[*heh* I’m even late posting this. Completed–well, aside from a few minor lil tweaks ‘n’ touchups–last week.]
Well, the roof’s finished, for most values of “finished” given that I will probably be tweaking tiny little things for some time to come, but so slowly that I only got a bronze bagel*:
Some lessons learned or reinforced:
Could NOT have done it w/o some help. TYVM, “crew” (my Wonder Woman, Son&Heir and Lovely Daughter).
Always allow for screwups. I purchased extra lumber and steel panels and trim to allow for that, and that was a Very Good Thing. Very second panel: had to have a hole cut for a plumbing vent and… I cut it wrong. Notaproblem, as I had extra panels and the hole didn’t prevent cutting two end pieces that needed to be 1′ X 16′. I did purchase almost exactly 1/2 the screws I needed to install the purlins, but since a trip to Lowes isn’t a problem for me, no biggie there, either.
Safety, safety, safety. The safety anchors, harness (TYVM for the loan, Joshua and Lovely Daughter!), rope, caribiner and descender I used were sometimes cumbersome, but just one slip was enough for me to be glad I was using them. The two times I neglected to wear gloves when handling the steel panels, I cut my hands. Hot stoves and all that…
Not as young as I used to be. Yeh, well, that’s a lesson most folks eventually learn, eh? 🙂
Using the right tool, correctly, beats repairing work damaged by using the wrong tool. Just sayin’. Spend a little extra for the right tools. (Besides: MORE TOOLS! ;-))
Clean gutters more often. *sigh* Fortunately, we re-prioritized this roofing job and moved it ahead of other things for the house, because I located a 9″ X 14″ section of roof deck (out over the soffit) that was rotted. Yep. Downspout at that location had been plugged up and water had backed up and soaked under the drip edge. No problem to repair, since I had all the lumber I needed to do the job, but it could easily have been worse. Clean gutters more often. (Yes, the gutters had “leaf shields” but they’ve never really worked well.)
*You will recall, I hope, the late 1990s Smuckers Simply Fruit commercial where the young wife offers her husband a Simply Fruit-spread bagel for roofing the house? “A bagel? Just for puttin’ on a roof?!?” *heh*
And, a pic. Note the arrow indicating a stack of boxes of stuff to be donated; siding, etc., not painted yet, and–of course–this is just the part of the roof that’s pretty much over the garage and a wee tad more.
