Outdoor Maintenance Project

Our roofing guys came last Thursday and fixed the fascia board on the driveway side of the house. They also took down and re-installed the gutter. Unfortunately, it's still not right. It's way too high for a slate roof (the snow will hit it) and it's not pitched far enough (water puddles in the front end). They should be back Tuesday to finish the job. They should also be finishing (or starting, really) the replacement of a section of cedar shingles on the wall beside the driveway. They're rotting from a combination of the water (compliments of the window-well puddling) and the heat (compliments of the driveway). It's not a huge section, but once it is done, hopefully the house will be completely weather-tight!

Here's what it looks like under those shingles:


Hopefully the wood underneath (the sill) isn't damaged by rot or bugs. If so, there will be some extra wood to replace. Further updates tomorrow if I have time.

Insulation!

Jake, John, and Rose installed the insulation in the slanted part of the ceiling this morning. They did a great job with the R-19 and staple gun. Here are Jake and John, hard at work:


And here's Rose, taking out nails in the wall so that our drywallers can do their jobs.

And here it is, the slanty ceiling all finished (except for drywall):


In the world outside, the workers succeeded in adding wood to fill the gap in the fascia boards, so we can no longer see outside from inside (even without the insulation in there!). Here's a sample of the little view to the outside world from destruction day in June (it might be hard to tell, but that's the neighbor's house and windows you're seeing through the crack in the middle):

And here it is now:




Also on the outside, they started taking off the section of rotten shingles on the driveway side of the house. Check out the mess:


That's all for today, since we had to let our guests out to play for a while. We'll get them back to work tomorrow morning, no doubt.

The work continues

This morning at 7:30, my slumbers were disturbed by the sound of a pry bar and saw taking on the gutter and fascia board problems at 83 Durant. While this isn't my favorite way to be awakened, it does mean that another project is underway at 83 Durant, and that always pleases me. The carpenter arrived, and they are taking down the very poorly installed metal gutter, adding new wood to the undersized fascia board (that gap where we can see out to the neighbor's house through the spare room), and re-installing the gutter in the correct manner. This is good.

After some discussions with the carpenter about some of the other issues on the driveway side of the house, he suggested several solutions:
1) for the drain in the driveway, he can install a flat metal cover so that it won't get clogged up so easily.
2) for the leaky window well, he suggests a metal edging, sealed with cement caulk, and then digging out the concrete and putting in stones. This would be the best way to fix this problem, so once he gets us an estimate, we'll decide if we want to do that, or go with one of our home-grown do-it-ourselves ideas
3) he's going to replace a section of the wooden shingles beside the driveway that have rotted out (mostly because of the splashback and moisture off of the driveway). Once he gets those shingles off, he'll be able to see how much damage there is to the wood underneath and to the sill of the house. This might warrant further repairs and wood replacement, which is a bit scary. But we're glad that we will at least find out a bit more about the state of the house.

Other indoor projects -- insulation and plumbing -- will soon be underway since we have John and Rose here. Updates to follow!