THIS WAS how we left it Sunday with the roof boarded in and the rakes and soffits ready for drip edge. Jonny sent one of his roofing subcontractors up Monday to shingle the building. That gets us mostly weatherproof. A few more weekends and we’ll button it up for winter, do windows and siding in the spring.
Not bad for six days’ work.
Here’s where we had left it the week before.
We had a four-man crew the first weekend, three of us there the second, and this weekend coming up, two.
I’ll see my oncology guy tomorrow, do some writing for Jeff Weigel, then Jonny and I are headed north to dig a couple of holes, pour concrete piers and build an outdoor stairway up to that door on the second floor.
We also need to trim out the garage door openings for the installer and temporarily close up the undersides of the soffits so critters don’t move into the building. The permanent soffit panels are on order.
It’s starting to get chilly in Vermont. We awoke to 34 degrees Friday, Saturday 44, Sunday 40. I camped in the lean-to up the hill. Jonny and Eduardo bunked in the garage.
Eduardo, master carpenter and all-around iron man, won’t use a sleeping pad or inflatable mattress of any kind. He puts a sheet of plywood down on cold, damp concrete, a painter’s dropcloth on the plywood, his sleeping bag on the dropcloth and… Zzzzzzz….
I don’t think he owns a pillow, either.
The weekend started with half a dozen remaining rafters to be cut and set in place. Eduardo and I did that while Jonny built the cheek walls on the dormer.
Then Eduardo built the rakes and Jonny the soffits, working together or separately, as needed.
I mostly ran the chop shop, cutting dimension lumber, boards and plywood and walking them up the ladders.
Here’s Eduardo in a dust storm, demonstrating how every hard-working carpenter needs to be able to hold his breath and make accurate cuts with his eyes closed.
There was only one fall-arrest harness in the trailer so Jonny and I weren’t up on the roof much. We left that to spiderman spiderman does whatever a spider can.
End of the work day… tools go under cover for the night.
Actually, Jonny had called an end to the work day about an hour before. And some minutes later we’re looking around… where’s Eduardo?
He’s back up on the roof. By himself. Installing skylights. By himself.
More astonishing limbo technique around the fire that night. I tried it but almost immediately hurt myself. Enough of that.
Jonny made a run for fuel for the generator before sunrise Saturday. He snapped this pic on his way back to the work site. Which is on that hill up ahead.
This was on the table all day Saturday, so we wouldn’t forget to have a toast around the fire that evening. A tip of the hat to the invigorating power of hard work in the great outdoors.
I won’t say it’s cause and effect but that rattle in my lungs had cleared up by morning.
Tony DePaul, October 5, 2022, Cranston, Rhode Island, USA
Nice job, really went up quickly. My late father was a carpenter and these photos reminded me of him and how hard he worked for his family. They called him Lefty and he helped build a lot of subdivisions in the Chicagoland area over thirty years or so. Also am reminded of all the side jobs I helped him with as a teenager where I got first-hand experience about just what being a carpenter entails. It was an impetus for me to go to college and go in a different direction, one that he made possible. He has been gone 25 years now and I still miss him.
Nice tribute to your old man, Joe.
My impetus to get an education was 18 months as an apprentice diesel mechanic, working on tractor trailers for International Harvester on Passyunk Avenue in southwest Philly. It was a union job, paid well, but I looked around at guys who were just 50 years old who creaked and groaned as they got up off a creeper.
Never lost the love of working with my hands, though, whether on motors or carpentry. It saw me through the opposite extreme: 26 years working for newspapers where you sit in a cubicle and get softer by the minute. The death of a thousand cuts of another kind.
poor guy is so tired .he could sleep on a bed of nails.. haha i’m glad i don’t sleep with him 🙂
🙂
Looks like a great job! I have the greatest respect for builders. As a preservationist, I’m always amazed by what they’re able to accomplish.
That’s definitely an issue for my friends who own homes in Connecticut, the ones I visited a few weeks ago. Rules are pretty tight on what you can do to the exterior of a house built in the early 19th century or even the early 20th. Building skills that were commonplace in those days come at a premium today.
There were no such constraints where I grew up in West Philly. Anybody could do anything because it was their property. Consequently, some really remarkable neighborhoods built around 1915 were butchered piece by piece, and, little more than a century later, they’re ghettos.
Really great to be able to directly, and more or less immediately see the fruit of all your labor.
It is! By the end of the day there’s something there that didn’t exist in the morning.
Knowing how to build something is satisfying. Knowing friends who can help, also satisfying. Building something in which to live, very satisfying. You guys are doing a terrific job! Thank you for sharing the steps. I will look up “cheeks” and “rake” in building lingo.
Great results!
Thanks, Cynthia. After we build the stairs, a woodstove Jenna bought will get lugged up to the second floor. By the seller, thankfully.
I’m not sure the stove she bought will take the lengths of firewood I’ve been cutting. I was thinking more of the house, that’ll have a bigger stove.
I’ll just have to cut a few cords of 14″ wood. Out of trees I’ve already taken down.
Thanks for this update, Tony. I’m so impressed with you and your crew. Jonny up before the sun and Eduardo working overtime. No slackers here, for sure.
It’s true, Ellie. And the remarkable thing is: after a marathon Vermont weekend they get up at 5 on the Monday and are raring to go all week long. I sleep until 9 and mostly wander around the house all day in my socks.
Nice to be young! Add their ages together and you get me.
Cheers to you Tony, and the men you’re working with; you guys did an amzing job!
You probably got that done just in time, weather wise. Great sunrise photo
Yeah, autumn’s brief in VT, even at modest elevations. The site’s about 2,000 feet up. Nights will be down around freezing this weekend.
Those guys are amazing… as are you, but that has been established. And single malt.
Best $30 single malt ever. Had never heard of it.