Week Fifty

Week beginning 15th May 2023.

It’s another Monday morning and our plan for today is to fit all the remaining gutters to the house and the mega-shed. We are off to a slow start and are generally feeling weary but we’ll plod on.

We are taking a lot of care to ensure the fall from one end of the gutter to the downpipe end is not too steep or shallow so we are using a string line and our spirit level to help place the gutter brackets.

We have fitted the gutters but need to cut the last piece to the correct length then make a hole where it will fall into the downpipe. Peter is using a hole-saw bit on his drill then making little cuts around the hole and folding them back to make the hole bigger.

We’ve just finished that job and our expected timber delivery has arrived. We need to get it indoors because the forecast for tomorrow is rain. Before we can do that we need to take down the scaffolding tower in the house to make way for the timber but first we need to tape up the boxed in middle roof window from it.

With the two of us on the job taping up the window hasn’t taken long and we are now moving two full sheets of 18mm plyboard, 20 full sheets of OSB, 50 lengths of 25x50mm tile batten and ten 38x50mm battens. It’s hard work carrying all these heavy loads, the 25x50mm battens are in tens and are at the limit of what we can lift together.

With the house done and the timber safely indoors we are now on the east side of the mega-shed fitting the gutter there, using the same method.

We’ve finished for the guttering for today but didn’t manage to fit the gutters on the whole of the east side of the mega-shed because we are one length of guttering short. Once we get another length it won’t take long to finish it.

________________________________________________________

As forecast, it’s wet today so we are inside boxing-in the last of the roof windows. As with the previous ones we need to insulate first using a combination of fibre-board, glass wool and expanding foam.

Cutting the OSB for the boxing-in has gone well, with only the final top piece needing some fine tuning to get it to fit snuggly.

It’s taken us most of the day to do this job but we had a late start and we are noticably slower these days.

Our final task of the day is to make ourselves somewhere to compost. We should have done this ages ago but just never got round to it until now. This is just a temporary solution, once the house is built and our caravan has gone we will make something more considered.

________________________________________________________

Our aim for today is to get the flashings fitted on the house and if that goes well get the roof ridge on too. It’s a nice dry day, perfect for this kind of task.

We are determined to do a better job of this side of the house than we did on the west gable where the flashings are a bit wonky.

We have struggled a bit getting the first length of flashing on because we were trying too hard and getting into a bit of a tizz but now that we have relaxed about it things are running much more smoothly.

We are in a flow and have just finished fitting the last of the flashings on the house and they look nice and straight, a big improvement on our first effort.

We’ve just finished lunch and Pete is on the roof now attaching special foam pieces that fit into the corrugations to stop water running up and birds and insects getting in. He is using a special double-sided tape to fix them.

Pete is really struggling to fit the foam because he is straddling the roof ridge and having to try and fit the foam in nice straight lines. It’s not going well.

We have just presented the first ridge and the foam is in the wrong place so we have had to take it down.

The foam has come off easily enough but we can’t get the double sided tape off. We are trying different solvents and nothing so far is working. We can get some of it off but it is taking ages to remove just a few centimeters so we are giving that up for now.

We are re-presenting the roof ridge to see if we can fit it without the foam. Pete has screwed it in place but it is not sitting right and when we try and push it down it buckles. Arghhhhh! What now?

We have decided to wait until we can get help and advice from Andrew before trying to fit the ridge because we don’t know what to do to make it right.

Molly has been to her Zumba class and Pete has done some yoga and we are both feeling much better than earlier.

We felt quite devastated by the whole roof ridge saga but we have picked ourselves up and will be ready to fight another day tomorrow.

________________________________________________________

The forecast is for a dry morning and light rain in the afternoon so we are aiming to get the flashings on the mega-shed today.

First we need to make and fit some corner pieces where the flashing meets the gutter.

The lower piece of flashing needs cut to size because if we use two full length pieces the overlap will be too much. With the experience of cutting the corrugated roofing tin behind him, Pete makes a good job of cutting the tin. We have decide to cut all four pieces at the same time since we are on a bit of a roll.

We have managed to fit the flashings on the north gable of the mega-shed but it has now started raining so unless it stops we’ll have to get on with some other tasks.

There’s a break in the rain so we are moving the scaffolding tower from the north gable to the south gable ready to fit the flashings.

Just as we finish putting up the scaffolding the rain starts again.

We’ve done some wee tasks but have decided to finish early for today because the rain hasn’t stopped. The forecast for tomorrow is good so we’ll hopefully finish the flashings then.