No roof over our heads

The last week since we moved in has been long and busy and crazy! We moved most of the rest of our stuff on Saturday, but even today we still have a little bit still left over there to pick up.

I spent days and days painting the living room and kitchen. Our builder arrived on Monday to start setting things up for his work and we had the furnace people in starting Wednesday. So as I'm painting the kitchen on Wednesday, the HVAC team is pounding, banging, and sawing away in the basement - while the builders are pounding, banging, and sawing away in the attic! We took the drop ceiling out of the bathroom to reach the pipes, so for every whack of the hammer or dropped piece of wood, chunks of plaster and insulation rain down out of the bathroom ceiling.

Enough chatting, here are the photos!


First, our builder put up supports for the roof:





He brought in scaffolding and lots of wood. These are the LVLs that will make the ridge beam (or whatever it's called).


Thursday night, Jeremy and I took the shingles off most of the south side of the roof.


Friday morning, we took the tar paper off to reveal the original sheathing on the roof. Look at those big beautiful boards! They don't build 'em like that anymore.


And then the builder started taking the roof off...






Then the framing started to go up...




With the framing all up, it was finally quitting time! I think the two guys wrapped up around 9pm. Not a bad day's work. They wrapped it all up in plastic for the weekend - so here is what it looks like inside now:






One always discovers interesting things when one takes apart a house. For instance, when the HVAC people were putting a new wall vent in the living room, they cut through the floor and discovered this:


Look closely and you'll see, from the bottom up, the sub-floor, the original hardwood floors, a layer of 5/8" plywood, a layer of 1/4" plywood, a layer of 1/2" plywood, then the parquet flooring!

We also discovered that under the old clapboard siding on the house is an older layer of siding called shiplap. And, in some parts of the house they did flat framing - which means they put the two-by-fours in "flat" making the walls more like 2 inches think instead of 4 inches thick. A pain in the rear if you're trying to run ductwork between the studs and the ductwork is deeper than 2 inches!

That's all for now. It's been a long delay because we still don't have internet (for real) at the old homestead. The computer has Windows 2000 which is apparently so incredibly old and obsolete, we can't download the router software to connect to the internet. So we have to upgrade the OS first. That means backing up all the files. And finding the original software for everything on the computer...which is packed in one of a gazillion unlabeled boxes...stacked high in the packed out garage. Oh joy. If you don't hear from me in a few days, send someone out to the garage to rescue me!