Tuesday, October 4, 2016

The Man Cave Is About To Get Cozy

A home improvement adventure in daily doses...



This summer my new deck was unplanned and quick. My new roof has been carefully planned but long-delayed, due mostly to the high desert's monsoon season. This will be a standing seam metal roof (forest green) laid over three inch nail base insulation. I'm having it installed by a Lowe's contractor, they having done right by me on my window replacement project last summer. When the roof is done the walls of my log home will have the lowest R-value of the entire place - compared to the floor, windows, and roof. We'll track the progress of the roofing saga on a daily basis. Stay tuned.




Day One - Wow! The shingles are off the front of the house, the three inch nail base insulation is in place, and the tyvek has been applied over it. They found some bad planks on the corner near the chimney. Upcharge #1 I suppose...ChaChing! There was an inch of styrofoam under the shingles, which I didn't expect. What a weird little house. The job site is spotless; I'm very impressed.




Day Two - Less progress, more mess. Seems the north side of the roof is more complicated. The whole roof is stripped and insulation laid down over 1/3 of it. The existing addition on the back of the house (which we think was created by enclosing an even older porch) was so weirdly built that roof debris ended up inside the laundry room. The more we dig into my little log home the stranger its construction appears.




Day Three - Repairs were completed in the southwest corner by the chimney and the work continued Thursday. The metal roof panels start going on Friday.



Day Four - Ooh! Aah! The roofers said they'd make progress in front so I was more than pleasantly surprised to find the back essentially complete as well!


Day Four - This picture of the front of the house is pretty dark, but I wanted to capture the sight that awaited my arrival home this evening.  They still have some detail work under the porch to complete, the fascia wrap to install, and the ridge to cover, but this is coming together very much as I had hoped it would.  Very, very nice!


Still looks great the morning after.

UPDATE: Some roofing material was damaged in transport and had to be reordered.  As of 1 November 2016 the job is essentially done.




There was a time in a darker past when guided imagery and meditation stopped a downward spiral and showed me the way back into the light.  One image that comforted me was that a of cozy log cabin in a pine forest.  It looked like this.  


Did I create this place or did it find me?