Nick doing graffiti

Nick got did a little graffiti before we finished the top. He was thrilled to be up so high. But actually where he is standing, he's only about 5 feet from roof below.

How to work on a sloped roof

I've been too lazy to post anything for a couple of months.

I spent a lot of time worrying how we were going to work on the side of the house above the garage. After all, how to you set up a ladder on an uneven roof and keep it from slipping or damaging the roof?

Finally I came up with this setup. We just used sheets of 1/4" plywood with some 2x4's screwed in horizontally. There are two 4x8 sheets of plywood on the left side and one sheet on the right since the house stops there. Since I crossed them and screwed them together at the top with 2x4's, they couldn't slide either direction.

It was a lot safer working this way. I didn't have to worry about damaging the roof dropping tools and all of the walking we did up there. It kept tools from sliding down (notice the red compressor near the bottom and the nail gun near the top).

In the next two pictures, you can see how the ladder is secured and how it kept tools from sliding down.

It feels higher than you might think.

The Other Side

You can barely make out the right section of the house here, ironically on the left side of this picture. This is the section we've been working on lately (picture is before we did any work on the front).

Years ago I had to replace the gable vent (in the lower picture), but it was too high to reach from the outside, so I did it from inside the attic. After ripping out the broken old vent, I mounted some boards to the back of the vent and ran some boards across to the studs from the inside. I know, that tells you nothing. I had to widen the hole by about 1/4 inch, so I used a 4" battery powered circular saw. Since there were studs in the way of the saw's sole plate, I had to hold the saw on the outside of the house, while I was on the inside. Confused yet? That means the blade was facing me, and spewing dust everywhere. I was bracing myself to not fall out of the hole when my hand slipped and it hit the spinning blade. It was a nice little cut, but not deep. Phew!! Just blood poured out, no meat.

Due to the angle of the roof, the traditional pump jacks or ladders didn't seem to be a good idea. I was concerned about how to do the siding up this high. A light went off solving that problem and I'll share it in my next post.

Lower Walkboards

These are a couple of pics from before we finished the front of the house showing our adjustable walkboards (extended to the full 14').

Unlike our work on the side, we didn't use any platforms on the upper work on the front, and we didn't use the pump jacks at all. You can see how we used step ladders and the walkboards to get a higher work surface.. On the other side, we set one of our workbenchs on saw horses to reach lower rows of boards.

You can see that I can reach the first 3-4 rows. With taller setp ladders, we could've worked higher, but we were able to use extension ladders for everything else. Since there were a lot of windows at the top, working from ladders instead of platforms made more sense. Work is easy when you're working between windows because all of the boards are cut to the same length, and you don't have to worry about butt joints hitting on studs.

Also notice that we ripped out the old soffit, which was made of the same cardboard like material as other "boards". I put a bunch of new insulation into the overhang since that's floor space right above it. When we get all of this done, I think we'll see a little difference in engergy consumption from all the insulation, foam board, caulk and Tyvek we're using.

Front done - 3 days work

The in-law's came to visit, so I took advantage. Tony (father-in-law), my dad and I worked for about 3.5 days.

Here's the "before" picture. I've already got a walkboard set up on the left.

I think Dad is scraping old caulk. Since we were focused on getting siding up while Tony was here, we didn't completely re-work the window yet (caulk, reapaint, etc), but we had to get the outsides cleaned and painted to put siding against it. You can see my mom tearing off siding on the right. She enjoys demolition, and I think she'd like to manage this project since she's always wanting to give advice. We're usually too stubborn to listen. Sorry, Mom.

We're putting up this 1/4" polystyrene board on top of the blackboard and then we cover it with Tyvek, taped at the seams. The blue board, as we call it, comes in pieces about 4'x50', folded every 2 feet (for about $34). It only provides about R1 insulation, but it also brings the new siding out a bit, which works better around the windows. It's probably overkill to have both Tyvek and blueboard, but you can't seal around corners with blue board.

That's Tony, Dad and about to put up the last board.

It looks much better! But, there's a lot still to do.

We left a lot of details incomplete because we just wanted to get the siding up. We have to replace the ~1x8" board that runs against the house just below the eves (Is that also called a fascia?), replace the soffit under the 2nd floor bump out, paint (and eventually replace) all soffits, eaves and gutters, do some work around the downstairs windows, etc. Still plenty to do. Everything takes longer than you expect.

You can see the new insulation that I added under the upstairs bump-out. The insulation was really lame. I hope it's worth it.

Finishing the side

Here's an update on the siding project, and some unusual pictures. I haven't been posting much, so these pictures are at least two weeks old.

This is a weird sight to see out of your window.

And then there's this just outside the window...

This stuff kicks up a lot of nasty dust. Sometimes I'd rather dress like a fool in garbage bags than get that stuff all over me and in my hair. I don't care how stupid it looks, but I guess it is a little embarassing since it loks like I'm in a plastic dress. Here I'm cutting a strip of siding off of the front, near the corner so we can wrap Tyvek all the around the corner (we're still working on the side of the house). I nailed up one of the old corner boards to use as a guide. It makes a much neater cut than freehand off a ladder.


You can see the Nick and me on the ladder jacks on the 14 ft. aluminum walkboard on the left. On the right is a pair of pump jacks with a 14 ft. aluminum walkboard and a wooden workbench. I can't imagine doing this without walkboards.

I don't let them up the ladders often, but Nick is bringing me a tool here. They love to climb.

The whole side is actually completed, except for the facia. I haven't been able to get by Home Depot to get the 16' boards yet.

Status - no pics

A couple of days ago we finished the upstairs prep work (painting, caulking, new end boards, etc.) We put up some blue board on the upper portion two days ago (1/4 foam board - R1) and Dad finished it yesterday. Last night we went to pick up a used joiner for Dad (thanks to craigslist.org).

Today we picked up another ladder, put up the Tyvek, and set up the ladder jacks. So, tomorrow we should be able to start putting up boards again.

Above the windows we have to remove the boards, replace the gable vent, replace and paint the new gable soffit boards, put up tyvek and then put up the rest of the boards. Then, on to the front of the house.

Leftovers

HardiPlank cost $1000 delivered from Home Depot for what they call 1/2 pallet (I just call it a pallet) of 108 prepainted planks. Each 12 foot board with 6 inch reveal covers 6 square feet, so the pallet covers 648 square feet. It'll take about 3 pallets for our house, maybe 4.

I think my dad's house took 3 pallets with 30 full length boards left over. He posted his leftover planks on craigslist.org and had a buyer the next day. But the guy backed out because his wife wants him to build a 2 car garage instead of residing his one car garage. Dad re-posted and he had another buyer the next day, and this one showed up and hauled them away. We were all surprised. Had they not sold, we would have used them on our shed.

Got Gas?

Last fall, the gas compnay replaced of the gas lines in our neighborhood. They did HORRIBLE work on our house. The yard looked terrible. All of the roots they left sticking out of ground looked like dead people sticking their boney hands out of the ground. Around the meter, we had a couple of inches of decorative rocks instead of plants or mulch. But they turned them into the ground, so now I have rocky soil that I can't plant in either. They left trash in the yard. Shoveled dirt onto the AC pad (a little getting on the AC unit). They broke the pipe inside the house when reconnecting the meter. Then, they cut this extra large hole in the siding. How am I supposed to keep water, or rats from entering this hole? Gee, they were nice enough to put some white fluffy stuff for the rats to use as bedding.

If I hadn't been planning to replace the siding this year, I would'v been upset. I was mostly bothered by the slopiness compared to the work they did on most of the houses in the neighborhood.

Improvise

Whatever the project, you'd better schedule time to improvise. This was our second little problem that came up (first being the no-insulation place where the fireplace would have been - earlier post).

This was shimmed out because on the other side of this corner board, it meets the brick on the front of the house, but the bricks weren't parallel with the wall. We decided to fill the gap and caulk it since from the front the problem would be more obvious. The dust on the boards really shows. This stuff blows a lot of dust when you cut it, so wear a mask or hold your breath during short cuts.

Now we have a big problem. I had two pallets of Hardi Plank (fiber cement board) running along the driveway. The boards slowly began sliding down the hill. At first I put a door in front of them and two garbage cans full of water. That slowed it down a lot (lasted for a month), but it finally gave way and as you can see, boards slid off completely. Also you can see mid-way up, under the stack are some bricks where I had jacked it up a little when I first noticed it sliding - oops not enough.

Four at a time, we moved the worse stack to a new pallet that we fortunately had from my dad's house.

This is what we ended up with. We jacked th heck out of it until it was level, or just a little high on this side. We jacked up the other pallet with a hydrolic jack. They hadn't slid off quite as much. But, I hurt my back trying to slide large numbers of boards back into place.

Cheaper than curtains.

I may have discovered a cheaper solution than those expensive curtains my wife wants to buy. This lets light in and provides privacy at the same time.

We added the corner board, but we added tyvek all the way up around the corner first. We had to cut away a narrow strip of siding on the back side fo the house (not shown) to do this.

Finally! It's starting to take shape. I love it when a plan comes together.

Siding project started

We finally started work replacing the siding of our 1968 house. We're using HardiPlank, factory painted Woodstock Brown. The material lasts 50 years and is repaintable, unlike most vinyl siding. The factory paint is guaranteed against cracks and peeling for 15 years. Anyway, here's the story.

It didn't take long before we found this spot with NO insulation.

After opening it up, we concluded that it's where the second fireplace would have gone had the buyer chosen this option. We added insulation and insulation board and it was as better than new. But what else will we find?