beep, beep, beep...!"—sound of panicking UPS). So running La Machine was pretty much out of the question. So I'd not intended to be working while all this was going on. But ditto on that best laid plans bit. Oh well. The solution, of course, is to work at night and sleep during the day. I normally do that anyway, so no biggie in theory. But it's not so easy to snooze through the aforementioned racket. I felt definitely woozy by the time this roof was finished. And, of course, wound up behind schedule for the workish stuff. Nothing to be done about it, really. |
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Copyright © 2001 by Vickie West. |
