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.

Yes, just a bit closer and dump it there.

Here you can see the foam sticking out at the bottom (white) while the dirt is being dumped on top.

Jason at work.  And there is always people looking on right!

This is it again for pictures.  Yes I have way more pictures of course but they are all more or less the same.  Enjoy and until next time.

Are we there yet!!!

I am sure that is what you are asking about now.  "Are we there yet!"  Getting close just the roof and some finishing touches and the building part is done.  Then comes the 'landscaping' part and that is a totally different thing.  But first some more pictures to show you the wrapping of the house and the installation of the windows.

The work crew came back on Friday to finish the upstairs picture window frame, wrap the house and install the windows.  The finishing of the window frame was not too difficult and they could do most of it from the inside of the house but wrapping and installing windows was a different story. 

Darren doing some measuring.

Here you can see how the top window frame is starting to look like the bottom window frame.

 To make their work easier they had decided to rent a lift.  But here is where the trouble started.  Before they could drive around to the other side of the building they first had to level out the dirt around it and we had Herb to this while they 'boys' worked on what they could do.  At 10 am (they started at 7 am) the lift came.  Well did we have problems.  The lift got stuck at the side of the house and had to be pulled out by Herb's bulldozer.  Even that was not the easiest thing to do.

Here you see the bulldozer pulling out the lift.

As you can tell it sunk in quite deep.  I was told that these machines are extremely heavy and have a lot of ground weight.

Here is Jason standing and keeping is his fingers and toes crossed hoping it will work.

It is working but it is also pulling the machine a bit to the left.

Success!  The bulldozer won and pulled out the lift.

So now we had to get some more gravel.  But it is Friday late morning.  Jason tried every company he could to deliver some gravel.  All of them were of course totally booked up already and the earliest would be Saturday morning.  Finally he found a company which had trucks but no drivers.  By mid afternoon he had found a driver and a load of gravel would be coming.  But now that the machine was out they could at least wrap and install the windows on the one side of the house which they did.

Darren struggling with the wrap.  But it sure is a lot easier having a lift.

All the way to the top and some more.

Looking nice boys!

Here the almost finished product and . . . a couple of windows.

Finally our gravel came so first we had to move out the lift for the truck to drive in.  What is not shown in the pictures here that the materials for our roof arrived and are scattered around our yard as well so space was at a minimum here.

Herb do your best and let's hope it is enough gravel so the lift wont sink away again.

Herb did a great job and there was enough gravel to hold the lift now so they could go to other side of the house and finish the upstairs window frame and the wrapping.

Now we can get to work and get this done.

What is that bundle of paper there?

Is someone playing hide and see?  I see a hand.

Yes there is someone under all that paper wrapping the house.

This is why they need a lift.  Wrapping is so much easier this way.  As it is it still took 3 people to get the wrap stapled down.

And now comes the hardest part of the day.  The installation of the picture windows.  It is getting mid afternoon now and they want to get all the windows installed and take the lift back that evening.  I could not just post a few pictures of the window install as you would not get the right idea on how big the windows were and how they struggled with it.  So I decided to put all the pictures (60) into a slide show.  The slide show is about 5 minutes long so get yourself some coffee or tea and enjoy.

You can see the video by clicking here 

On Saturday Jesse came back to finish installing the casement windows and finish off some odds and ends.  No pictures from this day as we had to go out.  Tomorrow or Thursday the roofers are suppose to come which I hope they do as we have had rain now for almost 2 days and everything is getting pretty wet.  But I will keep you up to date with pictures again.

Thanks for dropping by and we will see you in a couple of days.

just catching up. . . .

It has been a few days since we had our visitor and we had no building happening either as we were waiting for the truss to arrive which it did on Thursday.  On Friday at 6:45 am our carpenters were back again to first take apart what they had done earlier in the week and then build it back up again with the new truss this time.  It did not take them long to install the truss and continue on from there.  The came back again on Saturday to get the roof ready so we can have the steel put on.  This won't happen until Saturday this week as the steel roof is not being delivered until Friday.  Today, Monday, was another rest day and the carpenters will be back again tomorrow to finish the 2 inside walls, install the windows and door and wrap the house.  But here are some of the pictures, out of the 100 plus we took, from Friday and Saturday.

Here we are lifting up one of the trusses.  There were 3 of them and they had to be made into one.  Which of course was done after they lifted them up to the second floor.

Have to measure this to make sure it will fit.

Let's measure again!

Hold it up now!  Nail it into place!

I am sure you have to go to acrobat school first before you can become a framer.

Taking a break and enjoying the view.

Like I said you have to be an acrobat!

Hope the roof will hold them!!!

More acrobatic manoeuvring.

Get that nail in there!

Like I said - acrobats!

Again we have to take a measurement just to make sure.

Watch out below!!!

Here Joel is cutting of the pieces which are hanging over the edge.

Almost done for the day.

Done for the day and all cleaned up.  

They did a great job cleaning up the area.  But the roof sure looks complicated to me.

On Saturday, around lunch time, Erik and the kids came for the weekend.  After lunch they had a look at how real carpenters worked.  Then they went for a walk and when they came back the kids decided it was time to play a game.  Monopoly was the game of choice.  Samantha won this game.

Hope no one is cheating!

On Sunday we slept in till 9 am and after breakfast it was again time to play another game of monopoly.  We played until it was lunch time and this time Erik won the game.

After lunch it was time to play outside and do some hammering as well.

This is serious business nailing all these nails in the same hole.

Alex decided it was more fun to build a ramp for his playmobile motorcycle.

The weather has been co-operating with the building process and we sure hope it will do so for a few more days.  At least until the roof is on.  

I will be back tomorrow with pictures of the installation of the windows I hope.  

While we are waiting for the builders .....

to come back we had another visitor.  We are waiting for some wood to arrive so the builders can finish the roof so we have had a quiet couple of days.  But . . . . we did have some excitement during the night.  A couple of days ago Leo and I went for a walk and came across some animal droppings which we both felt were bear droppings but here!!!!

Well guess what!  This morning at 4 am I heard a loud noise outside and as I am curious to see which animal is now eating from our bird feeders I had to have a look.  I quickly went downstairs to get my camera and from our new bedroom window (installed yesterday) we were able to take these pictures.

Yes he is pretty big.  The noise I heard was him taking off the top of our bird feeder storage bin.  In it I keep several pails of bird food.

Here he decided to take out one of the pails.  Just easier to eat when standing on all four legs instead of just two.  As you can see he had already taken off the lid of the garbage can as well but I had just emptied it yesterday so no special treats for him there.

Another shot where he is eating from the pail.  This is right below our bedroom window.  

We will have to report him to Fish & Wildlife today just to make sure he is no danger to himself or our residents here.  I also know that I won't be going for any night walks soon.