We Almost Have a Roof!

The blog has definitely taken a back seat lately. Between working full-time jobs, milking a cow daily, taking violin lessons, making cheese and yogurt to use up all that milk, and building a house on the weekends we are spent!

Since the last post we: finished putting the sheathing on the roof, framed in the side walls of the dormers and sheathed those, put housewrap up on the gable ends and dormers, put ice and water shield over the entire roof, framed the roof in 1×4’s, stained the cedar fascia boards (thanks mom), put in the skylight, took out the skylight because we did it wrong, put up the cedar fascia boards along the sides of the house, installed the drip edge, re-installed the skylight properly this time, put up metal roofing on one side of the house, and started putting up the metal roofing on the other side of the house.

I usually like to be a little more detailed in my posts, but all of the above has been done over the course of the past month and a half and now I can’t remember the details. If you would like any specific information, just ask! 🙂

I will say we have encountered problems here and there and the phrase “we have no business building a house” was said through a bout of tears; I was however, able to calm Pete down. Okay, it was me that was crying and now I can’t remember what we screwed up that started it, but either way, this house is being built by amateurs and if you look close enough you will be able to tell. We had to stair-step the metal roofing in parts to keep it going in the right direction (after a phone call to my brother, he told us not to worry about it – that metal roofs rarely go on the way they’re supposed to), and we definitely forgot about the importance of being square when we built the dormers. But, it’s a strong and sturdy house and in the end I’m the only one who’s going to notice all the little goof ups. If you’re wondering how we screwed up on the skylight, no we did not install it upside down. We attached it to the roof decking, forgetting that we were framing in the roof with 1×4’s and that the skylight also needed to be set up on 1×4’s. Pete was able to use a dremel to grind off the heads of the nails and then used a nail set to pounds the nails in further. After that we were able to lift the skylight off. Now that I think about it, it was the skylight mess up that brought on the tears. I’m pretty sure that’s the first time I’ve cried over the house though, so I think I’m doing pretty good.

Pete cutting the skylight opening.