The Roof Saga Begins

(Please note that this work actually took place in December of 2011.)

Before we even moved in we were aware that our roof leaked.

There were obvious water stains in the master bedroom. If you look carefully at this picture you can see were the wall on the right has been water damaged and repaired.

Up on the roof Dan could spot the problem areas rather quickly. This picture was taken while standing on the roof looking toward the front of the house. The master bath is under the raised section covered with the silver corrugated roofing material. Beyond the master bath, under the same raised corrugated roof section, is what we call the guest bath.

This photo was taken while standing over the kitchen,

 looking toward the back of the house and the 'sunset room'.

 The previous owner told us that she had to go up every winter and patch the roof with "Henry's roof patch". Hmmm...seems like a band-aid when actually what is needed is surgery!

Looking down on that same raised roof.

This lines up with the master bedroom wall that shows water damage.

Because we knew the rains were coming soon we decided that we needed to work on a quick solution that would prevent further water damage. Then we could work on replacing the whole roof in the spring or summer.

Dan decided to do two things to minimize the chance of further damage. First, he would tear off all of the damaged siding and build a small eve or overhang to minimize the water running down onto (and probably behind) the siding.

Second, he put in some temporary flashing and new siding.

So, here is a photo of the eve that Dan and my brother-in-law built.

It has an overhang of about 1 foot.

You might also notice that he put down new flashing on top of the old roofing.

He sealed it to the roofing using this stuff. It has a foil 'face' and the other side is kind of a rubber-tar that the guy at Home Depot said would definitely stick. 

Being winter, it was pretty cold when Dan was working on this project. Since it was important to work with this tape while it was warm, he heated up the rolls in front of the fireplace.

Here is a close up of the flashing held in place

(roofing nails in the rough siding and the patch tape on the roofing).

He then put a layer of 30# tar paper over the rough siding and flashing. He re-used the old siding if it was not too water damaged. He did trim it a little so that the edge of the siding would not come in contact with rain water flowing down the flashing.

This photo shows the previous water damage and how much he trimmed off.

Here is a close up of the new siding section.

Remember, this was a temporary fix so we weren't going for pretty,

just effective (his words, not mine).

Here are a couple of shots of the finished work.

And good news! We went through the whole rainy season without any leaks...

in this section of the roof anyway...

Dan has been hard at work lately and the roof has changed greatly over the past several weeks. Stay tuned!

Well... thank you for reading and goodbye for now...

Ivy...Begin the takedown!

As you may have noticed in previous pictures, the front of our property has little or no Curb Appeal. As one drives up to the house all you can see is the roof, the wood fence, and the huge amounts of ivy covering the fence. Early on we cut away the ivy from the edges of the gate, but the entrance to the courtyard is well disguised. It's way past time to open up the space...

 This was taken while standing in the street.

The little bit of wood you see on the left is the main gate to our front courtyard.

This one was taken from just inside the main gate off the street. To the left is the old shed - one day it will be rebuilt but for now it stands almost as we found it. To the right (perpendicular to the photographer) is a fence with a gate. Going through the gate - which was always open - takes us past the front of the house and around to the side doors. Straight ahead you can see the huge ivy that is taking over the world. A few weeks ago Dan, Jen and I spent about 4 hours (that's 12 'man' hours!) taking down part of the ivy...only the part that runs between this gate and the shed - about 5 feet wide by about 8 feet high and 3-4 feet deep. Yes, really.

Here we have taken out most of the ivy and what was left of the so-called fence beneath.

 We've cleaned up a bit and Dan is beginning to rebuild the fence.

We are reusing wood from a previous project...

Because of the large rocks on the left, Dan is having to carve the boards to fit.

I got busy working and forgot to stop to take interim pictures, sorry!

The inside view of the day's work.

From just left of the gate (in the street). You can see the side of the shed and beyond the ivy that's still stands is the parking area. Dan is on the right, standing in the courtyard.

After all the clean up I took this picture from the street. Still not much curb appeal, but certainly

MUCH better than it was. We'll get in and tackle some more ivy another day.

Right now the days are too hot to be outside for long.

This weekend, Dan and I got going on painting our bedroom - finally! Well, you know how it goes...whatever is squeaking the loudest... And, Dan has finished some work in the girls' bathroom so Jen got back to work and painted, then the girls spruced things up a bit.

Looks really nice. Pictures of that next time.

Happy Father's Day to all, especially to my wonderful father by marriage, Mike! I love you, Dad!

See ya soon!

g~

Late Fall Weeds

Okay, so I've been absent for a LONG time. So sorry about that! I'm going to try to post regularly again.

These photos were from last Fall, I believe. Taken behind the house and looking down the hill into our 'yard' this is what we saw. Dan got out our great mower (the one we bought from a friend at a moving sale...thank you, Marla!) and spent about 90 minutes clearing the land of the waist high weeds. Add a little water, keep mowing, and we began to see a nice area below!

The piles of brush you see around the yard are trimmings that will eventually be burned. We live in the country up here and have burn days. Dan and (brother-in-law) Bob love 'em! Now that summer is upon us, though, we have to cut the trimmings to get them in the trash barrel (or pile them up and wait for a winter burn day).

Hard to believe we've been in our home for 7 1/2 months! The time has flown by and we are SO loving being here! Projects move much more slowly than we'd like since work and school get in the way [   :-)  ] but things are coming along nicely!

See ya soon!

g~

Workshop Work

Okay, so I've been a slacker. You'd think with Christmas break between semesters I'd get lots of posts done. Guess you would have been wrong! But although I have not posted that does not mean that work has not progressed. Dan has been busy around this wonderful house. I'll try to put up regular (although probably short) posts to show off some of his work.

Here we see the workshop before Dan did anything to it (other than vacuum, I think).

After thoroughly cleaning out all the critter remains
(just ask Jen - she's traumatized for life!) he added new lighting.

Dan repaired and reinforced the work benches and moved in many of his power tools.

He added shelves underneath for bins.

These bins hold various supplies - sorted by type of project; painting, electrical, plumbing, etc.

What we have now is a great space for working on the many, many, MANY projects that this house will require for the next...oh, 30-40 years! An added benefit to this room is that because it is partially underground it stays much cooler in the summer and much warmer in the winter. A blessing to be sure!

We are loving being in the home more than we can say. We are blessed!

It's Almost Christmas!

Even though I haven't been posting life in the foothills has been interesting! To start off, we got notice that our homeowners insurance was due to be canceled. The insurance company sent out someone to check out the property and they didn't like what they saw. There were 4  problems that they pointed out needed to be fixed. The first was easy. The door that leads to the area under the deck had a hole for a deadbolt lock - but no deadbolt. Cover the hole. Done.

The next took a little longer but was still very easy. Trim the trees over the house. Most had been trimmed already but these were over the covered patio. Okay, done.

The third was a loose shingle and peeling paint on the window trim outside the downstairs window. Nail the shingle, scrape, patch and paint the trim. Done.

The fourth was not so easy. Well, it was, but... We had blue tarps on the roof. For good reason! We are worried about leaks. Taking the tarps off was the easy part. Praying for no rain was important, here. God is good! No rain! So, Dan and Bob (thank you, Bob!) have been working on the roof. Now, what the roof really needs is a complete tear off and re-do, but there's no time or money for that right now. So, the next best thing is to tear off the really bad parts and do some proper patching. The roof has some really funky shapes to it - parts that are raised for whatever unforeseeable reason and other weird junctions due to the strangeness of the additions. Anyway, the guys have been hard at work setting things right. Or at least making it so we don't have leaks. Countless hours have been spent on the roof on the weekends. We all appreciate your hard work, guys!!! So, crisis averted, our insurance has been reinstated. Yay!

Oops! In the process of fixing the roof stuff - and getting our insurance reinstated - the insurance company noticed that we have several different types of roofing. Rolled composite (??), shingles, corrugated metal and ??? Anyway, They don't insure houses with rolled or corrugated metal roofs. We were told that they will cover us for initial year, but unless we re-do the roof with an acceptable material we will be dropped on September 29, 2012. No problem! We'll just add that to the long list of 'must do, ASAP'.  :-)

Another interesting thing that happened was that we received the bill for our first full month of gas/electric usage. Well, let me back up. Toward the end of November we received our first bill. It was for about two weeks worth of time, during which we didn't yet live here. That bill was less than $40. I loved it but figured we'd be hit with a big bill after we were in the house. Nope. Next bill came about ten days ago. Less than $80, and, we'd been in the house the entire month of the billing! Hmm... Upon looking closer Dan noticed that our electric usage was ZERO. Not possible. I can't remember if I wrote about the whole electric meter snafu before we moved in...PG&E wouldn't put in a new meter because the previous inhabitants had bypassed the meter and were stealing power...did I blog about that? Anyway, it was a mess and had to be fixed - by Fannie Mae, not us, thankfully. Obviously the meter went in - a new one at that, so what is the problem now? Well, I called and after quite a conversation I was transferred to an asset specialist. I explained the issue and told him we didn't want to get hit with a $500 bill down the road so I was calling to find out what was going on. He told me that it would be investigated (and, yes, he was very clear about noting that I was the one who called and reported the problem). I further explained the issue we had before moving in and he did some checking. It seems it's not only possible to bypass the meter, but it's possible to do it two different ways! Who knew???? Rhetorical question, obviously, since the previous owners knew, apparently. So, eventually someone will be out to check on things at the meter. In the meantime, we are not using any power, according to PG&E. So, we see the savings now, but we'll have to pay to have whatever the problem is fixed. Hmm... I think I would have rather had no issues, here.

On a much more pleasant note, school is out for the semester so the girls and I are around more. I've been working on my little office. I say little because it's smaller than my last office (10' x 12' with a sizable closet). This office is about 8' x 9+' with a corner (2 x 2 1/2') cut out. And not really any usable closet. I really like the space, though. It's just been a challenge to find a place for everything. By everything, I mean...desk, filing, sewing, quilting, crocheting, drawing, oil painting, beading, photography, Avon business and last, but not least, READING. I like books. So sue me.  :-) It's still a work in progress, but here's where it stands today.

I'm getting there!

Not much else inside the house has been done,

but we did get a little bit of decorating done for Christmas.

Oh, and we added a little bit of stuff downstairs. Dan's dad, brother & sister were here for Thanksgiving and we tried to give the first floor some warmth - okay, not literally.

 Oops! We've yet to tackle the bedroom, but since the TV went up last weekend the girls have been practically living down there (playing the Wii).

 The niche under the stair case is perfect for all our old VHS movies.

 Area rugs help to warm up the ice-cold floor. I hope.

 More rugs in the kitchen.

Dan has the next week off so he's busy trying to get things done around here. Of course, the first things had to do with one of the vans, but that should be taken care of today. We're hoping to start work on our bedroom next week. Of course, we have friends coming into town on Monday and family arriving at various times throughout the week. Then my family is celebrating Christmas on Thursday, so the week's work will be chopped up. We'll get done what we can and post pictures when there's something to show you.

In the meantime we are enjoying being home as much as possible. Whether we're working around the house or yard, relaxing in front of the fire or on the deck staring up at the stars, we love it here. I think the house (with all of it's many issues) was made for us. We are blessed.

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Ownership, Day 85