The Final Week

We have wrapped up the final week of work on the house. Not to bad, only 14 days past the projected finish date! With all the rain that we have had, it is a wonder we finally finished.

This was the week of where all the odds and ends, the final "punch list" items were completed.

The gutter company did come out on Friday and installed the gutters, but forgot that there were to be leaf screens put on them, so they do have to come back and do that.

I also noticed that the fellas forgot to put my house numbers back up on the porch post, but hey, I can still sling a hammer with the best of them so I can put those back up!

I started moving some of the shelf units back into the laundry room yesterday. I need to wash them down good and organize them.

Now I need to get myself in gear and finish up the very last of the painting in the laundry room and hope that I don't run out of paint!

Blue Blue Monday!

Ok, so it is actually more than just a blue blue Monday! It is all week long and the week isn't over yet.

I was told by one of the workmen that they would be here on Monday to start the painting on the outside of the house. Monday came and went, no workers showed and no phone call. Tuesday same thing. On Wednesday one of the workers showed up about 10ish to retrieve some tools that he had left in the laundry room in anticipation of returning this week and since it was the same person who told me they were going to start painting, I asked what had happened. I was told that they were running way behind on the other job and that it would be 3-4 days before they were able to get over here to work. Well, that is all well and good, I can be patient but a phone call would sure have been nice to tell me of the change in plans! I have a hard time being patient but under my present circumstances (with a daughter having problems with preterm labor and a baby that doesn't want to wait till her due date) I am on pins and needles and would like to be able to make plans to help her when possible. I kept my cool, waited till later that afternoon and called the general contractor. We had a friendly discussion and told him once again how important it is that they notify me of their plans to either show up or not show up as scheduled.

On Thursday, the general contractor came over to the house and we talked about the reconstruction of the cabinet for the water heater closet. He also took time to hook up the connection from the back of the dryer to the outside wall vent (which the electrician forgot to do) so that I can at least once again start using my dryer.

I explained to Monte that there were some major changes with my daughter at her appointment on Wednesday and that the doctor feels that the new baby granddaughter may not wait much longer to be born. She will be 34 weeks along if she makes it to next Wednesday and the doctor feels that will be doubtful. I told my neighbor across the street today that I have a feeling that the baby will be born this weekend......... little did I know until I came home and looked at the calendar that Sunday, October 4th is a full moon and I don't care what anyone tells you about it being an old wives' tale, but it is true, more babies are born during the full moon than any other time. So I will keep you posted to see if this old grandma is right or not.

Disappointing Week

Well I am feeling kind of bummed out right now and hoping that with the sunrise and a new week ahead that things will progress along more this week than last.

Once again we had lots of rain, which of course delayed much of the work that is necessary to be completed outside. What does upset me is that there are things inside that still could have been completed but have been done as yet. I doing my best to be patient and understanding but at times I find it difficult because patience is not one of my better personality traits. I have to remember that my house is not the only construction job that they have going at this time. There is another little house they are working on which once they got into it turned out to have some major problems that no one had counted on. Consequently, more time and repairs are needed there than originally anticipated. The owner of the home moved out while they are working on the house and it is important to get him back in as soon as possible so of course the house has to take priority.

There were a few disappointments this past week. The electrician came back and changed out the 220 cord and outlet. The cord he originally used did not meet our city's code requirements. They also added the two electrical outlet switches to the lights out in the garage and storage area rather than leave them on pull chains. The City Electrical Inspector arrived on Friday and they still didn't pass final inspection because they forgot to change out the plug on the patio outside wall which was to be a GFI outlet! So once again they will have to return and change that out and call for an inspection again.

The plumbing inspector still hasn't come out to check the changes that he requested to be made on the installation of the water heater. In fact I don't even know if that has been requested to be done yet. I need to call Monte!

One of the men brought over the paint for doing the outside. I was kidding around with him and stated that maybe I needed to check it out just to make sure that they brought the right colors and it is a good thing I did because the gray paint was not the right shade. I had given them a very dark shade of gray, like deep charcoal gray and the color on the top of the can was very light gray! At least the light green shade for the shutters and trim was the right color.

Today I am going to take time to rearrange my bedroom back to where it belongs. I had pushed my bed over to the outside corner of the room so that they would have unobstructed access to both the windows in that room. I will need to once again unload the 2 bookcases before attempting to move them but that is not that big of a chore. It will seem good to once again put the room back in order. I notice that I am going to have some touch up painting to do...... now where is that can of raspberry color paint????

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

Pardon My Dust!

Please excuse the mess we’ve got some major reconstruction going on here!
No not on the blog, at least not yet, here at my house!
Let me tell you about all the wonderful things that have been happening to me lately which is certainly a welcome change after all the worries of this last month with my children and their health issues.

I applied for a special program about two years ago through our City where they had federal money to assist people who are considered low income to assist them in bringing their homes up to building code. As you can imagine, there were many people who applied for this money and I finally made it to the top of the list.

The way that this money works, is you are allowed up to $25,000 for home repairs that will bring your home up to present building code. It is actually a lien note that is attached to your mortgage. You must be a homeowner and live in your home. It is actually a reducing lien so if you live in your home one year after work is completed and then sell (or die) 75% of the note needs to be paid out of the proceeds of the sale of your home. If you live in your home two years and sell (or die) then 50% of the note is to be repaid and at three years 25%. At the end of the fourth year, 0% is to be repaid.

The people from the City, who are responsible for overseeing this money, have you complete paperwork and then schedule a walkthrough on your home to see what all needs to be done. They take pictures of the interior and exterior of your home and measurements of the entire house and every room, even draw up a diagram of your house.
They access everything that is needed to repair your home. Then back to the office, put a pencil to the costs and decide exactly what can and can’t be done with the money allocated.

You then have another meeting with the City people to determine exactly what is to be done. They will also give you a list of alternative repairs that can be included in case there is enough money left.

Then everything goes to a bidding process with general contractors with a close date for the bids and once all are in, a contractor is selected. Once this happens you return to sign a contract with that General Contractor and the City and work must commence within 5 days of signing and the entire work has to be completed within 42 days. That means your General Contractor must be very diligent in scheduling his crews so they will coordinate together to get the work done in a timely fashion.

Work has begun here and I will take you on our journey as we complete this process.