No matter how hard you try,…

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today. Sage advice.

I knew I needed more time to finish. I had a plan in place all along to fall back to the July 4th week and take that whole week off. Two weeks should be enough time to finish any project. So I would tear in again and finish this thing off.

First step: I was lazing around the house, thinking it wasn’t time yet to get going on the roof again. My wife, however asked a very innocent question, “Are you working on the roof today?” This got me motivated to get going the week before July 4th. I decided to tear off more shingles.

I removed all shingles up to row 12 like I knew I should and found good roof sheathing the whole way. One thing was evident, the roof deck wasn’t wet like it had been right  at the eaves, at the bottom edge of the roof. The nails weren’t all rusted off with heads missing. Part of the roof deck was rotted through board #5. I fired up my Dremel tool reciprocating saw attachment for the first time. First warning, a Dremel attachment is not a Sawzall, so be patient. Believe it or not It worked! I surgically cut out just the rotted piece. I cut down a replacement board but it was a hair too wide. I ripped it down by 1/8″ with my radial saw and it dropped right in. So the deck was now fully functional, all the shingles were gone. I put down more tar paper and stapled like a madman to make sure it would hold up to the rain. Following my return from a conference for work, on one of those weekends I installed the Grace Ice and Watershield.

July 4th: I worked on nailing down all the drip edges on nailing down the flashing. I also worked on the Vent flashing around the electrical service vent. That required sanding all the rust off. Then I treated it with a rust converter. By 2:30pm that day I painted it with some oil based metal paint I found in the basement. I had also put a sheet of Ice and Watershield on the bottom of the vent flashing to stop-up the nail holes the previous roofers had created. This thing looked like swiss cheese. I counted over 30 holes. I added 2 more nail holes of my own because it wouldn’t lay flat when I installed the shingles. I tried as hard as possible not to damage the vent flashing by piercing it with more nails.I waited until the following day to install the shingles.

I got most of the shingles installed the following day. But I ran out of time with 2 more rows to go for the following Monday. Then Monday morning, big problems were showing up. To my horror that Monday morning I discovered I had installed the shingles the wrong way. I head measured the shingle reveal incorrectly. I was measuring from the bottom instead of the top when snapping my chalk lines. Stupid Me! I was off by 3 inches at the top row of shingles due to the shingles asymetrical ‘reveal’ size. The tabs are much shorter than the tops 5-5/8 inches versus more like 7-1/2 inches I think. I had to split the difference on the last two rows. I was angry for a while. After all the care I had taken I had made such a big mistake. But I kept going. There were also some damaged shingles along the way that I still need to address. Mostly cracks from lifting up and inserting the last row of new shingles under the old shingles at row #12. Roof cement was an initial good move but I need to put down a shingle in those spots to protect the patches from the Sun.

All this time I was also working on the shingles to be nailed up as siding. I had pulled off the cedar shingles in order to remove the roof flashing. The roof change previously had cedar shingles TOUCHING the actual roof shingles. Our roof repair guy, Mr. fixit had run silicone all along that seam at the roof change hoping to stem the flow of water into the roof eave. Removing those siding shingles was difficult. But I looked forward to replacing them with well painted nice new shingles installed properly. What I got was a funny dragon tooth effect. I suck at installing cedar shingles. But I attempted each step of the way to insure everything would shed water properly. It’s not pretty but it will not cause any leaks.

Last of all I needed to close up the eave once and for all time. I had designed this whole procedure over and over in my mind. I decided I needed two soffit vents running the full length of the roof eave. Each vent would be spaced roughly 8 inches from one another. The first one would go as close to the eave edge as possible to let cold air circulate where it would do the most good.

Ice dams may have been the cause of the roof rot to begin with. Preventing ice dams is my biggest concern now. And providing as much freezing cold air to the underside of the roof eave is my only goal now. The space between the vents would be covered by plywood. I wanted something much more substantial than the luan plywood I was replacing. I chose 3/8 inch B/C grade plywood. I had to settle for 2 foot by 4 foot panels as I wasn’t sure I could fit 8 foot long panels into my wife’s car. A real carpenter would not settle for so many seams. Seams are bad. Seams let in the rain, the bugs, the cold. But I compromised and decided two panels cut to the middle and covered over with trim might prove a better, tighter fitting solution than continuous runs of luan.