Last Summer's Huge Reno Job (Garage Roof)

So I never posted it, and now it will be out of order, but last summer I finally redid the flat roof on the garage. It was a brutal, awful, painful, frustrating, and exhausting job. If I never have to redo it again I'll be happy (I will hire someone to redo it next time).

Let's start with a few "before" photos. I have some from 2010 when I bought the house, as well as how terrible the roof was looking last year before I redid it.

Here was the roof when I bought the house in 2010:







Then this was in mid-2018:





Yeah. It was looking HORRIBLE. Despite how completely ruined the roof looked, it still wasn't really leaking yet. I've had ONE spot with a leak, but it's in a corner, not anywhere in the middle.

The removal of the old shingle material was somewhat easy across most of the roof, but some spots were really stuck down.









The work was very dirty, tiring, and long. The bulk of the roof was laid over a sort of tar paper, which is permanently glued to a plywood, which is screwed over the tongue-and-groove roof decking. I decided to remove all the roofing nails, which may or may not have been the best idea (I'll explain in a moment).



I had a coworker who did help me on one day to pull off a lot of the old material, but most of the roof work was done by myself. I had a week off in the summer, but everyone else was working.

The hardest part was trying to remove lumpy areas that has stayed glued down. This was all hacked-off using a 2" wide chisel, and/or a prybar and hammer. As I said... painstaking.

I did wear heavy work gloves, but the rough work (shingles aren't really smooth) just made holes in them and I was looking filthy by the end of the day.





Once everything was actually prepared, the actual installation of the rolled roofing was quite fast and easy. I had several things that needed to be fixed before I could start. First, the entire outer edge of the roof was crooked as heck, and looked like it was cut by a drunk person. I also had to install drip-edge, and I also added a 45 degree inner corner on the front part of the roof. It would have been nice to add this all the way around, but too difficult without also redoing all the bottom edges of the siding.



This was after trimming the roof edge, installing the metal drip edge, laying the first "half" sheet backwards as the starter strip, and laying the first row. The way these work is that each sheet is about 3 feet wide, and they have a centre "sticky" strip, and the entire underside of the front half "rocky single part" also has a sticky back. Both these have a protective cling film. Once you have the first row installed, you lay the next row on top (overlaps more than half the first sheet), and you nail down the top part only above the centre glue strip. Then you flip it over, pull off the underside cling film, and the centre strip on the previous row. Flip it back over and press down to glue.

Each roll is something like 3 feet x 30-34 feet? And the boxes weigh 100lbs. It works out to 100 sq/ft per roll and it weighs 1lb/sqft. Some systems use an additional system of base layer first, where you basically do the entire roof twice. First with a thinner un-gravelled base sheet, then a rolled shingle on top, but it was twice the price, twice the work, and same durability.



Something else that will need to be fixed soon is the fascia (edge of the roof) which is very badly installed. There's also no drip-edge on the roof, and the shingles are going to need to be changed soon (it was last done in 2001 apparently). Oh, and the tree needs to be trimmed away from the house.



Anyways, after a lot of work, over a week of time, and fighting off rain: I nearly forgot this part. Some of the days I couldn't work due to the rain. Remember all those nail holes? Yeah. Even though I had placed tarps over the roof, the rain was practically showering into the interior of the garage everywhere. I had to just throw more pastic tarps and covers over everything in the garage to keep the water off all my tools. An absolute nightmare.

So yes, the finished roof:











Again, will never ever do this again as long as I live. Even if I have to take out a loan, it's not gonna happen. These roofs only tend to last 10-15 years, so it WILL need to be done again, but not by me. The roof did turn out rather well, but I completely underestimated how much work it would be. It would have looked a lot nicer if the previous roofers hadn't slopped tar all over the siding. This isn't something that can be cleaned off, and it's also nearly impossible to paint over. Luckily no one really sees up here except the neighbours from their upstairs windows.

I do still need to buy and install a small square window where that plywood patch is over the stair slope. I decided to use regular shingles here that matched my roof instead of the black rolled roof (and also because I ran out). It looks better from the street with the grey shingles.

Victorian Farmhouse Part 26 - THE FLOOD!

Not long after the shower panels had been installed in the bathroom, Pierre decided to test the tub and take a bath. Much to his surprise, this caused a minor flood in the ceiling of the living room.

He kind of panicked and drilled some drain holes to let the water out, but it was basically a huge disaster.

I wasn't around when this happened, but these are some photos I took on my next visit.







Luckily the water seems to have bypassed the woodwork.



Several weeks later, after having found the source of the leak (which was in the bath drain*), I went over everything and patched the damage. This involved chipping away bubbled paint, filling holes, caulking, and puttying with drywall compound. We were thinking we might have to replace that length of crown, but it really wasn't that damaged.





Some good old BIN shellac sealer, and a few coats of pain, and this should all disappear.










* Because of how we assmebled the bath and drain assembly with ABS, we ended up with a slight misalignment, so the drain was not tight enough to form a good enough seal. We ended up cutting an access panel (a hole) in the spare bedroom wall to get to the bath drain and to check for more leaks.

Dining Room Ceiling Project Par 4 - Wecome to my Hell

So the dining room ceiling project has kind of gone off the rails and spiraled into "hellish pain in the ass" territory. When working with old painted woodwork or walls, I tend to give the advice "don't pick at it", but sometimes I don't follow my advice. On this particular job, I HAD to at least chip off the unsightly chunks of paint in order to be able to do a quick patch job. I was originally just doing this near edges and in the V grooves. The plan was just to clean up the ceiling and then patch the chippy edges of the boards.

A preview of things to come...


Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately? you be the judge) I ended up chipping off a big section of one board and then kept going.



This is the result of just half a minute of work. The thick layers of paint in the centre of the boards came off quite easily. This leaves just a bit of white at the edges where the paint had previously chipped and they had painted over it. The paint film separated right at the layer of shellac over the wood. As it turns out, the entire ceiling is actually stained and shellacked solid birch. In today's world (and today's prices) this would be about a 1000$ ceiling to put in. There's at least 500-600$ in wood, plus the added labour to have it stained and varnished. Back in the 1920s, however, it was probably just a bit more expensive than drywall, or possibly close to the same price, since drywall was still a very new product.





Here you can see a bit of an action shot (which was hard to photograph with my left hand) showing how the paint was coming off the boards.



Some of the first layer of oil paint was not coming off as easily, but at least the first 10 coats was chipping off pretty effortlessly.



This is probably and hour's worth of work. This was not fun, since you're working on a ladder with your neck bent.





The original shellac under the paint seems to have had some kind of reaction over the years and it now has sort of a swirly frosted look to it. Reminds me of frost on a window.



Here's a terrible photo.



By far the worst part of this whole job is just the paint chip management. I vacuumed the room about 3 or 4 times but it's basically an unending mess.



I think this is what I managed to scrape in one or two sessions (a few hours).



Yeah, I think that's what I did on the first night, and this was the next day (the bulk of the ceiling scraping was done between about Jan 2 to 6).











I also shot this terrible video for you guys. You might want to turn down your volume, as I had loud trance music on in the background as I was working.



As of today, 95% of the ceiling is paint free. I have a few edges left to do, then I can patch and putty the damaged bits. There's one big saw cut to putty, and several nail holes.

Yesterday I went to buy BIN (shellac based) primer and some white paint.

And yes I did briefly consider trying to save and refinish the original wood ceiling, but it would be an insane amount of work. All the cracks are still full of paint, the new patched-in boards don't quite match the original colour, and to actually get everything nice I'd have to chemical-strip, sand, and re-stain the entire ceiling. That's just NOT going to happen. It's too much work, and in the end, it wouldn't match anything else in the house. All the other ceilings and trim have already been painted-over decades ago. I'm just aiming to have a nice white tongue-and-groove ceiling instead of the drywall. I will also fix the ceiling in the kitchen, but not yet. There's no sense in trying to do it now because I need to remove the chimney in order to patch that corner hole. I will also need the cabinets to be out of there because they do sit right against the t-g ceiling and there's probably many extra coats of paint on the inside of the cabinets.

Speaking of the cabinets, I've actually determined that they must be original to the house. They kind of look more like 1940s or 50s cabinets, but the way they are built and how they were installed seems to prove that they were put in at the same time the house was built. They but-up against the ceiling, and they finish on the original tongue-and-groove paneling that went around the kitchen originally (more of the same wood). Additionally, when I removed the plumbing stack, the exposed cabinet side was unfinished white wash, which is the same wood that was used for the casings. Anyhow, more on that later.

Lastly, I'm including this photo to give you an idea of what a dark wood ceiling would look like. Many houses still have them, but a lot of people don't like the dark wood, so the survival rate for these is getting lower every year. The craze for DIY renos and constantly wanting to stay "on trend" with interior design is also not helping.