Shingling the Roof

I forgot, we did shingle the roof as part of closing it in before winter.

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Again the guys from the shop pitched in to help us with the construction of this house. Since I have a fear of heights, shingling isn’t a job that I’ll do. Haydn really isn’t particularly agile because of his arthritis. There is a myriad of styles to choose and colours to pick.

We had decided not to use cedar shakes on the roof. They look wonderful and would have suited the house, but with all the trees around us, the shakes being wood products would be prone to moss and mildew collection. The trees made them impractical for our location.

Packages of asphalt shingles are ‘extremely’ heavy. Like we did with the drywall, we didn’t have it delivered until just before we were ready to use it and we bought it from a place that had trucks equipped with cranes. Heavy equipment can easily put packages of shingles on the roof where it's needed. It costs the same to have shingles delivered to exactly where you will use them as it does to have them delivered to where you have to pick them up and carry them to where you’ll be using them. So if you see shingles that are on sale, make sure the company stores and delivers them according to your specifications. It’s no bargain if the roofing crew breaks their backs carting them around or has to struggle to bring them up a ladder. The packages should be on the roof ready for whomever you hired or pressed into service to help you get the job done.

We went with a traditional almost black asphalt shingle.

Felt was used under the shingles. It forms a membrane the shingles are nailed to using broad-headed, short, roofing nails. Flashing was put around the chimney, all the vents and in areas where there were valleys.

Pretty and interesting rooflines do have quite a few changes in their pitch. An attractive roofline can make or break the appearance of a house. Good designers do pay attention to rooflines.

Houses and roofs do move and you have to give components room to breathe. Don’t attach flashing to both the chimney and the roof—they have to move independent of each other. Here’s an article that gives clear instructions about the types of things you will encounter when you’re shingling a roof.

Too often I see endless diagrams and cross sections that just confuse do-it-yourselfers. It really isn’t that complicated. Bear in mind, the goal is keep wetness out of the interior of the house and allow the heat to stay in. To me, just getting up the ladder is the hardest part of roofing. The next thing is to ensure you stay up there. Use a safety line if you have to--just don’t fall off.

Haydn did have to go up on the roof a couple of times. Once to ensure the guys put the flashings 'round the chimney correctly. The second time, when one of the men nailed into the centre of a piece of flashing over a valley—it would have leaked had he not seen the helper nail right into it.

It bothered him that one of his men had done such a foolish thing. Made him wonder if he’d done it elsewhere. He did lose his temper and swear at him. Haydn can be abrupt if he thinks someone should know better. He sometimes doesn’t take the time to explain why some things are important. He just assumes that people are more knowledgeable than they are.

There’s an opening over the front door where we should have placed a skylight. The skylight would have allowed the light to come in and keep the rain out. It’s right in the middle of the roof over the front door and when it rains, the rain drips on people. We do make it a point to get to the door as quickly as possible when we have visitors and it’s raining. He never did put eaves around it because he’s always intended to fill the space with a skylight. It’s now coming up four years and there still is nothing in place to keep visitors and us dry when it rains just in front of the entrance door. Doesn’t really affect us because we normally enter through the garage, but our visitors sometimes get wet! If he doesn’t put something up there soon, I’ll have to warn people to bring an umbrella with them if it looks like rain. :)

Did I tell you when we sold the house in London, I phoned the City because I knew there had never been a final inspection? The planning department went bananas. They had lost our file and that was the reason the inspectors hadn’t kicked us out of the house. We lived there for 13 years before we sold it.

There were still some things that had to be finished:

1) Put a self-closing mechanism on the garage door,
2) Finish the drywalling in the garage. What am I saying…finish it, we hadn’t started until we got the offer for the house.

Correction: Drywall had to be started to be installed. The drywall had to be completely finished in the garage, all joints and air spaces sealed, primed, and tested to ensure gas fumes didn't leak into the house.

3) Insulation in the basement had to be completed.

We passed and got our occupancy permit 30 days before the closing of the sale of the house. :)

That is one of the things that happens when you build your own house. If there aren’t inspectors to hound you—they just don’t get done.

All of Haydn’s men are hard workers and don’t take many breaks. The shingling took three days for a crew of four to complete.

For anyone who is reading this blog, I’m sorry I got this step out of order. But if you were building your own home and had to have your house closed in, you would have noticed something as big as the roof not being shingled before the snow started to come down. :)