Sunday 15 May 2011

The Project Continues


Today we are going to be striking out for the ferry. We have to go back to Ontario to tie up some loose ends. We have been working like crazy to try and get the place closed in....we're almost there. The past week has been a bit hectic. The weather has not been in our favour for the most part. We were even gifted with 5 cm of snow yesterday. The temperature hasn't climbed much above freezing.








These pictures will tell you what we've been up to all week. Basically for me, I have been shingling like a mad man the whole week and working on putting cedar shakes on the gable ends. Ted has been "grounded" for the most part..unless I needed an extra hand pulling a string line or laying tar paper. He has kept himself busy with painting, getting the doors in and getting a start on the windows.







The structure goes up relatively fast but its all the finishing work that takes the time. There are so many little details that take way longer than anticipated. Its all the detail that gives the place personality though. We've had many people stop and say that the style looks good.





So, here is what we're leaving the place looking like. It'll have to wait a week or so to get any more attention. Hopefully, you all have enjoyed our story up until this point. I gotta run because we still have to pack and we've gotta be on the road in an hour. I just didn't want you all to feel like you were left hanging.
See some of you soon.

Monday 9 May 2011

Meat on the Bones



Soooo, we are moving forward our backs getting more sore and our knees in our pants getting more worn. The building is now taking shape.







The siding will not be this colour of pink. The boards came primed with this colour on it. We used "barn board" which is basically a plywood siding. We got it on sale for a great price. By the time we put aspenite on and a vinyl siding (which is what most people use here) we could just put on the barn board and save ourselves some time and money. In a couple years, if we feel like it, we can change it to wood siding or something else. All we would have to do is put the siding right over top of the barn board.


Thank Goodness for Informative and Friendly Hardware Stores

We ordered our shingles over the phone and had them delivered. They showed up with a 5 gallon pail of plastic cement. This is really thick tar. We questioned the driver as to what that was for or whether it was for our order. Well, we became a little more enlightened. Here in the windy parts of Newfoundland, they glue down every shingle tab. Yes, if you're thinking what we were thinking when we heard, you might think that its crazy. Well, not so crazy. If you don't glue the shingles down they will literally...fly away.



Derek, our neighbour's son, was over taking a look and showed us how the process of gluing on the shingles worked. You spread a layer on each tab of two shingles and sandwich them together. You do the same until you have a pile. Then, when you go to put them up, you peel them apart and nail them down. Lets just say.....its not as smooth a process as it would be in Ontario.

Today, I was working on the shingling and Ted was doing some painting. We are supposed to have good weather till Wednesday evening so we want to take advantage of it.







Ted's neck was quite sore tonight. He is walking around the house looking at the ceiling.










As you can tell from the pictures, the roof has a steep pitch. It was very difficult working with just a rope. There has been a guy shingling down the road from us so we went and asked him what he uses for supports. He gave us some roof jacks that we could borrow. Wow, it really has been a help. The people here are so wonderful. Today, we had to pick some stuff up at the building centre. A guy came up to us and started chatting. He said he lived in Crow Head and that he was going to stop by and offer any of his tools if we needed them. This is a very normal gesture around these parts. It is what more of the world should be like.

Tomorrow will be another day of the same. Will send more pics when the stain is on the siding...the roof is shingled..and maybe the windows and doors in...cross your fingers.

Thursday 5 May 2011

Keepin Busy





There was quite the competition for this bone. So, Crosbie tried to bury it....only, he must have got tired before he finished because 3/4's of the bone was sticking out of the ground.

We find these bones down on the pebble beach where the docks are in Crow Head. We figure they must be whale or seal bones. It keeps them busy while we're hard at work.

If Crosbie has the bone Iris sits there waiting patiently until she can steal it away from him. Crosbie does the same thing to Iris but he doesn't have the "smooth snatch" down pat yet.

A couple days ago, we went for a walk at the end of the day. Well, Crosbie must have been on a wild goose chase because he lost track of where he was. I was pretty worried, with the worst thoughts running through my head. Ted was sure he would be waiting on the doorstep when we got home....he was right...we got our little boy back!!

Our Most Accurate Weather Forcast



We actually have two barometers in the house. This one I got from Andrew (my brother-in-law) for Christmas. Here you see fairly high pressure which means no big storms are waiting to attack.

The time we had all that snow and wind a couple months ago the pressure was so low that the water in the barometer started to come out the spout. It is a great place to keep an eye on the barometer.
Ted is quite obsessed with it. He keeps walking over to his older fashioned one and giving it a tap so he can read it accurately....I make fun of him a bit for it.



Putting the lid on



The past few days we have been finishing the overhang and the finishing touches on the roof frame. Yesterday, we starting the sheeting. Its been kinda cold but we've managed to survive the days. We now have half the roof done...the hardest part...the valleys. Tomorrow, weather depending, all our mistakes will be covered up...Johnny, the mayor, dropped by and said we were building extra secure compared with other Newfoundland construction.

Sunday 1 May 2011

The Roof...The Difficuly level was rather "STEEP"!!



Finishing the walls was kinda disappointing. Even though it meant lots of progress it meant starting something new. You just feel like you're becoming good at the stud layout, placing windows and doors etc. and then you change projects. They say that change is as good as a rest (which I firmly believe) but we were just getting into hammering the walls together.


The floor joists went smoothly, took a day for us to nail down. The hardest part was practicing toenailing. We had it mastered though in short order.





The roof rafters started smoothly once we had a template that we could use....the trouble came when we were trying to figure out the valleys and their intersection.

As the week went on, the weather and our progress slid a bit down hill (we still worked just as hard but the day seemed to go too fast and we hadn't accomplished what we thought we would have). We had snow on Wednesday and Thursday. Yesterday was bitter cold and today we woke up to fog and a thin layer of ice on our working surface....up high on the roof. We decided it would be safer to work on solid ground until the ice melted.

This afternoon was very nice for working. We were very grateful for this.


What was that Compound Angle again??




I'm sure this picture doesn't mean much to you but let me tell you, it was a days work for us. Lets just say that it boggled our minds!! Lets just say (to justify how much trouble we had) that we don't think we had the correct tools to make the job go smoothly. Again, the nail puller came in handy. I think we took out more nails than we put in.

If you know Ted, you know that he has a calm and cool disposition when things go wrong. Me, not so much. I must admit, I was pretty frustrated by the end of the day. I think Ted was too though.

Thank goodness we had the compound miter saw. Trying to get the right compound angles to fit our valley beams was a test.

Do I see something starting to come out of the woodwork?






Slowly, the roof started to take shape.









No major casualties as a yet..must be cause we had a lot of wood to knock on.










TaaDaa!




This is the roof all ready for sheeting. Well, almost. It was getting dark and hard to see the nail heads. I've already wacked my finger pretty hard a couple times and I didn't want to add insult to injury. So, we called it a night.



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