Fun on the Roof

Fine weather arrived, and with it we sent Noel up the ladder onto the roof to do the shingles.

You will recall that some of the shingles on our roof were installed sideways, which had been causing leaks in the attic over our dining room (over a period of many decades). Yesterday Noel climbed up on the roof and pulled off the top layer of shingles, only to find a second layer of shingles on sideways. Under that, he found a third layer of shingles on the right way. Attached to that, and sticking through the many layers of stupid shingles, somebody had just left the aluminum support legs for a satellite dish.

The North side of the bay has had the worst damage, and what was left under there was pretty yucky.

As you can see, there was quite a bit of water damage in there.

Here it is all stripped of shingles. As it happens, the ridge that should slope slightly downwards away from us here actually slopes back towards the house, which is a huge water issue. That means this bay should be roofed as if it were a witch's cap roof, rather than as if it were a bay.

In order to drain the water off the roof without it going into the house, Noel used shingles to create a trough in the valley. This is a kind of cheap detail for re-roofing, but we're not building a 25-year roof here (I hope).

If we were doing a nice roof, I would insist there be metal flashing in the valleys. Of course, the roof we eventually want to put on this house will be metal, not asphalt shingles, so the water running off won't be polluted.

After shingling up the valley, Noel carefully shingled up the side of the bay. Note the nicely trimmed shingles there. Since the roof surface he was working on was so wonky, he used pieces of shingles to shim out the surface so it would drain properly.

As the sun was setting, the dogs and I went out to see how things were going. He was all Freedom Rock-ing it up on the roof, working his way through the packages of shingles methodically.

I admit, I'm not helping because for some reason being on the roof triggers an irrational fear of heights (I never used to have this reaction, so I put it down to being OLD). Not Mr. Monkeypants, though. Apart from having to spend the evening curled up with a heating pad, complaining about his back, Noel seems to suffer no ill effects from bouncing around all over the roof.

Shingling one half of the bay took about three hours today. There's still the North side to do, but that should go somewhat faster.

Technorati Tags: construction, roof

posted by ayse on 11/30/09