old man on a roof

[grouch]

This project consumed time and focus like a cow eating clover on the other side of the fence. I fell into a sort of tunnel vision just looking to get the next step done while constantly thinking, "Gotta move; this weather won't hold, rain is coming."

The weather mostly held and now I'm going to tell this tale. I know there are lots of folks here who think of doing it themselves first and hiring it done comes second, third or farther down the list.

Sometime while putting the roof on this thing I never should have built in the first place, I remember thinking, "If I don't fall off of here and break my neck, and it doesn't fall apart, I'll be back up here re-roofing in my 60s." Well, I'm pretty sure I survived, and the house is still standing, and those shingles were starting to look ragged, so the job seemed ripe.

Remember VHS tapes? Screenshots from a recording made one morning while waiting for the sun to straighten out wrinkles in the roofing felt:










Those are either 25 year or 30 year fiberglass / asphalt shingles. Either way, the warranty is not quite up, but I had a plan for getting steel roofing up there while I'm still able.

The house is 36 ft x 52 ft with a 2nd story of 36 ft x 40 ft. The main roof is a simple gable at 6:12 pitch with 2 ft overhang both sides and 1 ft overhang at the gables. It's 19 ft from ground to soffit on the back side. A deck roof sticks out in the way on the front.

When I was young and foolishyet, I relied on pucker power and being nimble to shingle that roof.  I don't have those features any more. I needed something to keep me on the roof in order to be able to put the roof on -- a fence on the front and scaffolding in the back.

[rjwoelk]

I am on my way east with a genie lift ,will that work. ;D.
I think you may need to get in line Brad barb was interested in using it as well.

[tree-farmer]

Looking at a similar situation, 18 yrs on a 25 yr shingle. You mentioned going to steel, would you need to remove  shingles first?
Anyone have experience with leaving shingles vs removing them when putting on metal roofing?
In any case be safe, a 19 foot fall or more would be a life changing or ending event. Old bones do not bounce.

[69bronco]

Looking at a similar situation, 18 yrs on a 25 yr shingle. You mentioned going to steel, would you need to remove  shingles first?
Anyone have experience with leaving shingles vs removing them when putting on metal roofing?
In any case be safe, a 19 foot fall or more would be a life changing or ending event. Old bones do not bounce.

No need to strip if your going over with steel. You should however put down a break between the two. We always used furring strips, they also make a (z) purlin in steel. The expansion and contraction of the steel rubbing on shingles will actually cause it to rust from the backside.

[21incher]

I got 24 years out of a 25 year roof. Last year I had it replaced and it did not cost much more to have it replaced by a roofing company then if I had done it myself. The new shingles come with a 50 year warranty. Ill never have to worry about them again.

[grouch]

Judging by the responses so far (thanks all!) I goofed in the opening post; the main roof is on at this time. It's going to take some time to get the photos and descriptions up, but the part that had me worried and somewhat desperate is over.

I am on my way east with a genie lift ,will that work. ;D.
I think you may need to get in line Brad barb was interested in using it as well.

Thanks, but I googled that and that thing's too tall and spindly for me!

Looking at a similar situation, 18 yrs on a 25 yr shingle. You mentioned going to steel, would you need to remove  shingles first?
Anyone have experience with leaving shingles vs removing them when putting on metal roofing?
In any case be safe, a 19 foot fall or more would be a life changing or ending event. Old bones do not bounce.

Some steel roofing manufacturers specify shingles have to be removed, most don't, but all that I've researched require some type of cushioning material between the shingles and steel. Most common (cheapest) is 30 lb roofing felt. There are also various insulating materials that can be put down to help reduce heat gain in the attic as well as protect the steel from the shingles.

You don't want more than 2 layers of roofing, so if you already have 2 layers of shingles, you may as well remove them all before installing steel. That would let you inspect your roof deck for damage, too.

BTW, almost half of fatal falls in construction are from less than 20 feet.

[grouch]

The first thing I needed to do was modify my scaffolding. I'd already built 20 ft of scaffold to rebuild and roof my son's deck.



5 ft on the deck, 15 ft to the right in this photo:


Note the 15 ft part is on a 2x6 track. That worked for the nearly level area outside his basement. It would be a royal pain to make and level such a track on the slope behind my house. I needed wheels and outriggers.





Replaced my stack of washers with spacers cut from 1/2 inch (trade size) pipe:

[grouch]

Cross bracing on scaffolding is not generally designed for resisting the jolts of moving around on rough ground.





And some outriggers...












I wanted the ends closed, but not at the very end.








And except for adding a trailer jack to each outrigger, the scaffold was ready:

[thecfarm]

Sounds better than old man on the ground.

[grouch]

After the scaffolding and other than ordinary work that always needs doing, I just had to wait for roofing weather.





and wait...





and wait...




(The weird colors are because that's a night shot. That was intended to be a garden instead of a swamp).

Even the 4th of July:




Now I know lots of roofers who seem to ignore the heat. I can't. August didn't cool until near the end:

[grouch]

Sounds better than old man on the ground.

I want you to know that I had an expert at climbing supervising the scaffold modifications:


Or maybe she was just hypnotized by the welding.

[grouch]

First thing you do when you want to install steel roofing is buy about 1650 lbs of lumber, right?





That quikrete is there because the load was almost perfectly balanced without it. I didn't want to pull an active see-saw down the road.

I have a truck. I bought it, it's registered in my name, I just don't get to use it. My truck stays hitched to my son's fishing boat. I think he just likes the numbers -- he's a 1981 model year, driving a 1980 Dodge D150, pulling a 1979 Ranger. Oh well, the little HF trailer has a higher payload anyway.

And we're off...


Some 6x6x16 posts

[grouch]

Needs more lumber:


(That dog has ordered something. He has to check out every bag, box or trailer of stuff that arrives).

See? Not what he ordered.


You can see that I listened to that spider.

[grouch]

At this point there was a mishap that derailed things for a while.

Just before Christmas of 2015, the big dog, Marshall, tore his left cruciate ligament while chasing a deer. That's pretty much the equivalent of a human's ACL. My wife and I both rejected surgery because of the uncertain outcomes and lack of independent studies of the results. (Almost all reports I could find are by the surgeons who benefit from it). He had almost fully recovered, even trotting occasionally, after nearly a year of reduced activity and diet.

Late on Sept 29, 2016 I heard him yelp for only the second time ever. I think he stepped in a hole, but can't be sure. He couldn't stand at all. He tried to drag himself across the yard. It was getting near dark and I was not about to leave him out there. I've never been without a dog, but Marshall is only the 2nd one I've ever allowed in my house. The previous one was 34 years earlier and about 235 pounds lighter.

I found a 3 ft x 4 ft piece of 1/4 inch plywood, drilled some holes around the perimeter and coaxed him up on it. I strapped him to it with ratchet tie-downs, put a loop of polypropylene baling twine in a hole in the end of the plywood and used a crowbar to pull it along like poling a barge or pirogue. That was too slow and scary for him, so I hitched a come-along and pulled him up the rest of the way across the yard, past the construction area and up on the porch. Cardboard boxes provided a bearing surface.

She calls him, "my baby".


That night, he tried desperately to get to the door, peed in the floor, and was so shamed by it he refused to come back inside for 3 days and nights. He spent that time in my garage. I made a trail of rubber stall mats and cardboard boxes for him to drag himself out to the yard and back to do his business.

It was awful watching him drag himself around.



For a long time, he could only stand when I helped by putting my hands between his hind legs and lifting. He also needed help walking during that time. He outweighs me by about 100 pounds, but he doesn't give up.

By Oct 5, he was able to stand while urinating, twice. By the 19th, he climbed on the couch without help, 3 times. On Nov 11, he walked a lap around the pond but had to stop to rest 9 times. His hackles were up the whole time so he was moving by pure determination.

[Ox]

Loving the pics, thx for sharing

[grouch]

Back to building the fortress...

Two posts were 6x6 x 16 ft, the others were 6x6x12 and 6x6x8. Everything is braced in 2 directions using 2x6x8s, 2x6x10s and 2x6x16s.


Strange place to put a rail fence. The mail carrier asked if I was adding on to my house. Looks a bit flimsy for that. It just has to stop an old man using the roof as a sliding board. The bottom rails were screwed on while standing on the deck roof. That gave me a place to brace against as I added 2nd and 3rd rails to each successive section, starting at the head of that long ramp.


The 6:12 ramp was completed 2016-10-14.


The ramp itself acts as the diagonal bracing for the four 6x6x8 posts. A fifth 6x6x8 is laid horizontally on bricks for the foot of the ramp to rest on. Between the ramp rails are 2x4s on 2 ft centers.

The location of the ramp was dictated by (1) that box elder tree and (2) a clear space between my wife's flowers. Strangely, those flower beds are a higher priority than a roof over head. It still worked out nicely for 8 ft spans between pairs of posts.


I had originally planned to put up just 2 rails above the eave. When I got up there, it was obvious it would be easy to slide down the steel roofing and flip right over the 2nd rail. So I added a 2x6x10 on the other side of each 2x6x8 upright, and screwed a 3rd rail on.

Here's a crop of one of the above pictures that may show what I mean. (Please ignore the algae).


Planning for this contraption began with planning for a garage extension and a place to shelter sawmill, tractor and implements. That morphed into plans for 2 garage extensions instead of a separate building. I worked backwards from those plans to what kind of safety railing and ramp could be built and re-use the lumber.

If you squint just right and maybe use a couple of mirrors, you can see those garage extensions in the pictures. Ok, it might need sleep deprivation or some adult beverages to see it, but it's there!

[coxy]

i remember the first metal roof i did you had to nail well i started sliding and slammed the claws of the hammer through the metal roof i never fell off but after that someone else put the rest of it on 

[grouch]

i remember the first metal roof i did you had to nail well i started sliding and slammed the claws of the hammer through the metal roof i never fell off but after that someone else put the rest of it on 

Would that have been 5v roofing or the corrugated stuff?

First I ever nailed was corrugated and was nearly a flat pitch. Used the old lead head nails for that. The 5v is easier to slide on, even if you hook the side of your shoe sole on the nail heads. My mother's house has that on it.

[grouch]

View from the top with a stack of 23 ft steel roofing at the foot of the ramp:


Other side, 20+ ft scaffold sticking up:






Missing a football game on in the garage:


A long way to drag 28 sheets of metal:

[grouch]

First sheet up the ramp:


3/8 inch fiberglass rods jammed between the rails to keep the sheet I was dragging from scratching the sheet below it:


First sheet went on the far side, starting at the end away from prevailing winds:


A makeshift jig to help align the next sheet:


My son teaches and coaches and has 2 pre-school toddlers, but he managed to be there at critical times. One such time was to unload the roofing from a trailer to that ramp. Another was getting that first sheet aligned. It would have been much tougher and slower to have to clamp it, move down to the scaffold, adjust and repeat.

I'm not sure what each panel weighed, but they were unwieldy at best, especially crossing over the ridge. I dragged them up the roof on cardboard to avoid scratches to the underside. (Roofing felt wasn't on the front side at this time. Traction).

[grouch]

It took 3 days to staple the 30 lb roofing felt on the east side, snap chalk lines, make a chicken ladder, remove ridge vent and fully screw down 5 sheets of roofing. Each sheet was dragged the full length of the ramp, one at a time. That had to change.

I'd already had a longer stretch of fair weather than was reasonable to expect -- even the wind hadn't gotten above 5 mph.

Then it rained, followed by wind gusts of 15 mph. But only for 1 day.

The whole stack inching up the ramp, courtesy of a 2 inch tie-down strap (3335 lb w.l.l.), some 3/8 inch chain, a 1900 lb capacity boat winch with wire rope, a come-along, a maple tree and some cardboard:




Can you see the wire rope and chain?


Whole stack to the eave:






There's the hook end of the 2 inch strap with a cardboard cushion:


No more crab-walking up those blasted 2x4s two feet apart while dragging a 23 ft sheet of steel one-handed:

That's the top of the maple tree in the background. The wire rope on the boat winch goes over the ridge, hooks to a 3/8 chain which hooks to a 1/2 inch chain which wraps around the trunk of that tree.

The edges of my cardboard track for dragging sheets up the roof were starting to curl from the rain the day before. Had to re-staple. Only stepped on that once and didn't fall or let the sheet go back down the hill much.

[coxy]

in the first pics I was wondering what heck you where building  :D but I understand now and I would have never though of that  when my dad did the roof for the house we picked it up with the log loader the first few units was a pain till we got it right on the last few units  but that's the way it goes    are you done with it or just start it  the metal I nailed was the same as your using    the nails was a lot cheaper  for a young guy with his first kid on the way now every thing gets screwed much easer to take apart when you mess up and I do it a lot never clamed to be a carpenter and never will :D :D

[grouch]

coxy:

Nothing I have would lift that metal high enough to get it on the roof. I had to go ancient Egyptian and build a ramp. I just used wood instead of sand and mud.

That last photo was taken 2016-10-28. During the time this was going on, I had blinders on. Weather and that roof totally occupied me from the time I'd get up until the time I went to bed. Normally when I grab my camera, I take photos of everything that catches my eye on the way to whatever made me grab the camera. There are hardly any photos of anything but that roof for that whole time period.

I used an impact driver for running the screws in. I've seen people use drywall screwguns and rely on the clutch setting, but that usually results in over tightened, under tightened and broken screws. Every screw in this roof was run in until the rubber washer touched, then backed out to let everything relax, then run in until the washer compressed properly. There's no substitute for a person's eyeball and judgment for some jobs, in my opinion.

Well, until they make a cheap robot that measures torque and the bulge of the washer while running in the screw. Even then, I'd want somebody (who has an interest in the job) watching the robot.

[grouch]

The day after getting the stack to the top of the ramp was Saturday and my son was on the scaffold helping align sheets most of the day. Got 7 sheets put on that day. 4 were only partially screwed down -- I wanted to get as many aligned and 'tacked' as possible while he was there. Not even pictures from that day.

My ox was in the ditch, so I finished off the east side on Sunday and started the felt on the west side.



My homemade scaffold in all its glory:


And the outriggers...

What? You don't have any clutter in your back yard?
All the wheels were off the ground. The outrigger in the lower left of the picture is sitting on a 9x10 block that's sitting on a pair of 6x6s with some 2xsomething chunks at their ends. Scaffold was level, plumb and more stable than any I've worked from.

A strip of plastic was used to close up the ridge vent at night.
That lump in the middle of the ridge is where my "Fall Protection Kit" is anchored to the trusses inside with a 1/2 inch log chain.


I used 3/4 inch pipe insulation tied to the rails of the chicken ladder to avoid scratches. The ladder is anchored to the railing at the eave of the other side of the roof.


Pretty straight:


The anchor rope (actually, 2; I like redundancy) passes through the hollow rung of the ladder.


That dimpling is not caused by overtightened screws; it's from the shingles underneath. Some people object to that look and remove the shingles first. From the ground, you have to be looking for it to notice. Doesn't bother me at all.


That oak tree is an old buddy. Was practically a sapling when we moved here.


Screws are 24 inches on center, eave to ridge, measured and marked but *not* pre-drilled. Drilling the holes can cause leaks and damage the coating from heat and chips. Manufacturer claims graphite pencil marks can lead to corrosion, so a Sharpie was used for marking.


Any one of the 12 strands holding that lower ladder section to the upper could hold my weight.


Hmph. Bad photographer. I swear that lump is what anchored my fall protection rope and harness.


Ok, a distraction from the (other) bad photography -- shot looking down from the scaffold:


That's a 3v 3/8 geodesic dome with 11.82 ft radius (close enough for me to 24 ft diameter), made out of 3/4 inch conduit. My wife hangs plants from it. I just wanted to build one. The maroon thing is yet another project: 1984 Mercedes 300D turbo diesel. The engine is interesting to me. Don't care about the rest of it.

[Ox]

Love the country engineering and safety factors.  Roof looks great, too.

5 cylinder turbo diesel Mercedes - reported to be a 500,000 mile engine with proper maintenance.

I'm also partial to certain trees.  I've got an old black cherry close to the house that looks like hell warmed over but I refuse to cut him down.  He's my buddy.  Now and then some deer will come out in the fall and nibble on the little black fruits that fall off from him.  He stood up to the straight line 70+ MPH gust from the last storm so he can stay.  :laugh:

Where did you get the fittings to put your dome together?  It's very interesting to me... I'd like to know more about it.  Plans?  Just put together from your mind?  How strong?  If you covered it would it hold up to a couple foot deep snow load?

[grouch]

Love the country engineering and safety factors.  Roof looks great, too.

Thanks!

5 cylinder turbo diesel Mercedes - reported to be a 500,000 mile engine with proper maintenance.

That's the one. It has bad injector knock until it warms up. I've tried replacing a nozzle, but me and flat copper washers have never gotten along. Now it blows bubbles around the base of that injector.

Where did you get the fittings to put your dome together?  It's very interesting to me... I'd like to know more about it.  Plans?  Just put together from your mind?  How strong?  If you covered it would it hold up to a couple foot deep snow load?

No fittings -- I crushed the ends of the conduit with an arbor press, drilled, and bolted.



Plans (sorta):

3V dome calculator.
I used 4.875 ft in the C position so I could get 2 pieces of each type from a 10 ft stick of EMT. (The C struts are the longest). That's 4 ft 10-1/2 inches center to center of the bolt holes. Add 3/4 inch to each end and that makes the cut length 5 ft even. I used a 1-1/2 inch diameter disc of mild steel to crush the ends in the press. Made for a stronger end than a squared crush. BTW, I used a 2 ft cheater on the bar of a HF arbor press and it didn't flinch.

Conduit Dome Tips. That has a wealth of info, including assembly diagrams.

As for strength, I can hang from any of those nodes without sign of bending. That 3/4 inch conduit would likely bend if I tried that between nodes. I wouldn't worry about a snow load on it. Tarp, canvas or plywood triangles, I think it'd hold up fine.

[Ox]

Cool!  Thanks very much for the info.  Your half round crimping makes sense and I doubt I would have thought of it.

[grouch]

Crimping and drilling all those ends took the most time even though I set up jigs for each operation. I cut them in batches of 10 by banding them together with hose clamps and using a metal cutting bandsaw. It needs some kind of cover now.

[grouch]

An ominous looking cloud


Ugh. Glad I don't have to carry any more rolls of that roofing felt up 2 ladders and then the roof.


Felt all stapled down. I used a pneumatic stapler -- Surebonder something-or-other -- for this job. Got tired of having to buy a new slap stapler (hammer tacker?) every time I needed to staple felt, plastic, whatever.




I thought I had a picture of the fall harness, but couldn't find one. Here's a full crop from that last photo:

First time I've ever used one of those things. That rope clips to the back of a harness. It won't stop you from falling; it just "arrests" the fall so you don't have that possibly fatal sudden stop. That assumes you keep the rope grab caught up with you so you don't end up with enough free rope to hit the ground.

It interfered with working far less than I expected. It was well worth the price of having it while I was working on the east side of the roof.

[Ox]

The hammer stapler you mentioned reminded me of a funny story:  I was helping the old man years ago roofing the small carriage barn, now used for parking his car and mower and firewood.  We were putting down the felt for shingles (I hate shingles but couldn't talk him out of shingling this and the entire big barn) and he was swinging that hammer stapler all over the place random like and I saw a wrinkle in the felt as he was getting to that area and quick swiped at it with my hand to flatten it and in perfect unison my hand and that hammer stapler met in the same place.  I quick pulled my hand back and looked and laughed.  That big old 1/2" staple was completely embedded in the back of my right hand, pushing the skin down hard and made it look funny.  The two prongs of the staple had missed the tendons, but were straddling my middle finger tendon just perfectly.  Well, almost perfect, I think it nicked that tendon a bit.  It was so tight in there I couldn't get ahold of it to pull it out so I had to use a utility knife blade to get under it.  Just two dots of blood and not much pain, but felt funny there for a few days when I used my fingers which made me believe it might have nicked that tendon a bit.  No infections.  Good story to tell if I remember it when I'm old on my porch rocker.

I'm enjoying following your project with your pics.  Thanks for taking the time.

[grouch]

Ow. That hurts me just reading your description. Good that you can look back and laugh at it, though. We all tend to ignore any injury that doesn't stop us from working, but that's not always a good thing.

Puncture wounds, especially, can go rotten in a hurry. Everything on the outside is suddenly pushed to the inside and trapped there. (Google cat bites if you want to see some horror stories).

[grouch]

Couple of details I left out before:

The fiberglass rods I used at the start to separate the sheets were scuffing both the underside of the sheet I was dragging and the top side of the next sheet in the stack. I switched to clamping a piece of cardboard to the tail of the sheet of roofing and slipping another piece of cardboard under the mid-point. Lifting the upper end to drag it left only cardboard in contact with the remaining stack.

The clamps were some little plastic ratcheting squeeze clamps that my wife had bought sometime, somewhere. She has this habit of buying little tools for me on a whim. Sometimes she gets junk; sometimes she finds jewels.

These little clamps (you can hide one in your hand) looked pretty useless to me at the time she brought them home. They were perfect for this task -- didn't scratch, applied only as much pressure as I wanted to squeeze, the handles held the very end of the metal up off the next one, and they slid off as the end of the sheet came off the end of the stack.

Another detail I forgot to mention before is that I swept that shingle roof with a shop broom several times. It was like trying to walk on BB's. The amount of loose granules scattered over the roof was pretty amazing. Sweeping made walking more comfortable whether or not it makes any difference to the roofing felt.

[grouch]

There were wind gusts the day after that last photo. That was only the 2nd day the weather didn't cooperate. Revised my chicken ladder from one that hangs to one that stands -- feet of the ladder against the bottom rail. Got 3 sheets screwed down when the gusts died down. Got 4 sheets plus 16 ft of ridge vent the next day. Since the ridge vent is aluminum, I put a strip of self-adhesive flashing on the bottom so it and the steel roofing wouldn't fight over who gets to turn to rust fastest.

Dreary sky, threat of rain. Halfway point on the west slope:




Weather had changed a bit since the start:


The ramp is empty:




Only half the ridge vent up, the rest is covered in plastic:


Can't use the fall protection kit if you can't anchor it. The ridge vent was installed from the chicken ladder. Late dew kept me twiddling my thumbs for a while on 2 mornings.

[grouch]

Some disassembly required. Top rails from the roof, rest from below.












Let it rain, sleet, snow, hail or drop custard pies from the sky; I'm off that roof. With a 40 year warranty, I shouldn't have to repeat this. Let the next guy deal with the sliding board.

I still have to do trim and the two other roofs, but those are R&R by comparison. I've already made hillside legs for a section of my scaffolding. That will go up on the north 6:12 roof to do the gable trim, then I'll adjust it for 5:12 pitch and set it on the south deck roof to do the gable trim at that end. (North is left in the above photos).

Done with that worry.

[Ox]

  Well done - you don't mess around - kickin' butts and takin' names...

[grouch]

Thanks Ox!

I was just reviewing the thread to see if I'd left anything out and saw your reply. (In the house stretching lunch to avoid going back out in the heat).

[Ox]

Yeah - it's darn hot right now.  I can swing it up to about 83 or so but when it's 92 it's just too much for me.  Can't breathe good, I'm a born sweater and will sweat while I'm shivering and so I just get dehydrated while guzzling water and salt.  Just too much, can't hack it.

I can't believe how quick you're doing that job, with all the scaffolding and everything.  It'd take me twice as long, easy.  When I said well done, I meant it!  It was quick and it looks great.  You'll have no worries until you die I reckon.  40 year warranty don't mean it'll fail at 40, just that it'll still look new at 40! I'm betting it'll do 100 years pretty good, maybe with a few coatings like the old barn roofs.

[grouch]

It's 92f where you're at today? I'm gonna quit complaining. It's 84 here, fairly nice in the shade with a breeze. Just the sun cooks my brain when I get out in it.

I started raising the posts 2016-09-21 and took 'em down 2016-11-12. Most of this was a one-man show. I had better weather than any reasonable person could hope for -- rain and wind stopped work 3 days during that whole period. The rest of the time had mild winds up to 10 mph, most days just 5 mph.

That ramp was the easiest, quickest and safest way I could come up with to raise 23 ft long x 29 gauge roofing that high without kinking, single-handed. You wouldn't believe some of the hair-brained schemes I came up with and thankfully rejected. The idea of a long ramp came to me one day when I was kneeling by the grapevine looking at the roof, thinking about the job. I noticed I could just bend down a little and sight flat along the slope from eave to ridge. If I can't bring the stack to the roof, bring the roof down to the stack.

[Ox]

Hillbilly engineering.  I'm a hillbilly too, just not smart enough to do what you did.

Somehow I got mixed up and thought you were doing that job now, not last year.  It don't matter, the well done still stands.

Yeah, it was hotter here than in Texas today and yesterday.  One of those weird things that happens now and again in the north.  Thank God tomorrow will be back to the high 60s.  I can hack that just fine.  Got some sawmilling to do and I'm behind 2 days now cause of the recent heat.  Good thing I ain't getting paid or I might get fired!

[grouch]

When I do the rest of the roof, I'll update this thread as it goes on. The blinders and tunnel vision are over. I wish I could adequately describe the relief felt when that last section of ridge vent was screwed down. Normally fall is the rainy season here. Every day I expected rain to set in and last until winter. I wasn't even reading FF, just listening to NOAH weather radio.

I wish I was only behind 2 days on *anything*. Got in some mowing after moving that arch experiment. Didn't get finished. Hoping to get the arch blocked up before the heat gets bad, and finish mowing late tomorrow. In between, maybe I can saw a little.