Painting upside down and sideways

One of the most challengng areas of the house project has been the dormers. The upstairs windows were a last minute addition to the house (as were the upstairs rooms). The first challenge was how to build the curved roofs and window headers and how to blend them into the big roof. Harold's cew did a great job with those things. The Penfold's roofing crew did a fabulous job putting the recycled rubber roof in place, making sure to keep the lines nice and straight. It took a lot of fiddling to get it right.

Then we sent Harold's crew back up to the roof to fit and install the soffits into these tricky areas. Their mandate was to get things fitting perfectly so no squirrels or other wiggly critters could squeeze into the attick space. Colin, Ryan and Benji did a wonderful job, even taking the time to line up the indents on the corners.

Then it was back in our court. Our crew stapled on the galvanized mesh and squeezed up into that impossible space to apply and carve the concrete. Peter did the bulk of this work and managed to do it without leaving a wide swath of waste concrete on the roof. With our summer crew gone it fell to me to apply the paint to the facias, soffits and walls of the four dormers. The first two on the front were tricky but as long as I moved slow and carefully there were no big issues. The third one which I started today was a slightly different story. Without the lower eyebrow the roof was all 12/12 pitch. That's a 45 degree slope in case you don't understand how pitch is calculated. A roof that steep is hard to stand on without hanging on to something (for dear life) to stop a quick trip to ground level. And that was the easy part. To add a degree of difficulty the hot sun baked the roof to a point that was a bit too warm to touch.

With two roofs coming together and the dormer squeezed into the middle it was necessary to hook my heels over the ridge cap and then lower myself, head first under the soffits to I could see what I was painting. I managed to not get paint on the roofs but I wasn't so lucky. It was my face that was acting as a drop cloth. Matt (who took this picture) was loading my brush when I came up for air. I was determined not to come down until this difficult task was done. We had a late lunch. :)

One more dormer to go...

-grampa dan

Insultation and paint

Today was a day off for most of the crew as it is a national holiday. Hailey came in however. She is down to part time as of last week as she returns to university tomorrow. She continued adding the glazes to the porch trees and made good progress. Only two beams remain to recieve their second to darkest glaze. The trees darken with each glaze and get ever richer in color and detail. Bec masked off the east side of the front of the house and applied the speckles to the rock work. The grout lines is all that remains of the paint work on that half.

The crew from ELEMENT Spray Foam also worked today. They were eager to get started on the spray insulation on this high visibility project. It will take them a couple of weeks to spray all of the ceiling foam in the house. They started at the back of the house in the outside lawn mower room. They sprayed in two inches of foam in with each pass, allowing the layer to offgas before laying in the next thickness. Two inches of foam is enough to act as a vapour barrier by code. Six inches of foam will give us an insulation value of R40 - more than enough to keep us snuck and warm through the coolest winter days. R28 is all that is required by code.

Ryan and Colin got a start on the spray foam in the master bedroom before quitting time. They'll be back tomorrow to continue their work. Tomorrow my help will be limited to Matthew, the only full time help left. We have plenty to keep us busy in spite of having to stay out of the house while the spray foam is being applied. Stay tuned...

-grampa dan

Fiddling on the roof.

Today, being Sunday meant that this was mostly a day off but it was sunny, the temperature perfect and there was no one around to bother me while I did a little job that no one else could do. I decided I would spend some time up on the roof painting the facia, soffits and wall panels of the front dormers. It was a tricky job as the roof is a 10/12 pitch and the space is tight as the two roofs meet. The hard part is to cling to the roof as you reach into the tight areas all manner of contorted positions. It was an interesting way to spend an afternoon. I even managed to paint the necessary areas without getting any paint on the shiney new roof.

Next up I'll begin routing the trim which should be ready to install about the same time as the windows are installed. The painted dormers bring the house one step closer to done.

Tomorrow, the Element Spray Foam crew starts in on the ceiling insulation. Pretty soon we'll switch our efforts to the inside of the house. I can hardly wait!

-grampa dan