Tin Roof Rusted

The tin roof over top of the studio at Camp Davis is no longer.  We spent a long weekend at Camp and my dad and I ripped off the old leaky roof and replaced it.  I’m not going to type a lot for this one – the pictures speak for themselves, and my hands are kinda shaky from all the hammering.  I was actually a roofer for a during my college days.  This weekend reminded me why I decided to become a lawyer instead.

We started by removing the old tin roof.  Half of it was screwed down.  That was pretty easy to undo.  The other half was nailed down.  That was awful to remove.  We spent three hours banging cat claws against nail-heads that inevitably broke off.  Not fun.

It was all Loren could do not to climb up on the roof with us.

We did what we could to keep him busy:

But he managed to get involved here and there anyway:

By day two we had the roof covered in plywood.  This new roof would have what is known as an “overhang” where the roof actually goes past the walls of the building.  That wasn’t the case before.  Rain would simply run down the side of the building, getting behind the walls and rotting the place from the inside-out.  But today we have an overhangand drip-edge for safe measure!

I should mention that we nailed this whole roof down by hand.  Each sheet of plywood required 45 nails, and then there was the roofing material itself, which added many more to the count.  My final calculation had us hammering well north of five hundred nails.  I’m just thankful to be ambidextrous.  I dont think I could have done it one-handed.

My dad is 67 years old.  We actually got a senior citizen discount when buying our building materials at Ace, no joke.

And he worked me into the ground.

But he was rejuvenated by lots of one-on-one time with his grandbabies.

And he conceded that this was probably his last roofing job.

We did it though: 500 square feet of roof completely replaced in a weekend.  The studio is one step closer to becoming “The Tin Can” and one great big step closer to being actually usable as a living space.  The inside is still a wreck and half of the outside still needs siding, but I’m now finally allowing myself to see this as a real possibility and no longer just a pipe dream.

We head back to Camp this weekend for another round of tinkering…assuming I can move by then.

 

[Note: Yes, I noticed we do not have a proper "after" shot of the roof.  Blame it on exhaustion.   We'll take plenty of them this weekend and share early next week.]

Finally got a shot of the roof to add to this post.  Sorry for the delay: