Friday, August 20, 2010

The Roof: It's Going Well!

Chris and his boys were working hard all day yesterday, and there's much progress to report.  The west end of our house (one of the narrow sides) is complete, and they're now working eastward on both the north and the south (long) sides.  By eyeball I'd say they've now “skinned” about 15% of the total roof area.  Included in this are several items that required extra work: two dormer vents, our satellite TV antenna, and the exhaust for our house heater.  Most of the rest of the roof is not so crowded with items like this, so those areas shouldn't take quite so long.

It's been interesting for me to see exactly how this work is done.  A surprising amount of hand-crafting on the spot is required.  The roofers frequently cut and form small pieces of heavy-gauge sheet metal to create custom fasteners, connectors, and adapters for all sorts of things they run into.  In this respect it reminds me of what typically happens when carpenters and framers go to work on a house – they start with standard raw materials (2 x 4s, 2 x 6s, etc.) and cut and form them to make a house.  The roofers start with formed panels and unformed sheets of the Kynar-coated steel roofing, and cut and form them to make a roof.  It's most definitely not like putting Legos together...

There's a Lot of Energy...

...in a bullet:



Some People...

...are very, very serious about their yo-yos: