7100km between towns: And now for the roof!!!

Now that the windows are in the next thing is the roof. As I mentioned the roof was supposed to have started on a Thursday or Friday but those roofers backed out of the deal and Jason, our contractor, had to find another company to do the work. This was not easy as winter is coming and everybody in Alberta wants to get a new roof on before the snow flies. At least it seems that way. But he did find a roofer who is willing to take the job but can only do it on weekends in between his regular jobs. It in itself is not a problem and we were lucky that the first weekend was a long weekend so he came for the 3 days to work on the roof. The unfortunate part was that he was all by himself with his son and another young helper so all the work, measuring and cutting, had to be done by him. Again not a problem but for each piece of steel he had to put up he had to measure, up the ladder and stairs, and cut, down the ladder and stairs. After cutting he had to go back up on top to install that piece of roof. He could only do this for about 4 hours a day so he did not get a lot done this past weekend but he said he would be back coming weekend and bring a co-worker so it should go twice as fast then. The roofer thought they would get it all done this weekend. Let's hope.
We did have another problem occur though and that is rot in the rafters of the old house. Our framer Darren, Jason and Leo discussed it yesterday and on Friday Darren is coming back to 'fix' our problem. This has to be done before the roof goes on of course. So in a way it does not matter that the roofers could only do it on the weekend. Reason Darren is not doing it until Friday is because the forecast is for dry and sunny weather. Right now would not be a good time as it is snowing lightly and windy.

This is the first day the roofers were here. First they had to prepare the valleys of the roof before they could on the real roof. Here the roofer's son is handing a piece of valley steel through the rafters for the workers on the roof.

Again the process of handing the piece of valley steel through the rafters seen from on top of the roof. ( No I did not take the picture. Leo did. No way will I go on top of the roof.)

Again a view of preparing the valleys of the roof for the 'real' steel.

This is our roofer attaching the first piece of 'real' steel to the roof.

This is why the roofer had to go down to cut the steel. Too many sparks flying around and too dangerous to do that up on the second floor with all the wood and sawdust around.

The first day they also took some time sorting out the pieces of steel. We had 2 containers, like you see here, of roof pieces in different lengths.

And this is what it looks like after they sorted out all the pieces.

Last Friday we had some dirt delivered to do the backfill which was done yesterday. Leo did not only want the dirt packed up against the house he also wanted pieces of Styrofoam put in to prevent the frost from coming underneath the footings. The following pictures give you an idea on how that was done.