The roof, the whole roof, and nothing but the roof

     As I have received some feedback from the peanut gallery that the last post was a bit dramatic, I shall attempt to be more factual in this entry, and less fanciful. I have a lot of ground to cover, not having written a progress report since before Christmas. The time between then and now was either spent on the hillside nailing on roof boards or in the kitchen turning out holiday provender aplenty. But even then, I could not escape construction, as the entry from Christmas day will attest to.
     When I last checked in, we had just completed sheathing the walls, and were ready to move on to the roof. The roof sheathing consists of the same boards used for sheathing the walls, except with the ‘v-groove’ facing inward. It gets applied the same way, although there is a bit more room for error, as the v-groove tends to hide the gaps between boards a bit better. After five or six courses of boards were done, we would cover it with Typar house wrap, fold back the excess, put on another five or six courses, staple on Typar, etc. This all may sound simple in theory, as much of this house building stuff does, but in practice things were a tad more difficult.
     Getting the boards to join tightly together was a chore, as was putting on Typar in high winds. The coup-de-grace, however, was the HUGE blue tarp we rigged up to go over the rafters. Ropes, clamps, leverage, push-sticks, magic tricks and swizzle sticks all came into play to get this thing not only rigged up every evening, but taken down in the morning. Do you know what’s more painful and maddening than untying frozen ropes with your bare hands when it is twelve degrees outside? If you do know, tell me, because I can’t figure it out.
     Here is a breakdown of the past two weeks and what we accomplished:

December 21 Anne takes off work and we begin sheathing on south side.
December 22 Anne’s sister Bridget helps for a half day, we sheathe and Typar lower southern roof and get blue tarp set up.
December 23-26 No work due to holidays and weather.
December 27- 29 Finished south side sheathing and Typar.
December 30-31 North side sheathing is half way done.
Jan 1 Day off for rain.
Jan 2 Four courses shy of completing roof.
Jan 3 Finished roof in the dark!

You may look at that schedule and wonder why it took us all of January 3 to put on four courses of boards. Up until then, we had been able to attach the sheathing from inside, using stepladders on the second floor. By the time you have four courses left, however, the space gets too narrow to work in, so the boards need to be attached from the outside. This necessitates setting up a system of ladders and roof brackets and a safety harness. It took awhile for us to figure out the best system, which included backing my car up to the house and tying the rope off to the towing hooks and swapping my stiff boots for a pair of sneakers. After being up on the roof for awhile, I got comfortable, and we moved along at a steady pace, racing the sun as it sank behind the western hills. With Anne on the second floor cutting boards by headlamp and me outside on the roof nailing them in and stapling the Typar, we managed to get the final board in just as it was getting too dark to see the nails I was trying to hit. It felt great to have that part of the build behind us, for it was exhausting, to say the least. The ceilings look great from inside, and the entire space is gaining definition. Most importantly, we untied the blue tarp one last time and kissed it goodbye. For the record, no tears were shed.