Our Journey as we chase the dream of sailing the world!
Turning this:
Into this:
Creates this:
We did 2 of those in the last 2 days. The tractor bucket made a great “ladder” to stand in and hold us at the perfect height. It also made clean up easy since all old shingles and cut scraps went straight into the bucket to be dumped in the garbage trailer for hauling away.
We’re slow, but we do good work!
This is the west side of the roof over the front (north) door of the house. This roof leaked last winter/spring, and I bet that you can understand why. And since winter is coming, I thought I better go ahead and get this fixed, NOW! I’d have done it long ago, but the projects that gave us living space have all seemed more important up until now.
Thankfully all of the needed supplies and tools were here already. Dad reroofed almost the entire house a few years ago and had plenty of extra packages of shingles just waiting for me to use.
The hardest part was taking those old shingles off. As worn out and rotten as they look, they were still solidly attached to the roof. The shingles in the open were fine, but that small section under the overhang… those were rough. As that space disappeared it became almost impossible to get the nails out. And the space to grab onto them was almost too small as well.
It took about an hour to get that portion cleaned out on both sides of the door. Truth be told, I did end up leaving a portion of the old shingles on the East side. No amount of pulling or mangling could get it released since that upper portion of house was built on top of the already shingled entry way. But since it is well hidden it won’t be an eye sore, and being covered the way it is there is no way it will cause a water problem.
When the demolition was complete we found that the tar paper was actually in really good shape. On one side we left it in place, and on the other I did lay some new tar paper to cover a spot we ripped it while tearing shingles off.
As mentioned above, the shingles under the eaves had been put on prior to the eaves being built when the house was under construction 35+ years ago. That made nailing down the shingles then easy to do. Not so much today though. There is no way to get a nail gun nor hammer into that space to secure the shingles with nails.
Instead, we glued them down. After nailing each shingle down as much as we could, we used roofing tar to glue them in place. No shingle is ONLY held by tar though. We were sure to not to put any partial pieces in under that area that couldn’t be nailed. Every shingle has at least 4 nails in it out in the open, and then some tar under the eave to glue that portion down. I hope it will be just fine.
It only took about an hour of work to get the new shingles on. It took more than a couple of actual hours due to the breaks I kept taking for my back and feet (ached terribly from standing on the ladder). I knew this was going to cause a fair amount of pain, so I asked for help. I guess my Elder’s Quorum (church group) dropped the ball on me. C’est la Vie.
If you look closely at the photo you’ll notice that the fascia was never installed around this door. Dad, who worked in construction his entire life (He was a project manager for building hospitals, shopping malls, and an LDS temple) never got around to finishing that small project.
So, after roofing, Julie and I decided that it was high time that it got done. Again, all the supplies were here already.
Julie actually took over this portion of the project. My back was killing me by the time we got to this point, so she found the items and started measuring and cutting. She can do it all (must be part of her Cyborg programming).
(I wrote the previous paragraph while she was indeed out working and I recuperated. After about 45 min I went out again and found she hadn’t put up any of the soffit or fascia, so I proceeded to do it myself while she went and got kids from school and ran them to/from various locations. I left that paragraph in the post just to rub it in a little bit to her – a good natured laugh we were having).
I wish that we were done with this, but it turns out there are 2 bay windows that Dad failed to re-roof as well a few years back. So those are also on our to-do list this week.
I wrote last week about my shipping container woes (Connex). Here is an update on that.
I went in and met with the Bluffdale City Code Enforcement Officer, Ben Henrie. He’s a very nice guy who seemed willing to find a way to make things work for me. I was impressed with that. He discussed with me several options for how I could make this work within existing code.
He had printed out a picture of what another resident had done with their connex. This person had put a pitched roof over the top of it using what appeared to be pre-built trusses.
I kind of laughed at that because the connex’s are already water proof and so the roof was superfluous. It also did NOTHING to hide the sides of the container (the part that is visible) from the neighbors, and it was the appearance that made the container not work with city code. All adding a rood did was add to what the neighbor saw, not hide it at all. But it moved the container into a category of a building, and that fit that code just fine.
I don’t want to do this. It is needlessly expensive and provides no benefit other than to satisfy arbitrary rules imposed by government. Also, I might in the future want to bring my container from MO, and would probably then use them as the walls of a “barn” and put a roof over the middle. I don’t want to put up one roof and then in a few years tear it off to build another one.
If, as Ben and a co-worker (Pam) were telling me, the only real issue is that the connex shouldn’t be visible to neighbors, I would be happy to get it covered. My dad has a plethora of 2×6’s from a fence he de-constructed, and I would use them to make an edging around the top that I’d hang something from to hide the container. That would be something like a tarp or visqueen. They kind of frowned at that, but didn’t sound like they had a reason it wouldn’t fit the code. It would hide the appearance of the container.
Ben did say that another way around things was to put a “sight blocking fence” around it. It was here I think that he emphasized that the real issue is that it is a visual nuisance to the neighbors and that if it can’t be seen than it is perfectly acceptable. Heaven knows I don’t want to build a fence around one, so this option won’t work for me either.
With the issue being sight, this should be acceptable. I didn’t mention it, and neither did they, but I don’t see how they could object to it. I don’t want to do this, but it is doable.
When we left we didn’t really have a good answer from Ben’s boss on what I could do to make a connex fit into the code. The boss wasn’t there and couldn’t be reached. They were having a staff meeting later that day however, with all persons who would have input on this including “the head man” who would have final say on these issues. I was told by Ben and Pam that they’d bring it up and see what was determined.
I reached out to Ben today to ask how that meeting went and what I can do. He said that they came to the conclusion that I CAN have a connex. He said as long as it is only one, and that it is in the back yard, that it is allowed under the current code. I asked for something in writing from them to that effect. He sent me this: “After my staff meeting it has been determined by the planning department that one container placed in the rear of the property will not constitute open storage under the current interpretation of the city code.”
Ben did tell me over the phone that the code was likely to change in the next 5 years or so. He wasn’t sure how it would change, but said that I shouldn’t have a problem. Apparently all the decision makers were present, and they agreed I’d be fine.
After posting about my woes finding a container, I got a message from someone telling me that they sell them in SLC and to give them a call. So with my good news in hand, I called. They do indeed have a variety of them available that I could have delivered in about a week. \
I’ve found me a connex. So I looked at finances, and the only woe at this point is affording one. I don’t exactly have thousands of dollars lying around. In fact, because I’m trying to pay for a home that no longer exists (rather than just declare bankruptcy), I’m decidedly upside down financially.
So… now what? Do I leave thousands of dollars of stuff out to be snowed on, stolen, or rusted? Or do I spend thousands I don’t have to protect that stuff AND to help clean up both the yard and the garage/driveway here at my parents place? I spend a couple thousand I don’t have in one situation, and potentially waste/ruin several thousand more if I don’t.
That’s the rock and hard place I’m trying to work out today.
Any good ideas?
We (and by that I mean Julie) have finished two new bedrooms, and now only have one to go. It’s not much, but it is another project checked off our list.
Julie finished grouting the tile on Wednesday, and yesterday she moved the girls beds over from the room they had been in. Thankfully they fit along that well quite well, otherwise making them fit into that room would have been awkward.
Now of course when I say we “finished” the room, I don’t mean to imply that we actually finished it. How silly of you to make that assumption. Really I only mean we finished the floor. There are still no blinds on that window, which is going to be a must, VERY soon, since you can look in that window from the road. We also don’t have any baseboards installed, nor the closet put together.
We are ready to work on closets though, for both rooms. My dad picked up the melanine last night. That will be this weekends project I suppose. I’m sure they’d appreciate being able to keep their clothing in the same room they sleep in. Simple things like that matter to people, you know?
In this picture of the melanine, you can see some doors in the background (left). Those are going to be an upcoming project as well. Just in front of those doors is a wrapped cabinet for the end kitchen area upstairs. That is another project that keeps getting put off.
I think next we finally start on the new bathroom/shower. We could really use a 2nd one in this house. If any of you feel the desire, we would use and appreciate any service anybody wants to offer. We have a variety of small things that would really make a huge difference to us, but that we just can’t find the time to get to ourselves.
Anyway, thanks for reading again and following us on this Journey!
That is how I feel sometimes: like a louse.
Yesterday it wasn’t because of the mental issues, but the physical ones. We’ve gotten to the point of putting down flooring in the house and bought 50 sheets of tile backer board to put down.
Those sheets are 3’x5′ and weight approximately 42lbs each. We bought an entire pallet of them (50 sheets). That is a weight of just over 2100lbs. It had the trailer tires looking over taxed on the drive home. We need 75-80 sheets, but were worried about the weight.
Being the broken louse that I am, I carried exactly ZERO of those sheets up to our work area. My Wonder Woman wife carried all 50 of them, alone, from the trailer, across the lawn, up a flight of stairs and into the remodeled space of the house. That is over 1 ton of material moved by her 5 foot tall, 135 lbs frame.
And not content to stop there, she proceeded to then start laying them out on the floor.
Gentlemen, you would feel pretty lousy too if you couldn’t help you out in such a situation, right? I’m a big guy, broad shouldered with a fair amount of muscle on me. I get asked if I’m a bouncer (often), a bodyguard (a few times), or played professional football (really?). Yet I might was well be a 110lbs weakling for all the help I have to offer around here. And knowing that I used to be able to do that precise type of thing without feeling taxed at all… well then the mental pains really begin to set in. Watching my wife do it all in my place … well, makes me feel like a louse!