I Can See Clearly Now!

Friday they started installing the new windows! YEAH!!!!
It was amazing to watch as they taped all the glass, went around the edges where they were placed into the metal window edges and then they were taken out! I totally expected they would have to break the glass but so far, not a single piece of glass has been broken. Now they have collapsed the metal frame that goes into the brick around the window frame opening, after the glass has been removed.

The new windows are so nice! The screen part is so fine, you can hardly tell there is a screen there at all. Also the windows will tip in so that I can clean the outside without having to remove the screen. That is such a nice feature. They are also double pane glass and have a high energy rating which will help keep the house cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter.

Monday they plan to come out and finish the last five windows but if it rains as predicted, I am sure they will have to wait until probably Tuesday or Wednesday.

We Were Changed Forever

September 11,2001


You didn't have to live back East to feel the impact of this day because the entire country trembled from coast to coast as we watched on television, listened on radio or by internet to the events unfold live before our very eyes.

Frantic phone calls were made to loved ones to be sure that they were safe and sound. Mothers scurried like hens to gather up their chicks and place them securely under their loving wings. There were more "I love yous" spoken and kisses given as children were tucked safely in their beds that night and longer times spent on bended knees or with heads bowed in prayer asking for God's protection and love in our country's hour of need and in the days to come.

The full range of emotions flooded through my being as I watched in horror. The planes hit the towers and the destruction that followed. Images of people covered with ash and soot running away from burning buildings, as firemen went past them the other way headed into the infernos that they were so desperately trying to escape from. My eyes filled with tears as I watched the destruction, the expressions on the faces of those who were escaping, thankful to be alive, but concerned about those left behind who did not make it out of those buildings. The firemen who knew this was bad, really really bad and inwardly praying they to would make it out alive as they pressed forward to look for survivors.

Anger followed when I learned of two more planes, one crashing into the Pentagon and another into a farmer's field because of the bravery of passengers who stood up and attempted to overtake their hijackers and if not to gain control of the aircraft from them, to divert them from their intended target, which by later reports appeared to be the White House itself.

I felt complete helplessness as I watched, glued to the television day after day. It was paralyzing, wondering what was going to happen next. Would there be more attacks in other parts of the county? Flashbacks of the Oklahoma City bombing began to race through my mind and then the calm came sweeping over me. I watched as people banned together in unity, like they did when we went through our tragedy. People from all over the country headed to New York to help at Ground Zero. After all we aren't called The United States for nothing!

I felt compassion and grief for families and friends as they gathered in areas near where the twin towers once stood, holding pictures of loved ones, shouting out to anyone who would listen " Have you seen this person" as they held their loved ones photos higher to be seen. Impromptu memorials sprung up on street corners and night time candle vigils were held.

Pride swelled within me as I watched sweat soaked firemen coming off their shifts through a street lined with people clapping and cheering for them, letting them know they appreciated all the work that they were doing attempting to find anyone alive or to retrieve the bodies of a loved one.

One image I will never forget is that of the priest who went in with the firefighters to give comfort and last rites to the victims and became a victim himself. The photograph of the firemen carrying this man of God, who sacrificed all, to give comfort to those in need, will forever be etched in my memory.

The other image I will remember will be the picture of the firemen raising the American Flag above the ruble. It reminded me of the flag being raised on Iwo Jima during World War II.

Let us not become complacent or arrogant thinking that this can never happen to us again. There have been other incidents in history that should never have been forgotten, or the "rough edges" taken off with the passage of time, but as years pass and people settle into "the new normal," acceptance and complacency begins to follow instead of vigilance.

Getting Ready For Another Blog

Well folks, I am in the process of setting up another blog which will be to help those who are wanting to trace their family roots!
I will teach you how to develop your family tree, good places to do research on the web and how to interview your living relatives to gather information but I want to actually encourage you to do more than just list important data on a piece of paper or into a GEDCOM file on your computer.

My goal is to help bring your past history alive for you and for all the generations of your family who are yet to come! Your ancestors may be dead, buried in the ground, but they will become alive through you and the living history that you create! Genealogy and history go hand in hand and opens up an entire new appreciation for what your ancestors did to be brave enough to leave their homeland to venture forth to a new country.  In some cases, they were forced to leave and come here, many were forced into servitude. 


So get ready, get a notebook and a pen or pencil handy because we are about to start soon!  If you would like to be notified when this new blog is ready, please leave me a message at the end of this post and be sure to include your name and your email address so I may contact you.

New Flooring Going Down

Wednesday evening I started to lay the new flooring in the laundry room. You always start out by finding the center of your room, by taking measurements of the width and length of your room. Divide your measurements in half and that becomes your starting point. Lay out plumb lines in both directions and begin laying the first tile at the junction of these lines. All of your "self-stick" tile boxes will have instructions on the box, including how to cut your tiles when you get to the edges of you room.

By Thursday I had almost all of the room completed except for the tiles at the edge where I have to start the tedious part of cutting and fitting the final tiles that meet the walls. I do have to move the washing machine out so that I can tile underneath where it is sitting.  I will need to put the leveling feet onto pieces of cardboard so that when I move it I won't damage the surface of the new flooring. My goal is to get that done on Friday and then move it back into place.  I also want to get the edge tiles completed on the wall where the dryer will be placed so that will be done when the workers bring the dryer inside.

I would love it if I could begin painting out there this weekend but since the new sheetrocked wall is not textured yet and we won't be able to sheetrock the wall where the dryer is to go because of a problem there that didn't pass inspection, I think painting is going to have to be put off for a little bit. But who knows what might happen....... I am impulsive!

Shall We Dance?

Two Steps Forward and One Step Back!
We had both the electrical and plumbing inspectors scheduled to come out on Wednesday. Both showed up but I had run to the store quickly at about 3:30 posted a note I would be back in 5 and wouldn't you know it, the electrical inspector shows up while I am gone and we had to reschedule!

The plumbing inspector passed almost everything, but there were a few minor things that he needed to go over with Keith at the city about.

We rescheduled the electrical inspection for Thursday and then they called and asked to reschedule for Friday.

The electrical inspector just left and will be getting with Keith also regarding a couple of things that he wishes to discuss, so no approval there as yet.

Trolls On The Roof !

Ok, they aren’t really trolls, but an entire army of roofers!  When they said they’d bring a “crew” I figured maybe 4 men at most.  Well there are at least 8 of them up there, but they are moving along so fast I’m having a hard time trying to count heads! Turns out I was pretty close; there are actually 9 of them.

They promptly arrived at 8AM and after moving my car out of the driveway so they could place their collection bin there, they had a group laying out tarps on the ground to catch the old shingles and nails beginning the process of removing shingles at the ridgeline.  For those of you who don’t know what the ridgeline is, it is the upper most top of your roof and then they work down to the edges.  They use tools that actually look like a farmer’s pitchfork and then a shorter hand version as well. With the pitchforks they are able to remove reasonably large patches of shingles all at once.  They work in teams, one loosens up the shingles with the pitchfork and the other gathers up these loosened shingles and takes them and dumps them into the collection bin.

While outside visiting with the roofing contractor and the general contractor, we learned that the decking on the house was 3/8ths of an inch whereas current standards are 7/16ths of inch plywood.  They have totally removed all old shingles from the house and are now working on the patio and garage roof. A true testimony to how well the old roof was installed is that the  house decking looks good, there is no water damage at all.  They were quite surprised to say the least. Now the patio roof might be another story.

By 9:30 the scraping sounds of the pitchforks had stopped and I begin to hear pounding. There’s no way I think that they can already be laying shingles, so I walk out onto the covered patio and gaze up to the roof top to see what is going on.  They are now in the process of either pounding in loosened nails or using tools to pop off nails that were holding on the old shingles in preparation for the new roofing felt paper and shingles. I learned that the name for these tools is called a roofing hatchet. One end of the blade has a chiseled hatchet end and the other looks like the business end of a hammer.

Next came the installation of a metal flashing strip on the small piece of wood that forms the edging of the roof decking. The proper name for this piece of wood is the drip edge and the metal strip is called the drip cap.  It is here that you often see rot and mold damage where water runs off the roof into your gutters and if gutters are not kept free of debri and water doesn’t run off properly, you will find this type of damage and in turn causes damage to your fascia board.

At 10:20 AM some of the workers were already laying the roofing felt paper on the front of the house. The paper is put on starting at the bottom edge of the roof and working up to the ridgeline or the peak of your roof.  .This paper is secured in place with staples and I am listening to the rhythmic sound of their staplers as they move across the roof. After the paper is laid, they mark plumb lines for the shingles.  Now the house is completely covered wit the roofing felt paper, as well as the patio and the garage roof. 

Time is now 10:57AM and I am hearing the thud thud thud of bundles of shingles being laid up on the roof.  They are strategically placing them in different areas of the roof to enable the roofers to easily open the bundles as they progress along.   I should start hearing nail guns going shortly.

Break Time 11:11 AM and for my cats this is an opportunity to come out from their hiding places under my bed to get up on the window ledges to see if they can figure out what all the noise was about!  Bradley, my parrot is actually handling this pretty well (he is the one I worried about the most) only letting out a few high pitched squawks when he heard them using the staplers directly above his head!

12:20 PM Lunch break is over and once again the sound of staplers is echoing above my head.  I also hear the sound of the air compressor being started up.  

One of the things that have to be watched carefully when using a pressurized nail gun to install roofing is that you need pressure gauges on both the compressor unit as well as on the nail gun unit. If too much pressure is used, then when the nails are shot into the shingle, it will go right through the shingle and you will get leakage at some point in time.

Shingles are now being laid!  There are certain areas that require being worked on first before all the straight run pieces are laid in place.  The “valleys” of your roof as well as around vent pipes and wind turbines.  Valleys should be covered with a special mineral-surfaced, roll roofing material .First, a wide strip of metal flashing is placed down the center of the valley, from the eaves to the top of the ridge and then this special roofing material is placed on top of it.

I watched as several of the men were putting the shingles up on the front of the house.  You start at the very lower edge of the house with your first row of shingles with what is referred to as a starter strip. Once the starter strips are in place and shingles are run up the exterior edges of the house they begin filling in the rest of the shingles. It is too difficult to try and explain all of this to you but I found this fantastic article   http://www.doityourself.com/stry/h2shingle which you can use as reference.

Expect The Unexpected

As in all projects, you have to always expect the unexpected.  In this case, they had already been forewarned about what we considered a “soft spot” in the patio roof.  I let them know the approximate location and advised them to be careful; I didn’t want anyone falling through! Sure enough, they found it and luckily no one fell through or was injured.  The decking was rotted and upon pulling it out, they found that an entire rafter was basically gone!  I truly had expected that they would find more roof damage than what they have found. Upon inspection of a piece of the wood that “was” the rafter, it appears to be water damage that caused the problem.  I was fearful it might have been termites but upon inspection of the wood, there were none in there. They did find some wasp nests though!

Off to the lumber yard to secure an 18 ft rafter board before they can continue roofing that section of the patio and garage.  In the meantime, the men are picking up debris from the yard and throwing it into the dumpster bin, while the other team continues roofing the backside of the house.  The front is entirely done and as I stand back and look at it from a distance across the street, I am so glad I chose the slate color that I did.  There is just a hint of green in with the gray and it is really pretty.  I have chosen a very dark charcoal gray paint for the eaves, soffit and fascia boards and will continue to have the light mint green as my accent color on my shutters, front door, the louvered panels on my patio, garage door and fencing. There is just enough of a hint of green in the shingles that this should be a very striking combination of colors.

New rafter is now in place along with the decking and they are finishing up that side of the roofing.

I went outside to check on the progress and they are pretty much done with things at least for today. It looks all that is left is to return my TV antenna to the roof and that is about it. Most of the yard has been picked up with just a few plastic wrappers that shingles came in and their personal tools that need to be gathered together.

It is now 5:30 PM and I am very impressed by the speed and professionalism at which they completed their work.  All tools have been picked up, trash removed, the yard checked thoroughly for fallen nails with a magnetic device and a courtesy knock on the door to say we are done and thank you for using our company. If you live in Oklahoma and need a good roofer, I would highly recommend them. They offer you state wide service on roofing, siding and windows.

Precision Exteriors
Robert Maurer, Owner
405-703-2955 or  405-877-703-2955