#tiny house progress

We got a crew of five-- Dude came out for this purpose, and so it was me, Dude, BIL, Farmsister, and then I called in the favor for M-L of having helped her move, and she said of course she’d come.

I went out at 8am with BIL, and we tore off the two top half-planks at the roof peak, so there’d be a proper air gap for ventilation. Had to cut out a little strip of the roofing underlayment too, and this made me so nervous, because it meant destroying what weatherproofing I had.

image: looking up at my cabin’s sleeping loft, the sky is visible at the peak of the roof through an opening approximately six inches wide.

But we got all set up, and double-checked the plans and got our materials set up. And then we set to work.

image: the cabin, with the roof covered in green Tyvek, my brother in law sitting across the peak, a ladder hung from the peak next to him and two stepladders in the foreground. Note to the right that there is an exposed bit of rafters-- those are the fly rafters, built off the end of the building to be an extra bit of overhang for the roof. In the background, the trees immediately behind the cabin are a riot of fall color, mostly sugar maples in shades of oranges and yellow and some red, with some of it still green.

I started off being on the stepladder, screwing down the bottom edge of the roof, but I gave that job to Farmsister because my left elbow has never been the same since I overdid things helping M-L move. (She showed up at 10, which was when we’d told her to come; we realized before that that we probably weren’t actually going to need her, so we told her to take her time and bring us donuts. Which she did, because she’s a sport.) M-L then saw me flexing and rubbing my elbow and was like “oh no what did you do to it” and i did not have the heart to tell her, so I just said I’m getting old.

Part of the reason I’d figured ML could be the 5th crew member is that if we didn’t need her, I knew she’d be fine just standing around being the peanut gallery. Anyone else would feel weird or be mad, but she wouldn’t care, and I was right, she mostly stood around and chased down screws the actual workers dropped, and Dude and I were not terribly busy but spent our time carefully prying apart the metal roof sheets which were damp and so had stuck together, and then carefully carried them over one at a time and handed them up to the folks on the roof.

Image: half of the south side of the roof is clad in metal; BIL is on the ladder hooked over the roof peak, and Farmsister is on the tall stepladder leaning on the screw gun as she puts in the screws right above the eaves.

We went up one side and then went around and did the other side, and started putting the ridge caps on as we went-- there were three sections of ridge cap, so one for about every four sheets of roof-- and we found the foam insulation that’s meant to go in as a spacer there, and got that put in. Still need to add the little insulation thingies under the eaves but that’s something for another time. (The kit hadn’t come with those, so Dude had to go drive around to several home improvement stores to find them all in the afternoon.)image

image: Farmsister and BIL each separately operating an electric screw gun, screwing down the metal roof panels in an artistically-framed photo that shows the very blue sky and the brilliant fall foliage of the tree overhanging the cabin.

We stopped for lunch at 1pm with one ridge cap still off but all the roof panels in place, and went in and had a white bean chicken chili that Farmsister had put in the crockpot overnight. It was very good. And we dismissed M-L at that point.

image: This is what the cabin looked like when we stopped for lunch. You can’t see that the last section of ridgecap isn’t on yet. You can see how bright the foliage is all around! It’s so pretty.

After lunch, just BIL and I came back out, and I handed him a few things but then he mostly was just puttering, getting the foam spacers in under the ridgecap and so on and so forth. So I went in and dug out the insulation batts I’ve had in the corner ever since we put the insulation in under the loft where it overhangs the porch, and I put on a mask and a kerchief over my hair and long sleeves and went up in the loft and stapled those batts up until I ran out of staples on the last batt.

It was only enough to do one wall, and not the peak, so it’s not enough that it’ll really be any warmer up there. But it’s something, and it’s a bunch less I’ll have to do later. The rest of the insulation batts are up in the barn loft and I was not feeling up to going and getting them.

We got the last ridgecap up finally, when Dude got back with the esoteric insulating pieces he had to drive all over robin hood’s barn to find. (BIL had also gone and borrowed a set of power shears from the neighbor; the plans said to overlap the last sheets a little extra but the measurements did not actually work to allow that, so we had to trim the edge of the roof to fit; it was too floppy to be left overhanging.) 

Image: this is the last picture I took, which is of BIL still on the roof peak ladder just putting a few final screws in, but it shows the ridge cap in place and the overhang trimmed to fit correctly, and the way the light caught in the foliage as the sun got close to setting.

We finished just in time to go in for dinner. Mom had made steak and mushroom pie, which is just about my favorite thing ever. I’d brought a bottle of champagne, so we had that before dinner.

I am feeling absolutely delighted; it’s not anything tangibly different in living in the cabin but it’s so nice to have a real roof. I’m very excited and I still haven’t picked up all the pots and pans and dishes and trays I had set out to catch drips the last time it rained but I’m going to, and take them in and wash them somewhere, because I don’t need them anymore!!

so anyway. that was sunday. but i got no writing done this weekend, needless to say, LOL. Still. Big news! Big progress.

stapling up the screen-- BIL on a ladder with a staple gun up against the north wall of the cabin