house: 2014

house paperwork

Remember those little pencil drawings of the front porch plan that Mare did a couple of weeks ago, and how we hoped they'd be enough for the Building Inspector? Well, they weren't. We really didn't expect them to be, so back to the drawing board we went. And by "drawing board", I mean the concrete slab of the front porch, where we measured and drew and measured again and tried to anticipate questions and finally came up with four pages for the Building Inspector.

Paperwork

A framing plan:

And a materials list:

So now we wait for approval of the building permit.

Just Because

A bit of backstory: All around the house, at the point where the overhang of the eaves meets the wall of the house just above the wide trim boards, whoever built the house used chair rail. It's a little bit of decoration on a mostly plain Queen Anne Cottage and I've always liked that detail. When I picked out the colors for the house this time, I chose a dark grayish brown for the chair rail, a color that I never really liked but chose because it coordinated well with the other paint colors.

So now that I've told you that, a couple of days ago I was doing some invisible but necessary work on the front of the house: painting the eaves and soffit along where the new front porch will go. I say invisible because, except for the fascia boards at the edge, the rest of it will be hidden once the new porch roof goes up; necessary because the soffit needs to be painted to protect the wood and that's a lot easier now than clambering up onto the porch roof to do it after the porch is built.

Anyhow, there I was on the front of the house, scraping away paint from the chair rail under the eaves that will never be seen again and getting a crick in my neck from looking up. A big chunk of paint popped off the chair rail and underneath I saw bright turquoise blue. At one time the chair rail was painted that color! I love turquoise blue. It's one of my favorite colors, in all shades.

Y'all know what happened next, right?

I briefly considered what the house would look like with turquoise blue trim. I worried that other people might think it was ugly. Then I decided that, by golly, it's my house and I love that color and I think it would look great!

So I painted the chair rail turquoise.

And I painted the underside of the eaves the same pale blue as the side porch ceiling. Just because.

I think the house looks happier. I know I am.

Third Time's The Charm

First, the guy who delivered the lumber for the side porch.

Second, a firefighter friend.

Third, the mailman who politely mentioned it.

So now I have a house number. Yes, I did use my kindergarten skills to trace around the house numbers Steve removed from the now-demolished front porch. I used a ball-point pen. The whole process, including the scribbly coloring-in, took about two minutes.

It ain't beautiful, but it serves the purpose.

Welcome

Nothing says "Welcome to my home!" like a boarded-up front door. I mean, really, the door, the boarded-up window, the welcome mat thrown to the side...it just screams of curb appeal.

The mailman came by the other day, stopped in his tracks on the front porch, and said, "Uhhhh...." Apparently my request to hold my mail didn't get there before he started his route. (I have a mail slot in the front door and no mailbox.) I jokingly told him he could use that hole in the plywood down close to the floor and just poke the mail through that. He said that was very kind of me to offer, but after today he'd just throw my mail in a box and I can come by the post office to get it. That probably works better for all of us.

So why is my front door still boarded over, weeks after we finished tearing off the porch? I knew y'all would ask that.

It's not procrastination. Not this time, anyway. I actually put this piece of plywood up after the porch demo was finished.

With no porch roof to protect it, the front door was taking a real beating from all the sun and the rain. After about a week or so it looked pretty bad. See all that faded wood and the shellac peeling off on the bottom half of the door? I didn't want to let that keep happening for another month or so (and that's being really optimistic!) without a porch roof, so I boarded it up. That stopped the damage. I'll still have to give the door a really nice spa day with Howard's Feed-N-Wax and Restor-A-Finish after this is all over. Poor little front door.

ps: Check out the color of the sky in that first photo. Not edited. The sky really was that blue the other day. Amazing.

Back To The Front

Things are moving right along on the front porch. Yep, moving right along at a snail's pace. I finally got the last of the demolition debris off the front porch, so I was ready to start building the new porch about five minutes after that. And then Mare said he's going to Montana and Wyoming for two weeks. Also, there's the tiny problem of not having a building permit yet. Remember way back in March, when I said I didn't want to be building the new porch in the blazing heat of July and August? Well, it looks like that's exactly what we'll be doing.

The process to obtain a building permit in one of Lexington's historic districts is...um...interesting. First I have to apply for a Certificate of Appropriateness (a name which never fails to crack me up) from the Historic Preservation Commission. They have to approve any exterior work on a building in a historic district, including paint colors. Once I have a COA in hand, then I have to apply for a Building Permit. It's possible to get the approval for one and not the other--it's rare, but it happens. I went before the HPC back in March when this whole thing started and my COA is a two-for-one deal: it gave me both permission to demolish the old front porch, and permission to build the new one, provided the new one looks substantially like the house's original porch. The President of HPC is my neighbor, and as he put it the other day, "It would be very unfortunate if you don't get a building permit, now that you've demolished the front porch." Indeed.

So on Wednesday I'll fill out the Building Permit Application and attach the COA to it. The prior Building Inspector and Codes Enforcement Officer (she who famously said "Continue on!", giving me her permission to do something which I knew I already had permission for, ahem) told me back in April that my building permit would have to have a detailed drawing of the planned construction including exact dimensions and a plan for attaching the porch to the house. She's since moved on to another job (and I can't say I'm unhappy about that) so Mare decided to go with a minimalist approach to the paperwork accompanying the building permit.

The little squares mark the placement of the porch posts. The L-shaped area around them is the concrete slab, which will stay. The porch posts are set in a ways from the edge of the slab, but that's where the posts were originally, based on witness marks on the sides of the house. We know from photos of the house that there were originally three posts at the corner of the porch, so we're duplicating that.

The posts will actually be turned posts (I think Home Depot calls them "Colonial"), although Mare drew them straight because he said, "I don't wanna mess with all the squiggly lines." Fair enough.

We'll see if this paperwork passes muster. If not, it'll be back to the drawing board. Literally.

The Other Porch

Remember the other porch? The one on the side of the house? It hasn't gotten much mention lately, what with all of the effort and attention being on the front porch.

The last time I showed it to you, it looked something like this:

Ick.

And then I tore up the rotted flooring, and found a rotted header joist. Sigh.

When I went back a few days later to pull the nails left behind in the joists, I found this:

To the left is the screen that's over a basement window. It's not attached to the house, but it does have two cinder blocks wedging it against the house. To the right is a little paw print which looks like it belongs to a raccoon. The position of the paw print relative to the window screen has me imagining a raccoon leaning on the foundation of the house with one paw while using the other to try to pry the screen off and saying something like, "Dangit! Why won't this stupid screen come loose?!"

A few days ago Mare came over and we removed the rotted header joist. When he went to put the new header joist in, he found something interesting. (And cobwebby.)

A mortise and tenon joint in the foundation of the house! This is really cool to me because when the National Register of Historic Places folks surveyed the neighborhood back in the 1970s or 1980s, they described my house as being balloon construction. Most houses built around the time mine was (which I think was 1887 or so) are, in fact, balloon construction. Mortise and tenon construction dates back thousands of years and it wasn't until the mid 1800s that balloon construction became popular in the United States. This means one of two things about my house: either the main part of the house is older than I think it is, or the house was built by someone who preferred mortise and tenon construction. I traced the deed history of my property back to the 1850s and no house is mentioned on the property until after James Kelly bought the land in 1887. The interior window trim, the stained glass windows, and the carved front door all indicate Victorian era rather than anything earlier. Also, Mr. Kelly was in his 50s when he and his wife bought this parcel of land, and according to Kelly family history he and his brother built the house, so it makes sense that they might have used mortise and tenon joints in the foundation.

We also found evidence that the original side entrance was just a small stoop and not a porch--the stumps of bushes planted on either side of the stoop. (I wonder what they were? I like to think they were spirea or hydrangea.) The Sanborn maps are proof that the side porch wasn't always there. It's not until the 1910 Sanborn map that the side porch shows up, after the addition was built onto the back of the house.

(We like a little archaeology along with our new construction.)

Mare built a sturdy new header joist and then put in a new floor a couple of days ago.

I primed it in a hurry to beat the rain, because Mare said, "If you leave that unpainted with all the rain they're calling for, those boards will swell up and because they're so tight they'll push the house apart." Umm. I'm never sure if he's kidding or not. So I primed the porch floor.

I think the side porch looks a thousand times better already, even though we have a ways to go before it's really done. Little things like a 1x8 over that treated lumber that's the header joist, and some shims on that center support, and big things like lattice across the open part, some steps, and a railing with balusters. All in good time.

Dirty Work

With the front porch demolished, I was left with two ginormous, ugly heaps of debris.

This one, on the front porch:

And this one, in the side yard:

I was also left with the problem of what to do with all that junk. Most of it was too big to fit in a trashcan, so renting a dumpster seemed like a good idea--that is, until I found out the trash company charges $220 for a small dumpster. That was about twice what I'd budgeted for debris removal, and y'all know how cheap I am. After about a week of pondering various options, I learned that a town 45 minutes away has a landfill that allows non-residents to dump there, so a friend with muscles and a truck and trailer came over and we hauled all that junk to the landfill. It was 93 that day with 80% humidity and strong winds. Standing on the back of the truck throwing stuff into a big dumpster felt like being in the hubs of Hell. I don't think I've ever been more hot, filthy, and tired.

But now it's gone, except for this little pile of junk that I need to scoop up into trash bags.

That is, if it ever stops raining.

Can I Get A Witness?

The best thing about having the old front porch gone is that now I can see the witness marks of the original porch. See that dark band underneath the eaves? That's the original roofline.

I suspected, from looking at the two old photos that I have of the house, that the original porch was a little bit smaller than the one that was built in the 1960s. The witness marks confirm that the original porch roof was even with the side of the house, not sticking past it a foot or so like the recently departed one.

Here's another close-up of the witness marks, because you just can't post too many photos of old clapboards covered with leaves and dirt.

Next Wednesday (the 25th) Mare will be here to take measurements of those witness marks and draw a diagram of what the new construction will look like. I'll need that to attach to my building permit application.

Because of another job he's working on and a trip to Montana and Wyoming, Mare won't be able to start work on the new porch until the end of July. That's okay, because I have plenty to do in the meantime. I need to have all that demolition debris hauled away first, which will either be easy but expensive, or cheap but difficult. (Still working out the particulars.) Then I'll scrape and paint the eaves of the house, which will be a lot easier to do with no porch in the way. Between rain and OT at work, it may take me a month to accomplish all that.

And just so you know, while I was writing this post, I was singing this in my head:

Not Exactly As Planned

On Friday morning the house looked like this:

The guys promised me that they'd have the porch off the house by nightfall. I was skeptical.

They started by knocking down the last big piece of the roof.

That's my son, Dylan, on the right and his friend Steve on the left. Here's what they said, in case you can't hear them over that incessant bird-chirping:

Dylan: Well, that worked out better than I thought it would.

Steve: I'm most impressed with the fact that it didn't kill us.

Encouraged by their success with that, they decided to start removing the "edges" of the porch--that rim of clapboards above the porch posts--by using a chainsaw to cut through the clapboards on either side of the porch posts, and then lowering each chunk of clapboards, porch post, and brackets to the ground with cord so the porch posts and brackets wouldn't be damaged. It was a beautiful plan.

Now might be a good time to mention that neither Dylan nor Steve is a structural engineer.

I had such confidence in this plan that I didn't even bother to watch. I thought it would be boring. So I went out to the little strip of garden between my front sidewalk and the street to pull weeds.

About ninety seconds later, after a brief burst of chainsaw buzzing, I heard a giant CRRRRAAAAACCCKKK and Steve yelled, "It's going! It's going!" I turned around in time to see Dylan leap off the porch and into the side yard as the entire structure of the porch slowly twisted and began falling towards the house. Towards the house. I screamed like a little girl at a Justin Bieber concert. Dylan and Steve were yelling, the porch was making a horrible splintering noise and--

And about this time my elderly neighbors arrived home from the grocery store and heard the screaming and the terrible noise of the porch falling. Floyd shouted from their back yard, "Everybody okay?!" Of course, we couldn't hear him. Because we were still screaming.

I ran towards the house and yelled, "Door! Door!" Steve raised his arms up in front of him in a sort of Wonder-Woman-golden-cuffs pose. Like that would stop either him or the door from being smashed.

WHOMP!! The porch hit the floor. When I stopped screaming and my hands stopped shaking, I took this photo.

The only casualties were Dylan's bottle of Gatorade, which took a direct hit and burst open, and the charger to his Sawzall. The porch twisted as it fell and somehow missed hitting either the house or Steve. Miraculously, not a single one of the porch posts or brackets was damaged. In another stroke of incredible good luck, the brackets separated from the posts, and the posts from the top of the porch, so we didn't even have to knock them apart.

The three of us were still laughing about our good fortune when Floyd's wife Gwen crept around the side of the house, her eyes wide. "I heard a crash and yelling, and then I didn't hear anything, and for a moment I thought the three of you had been mashed," she said. Gwen looked around at the front yard, with the porch posts splayed out and Gatorade streaming down the sidewalk and said, "Well, that went not exactly as planned." Um, no, not exactly. About two-thirds of one cut with the chainsaw and the whole thing came tumbling down.

But hey, the porch is gone! And in far less time than anyone predicted.

I Can't See It

This is not just a photo of the back of my house showing that I finished painting it. (Jan, please note that I even painted the electric meter!)

Nope. It's more than that. It's a photo of what denial looks like. It's a photo of an oasis. Because I can sit back here on my patio, look around, and not see any giant projects that need to be completed. (I do need to paint the window sashes and trim and replace the storm door, but that's just a day's work so it hardly counts.) Sitting back here, I can't see the stack of scrap lumber under the carport. I can't see the east side of the house that's two-thirds unpainted. I can't see the ginormous heap of demolition debris that's piled up over there, either.

And I can almost pretend that the disaster on the front porch doesn't exist because I can't see it. Sigh.

This week, the boys tell me, this week if it doesn't rain the front porch demolition will be finished.

ps: If you click on the photo to bigify it, you can see Louis Cat's pitiful face in the bedroom window.

Meanwhile

I'm still really excited about that witness mark above the front door. Which is good, because between rain and weird work schedules, we haven't been able to do any more work on the front porch demolition.

But little by little over the past few days, I did manage this:

Yep, I scraped off the rest of the loose paint and primed. I even caulked a little bit.

Libbi Dog offered me moral support and kisses when the going got tough.

I'm hoping for good weather and a high degree of motivation this week to get the back of the house finished up.

Who thinks that the fabric on the patio furniture cushions needs to be replaced with something brighter?

A Big Discovery

We made a big discovery a couple of days ago on the front porch: the original roof line!

For best results click to bigify.

The boys uncovered it above the front door. When they pulled off the existing roof and I saw that, I was really excited and started yelling, "Look, unpainted clapboards! Look! That must be the original roof line!" Dylan and Steve looked at me like I was crazy. That may have been because they were being attacked by a swarm of thousands of ants at the time, and I was making them stop work so I could take that photo.

But I continued undaunted. "Don't you think it's exciting?! I knew we'd be able to see the original roof line at some point after you got all the new stuff off the house, and there it is! I thought it'd be higher than it is now, too, because I knew, I just knew, that the original roof line wouldn't have been lower than the trim around the windows! I bet when you guys get to the side I'll be able to see the original pitch of the roof, and I bet it's not as flat as it is now! Why aren't you guys more excited about this?! I mean, that's the whole point of doing this."

Dylan said, "That might be the point of it for you. For us, the point is to finish it up so we don't have to deal with this crap anymore."

I guess it's less exciting when it's you doing the work and being attacked by ants.

The Coal Miner's Despair

A couple of days ago a For Sale sign appeared in the yard of White Trash Bob's house. Or, more correctly, what used to be WTB's house. Seeing that sign kinda put the period at the end of the sentence that WTB has really and truly left us. Sigh.

But WTB wouldn't want me to be all maudlin about it. So enough of that.

What you ought to know is that it's a great house, a really great house that was well-tended by someone who loved it, a sturdy brick Victorian built in 1895 by a coal miner or coal mine owner or something, and Bob always jokingly called it The Coal Miner's Despair. The kitchen is gorgeous and it has a cooktop in the island. (Swoon!) The neighborhood is beautiful, really one of the best in my little town, and you can boast that you live in the Old Neighborhoods National Register Historic District. All that, and you'd be my across-the-street neighbor, too, if you bought WTB's house! (I'll try to keep that as a plus to buying the house, not a minus.)

Oh, you want to know what it looks like? Well, here's a link to the listing. Lots of photos there.

ps: Long-time readers may recall when I nearly listed my own house for sale, and at the time I said I knew two realtors who I would trust with my life. The realtors who have the listing for WTB's house are those realtors. They love old houses, and it shows.

Auntie T-Rex Works

Ever since I broke my collarbone last fall, my nephews Cody and Ramsey have called me Auntie T-Rex. Never mind that I haven't been in a splint or sling since December, this nickname appears to be here to stay. Ramsey called me this afternoon and I told him I was taking a break from scraping paint off the house. "Rawr!" he said, "Auntie T-Rex is working!"

Indeed, I was. Though it doesn't look like it, all the clapboards below that big swath of white primer are done. The paint that's left on there is from just a few years ago and it's not a quarter-inch thick and alligatored like the rest of the old paint, so it can stay. Tomorrow, weather permitting, I'm hoping to get the rest of the scraping done and to get a coat of primer on there. Rawr!

Not Bad

Friday afternoon the back of the house looked like this:

By Friday evening it looked like this:

Not bad for a half-day's work.

Based on that success, having six nights off in a row, and a promising weather report, I think maybe I can get the back of the house done this week. Stay tuned.

Overbuilt

My friend Paulie and I were talking a few days ago. "How goes the porch demolition?" he asked me.

"Not so great," I replied. "It's slow going because there are three layers of roofing, two layers of decking, a lot of joists, and nails about every three inches. The damn thing's overbuilt."

He laughed. "You are complaining because something's built too well? That's a first."

I suppose he's right. But the porch really is overbuilt.

How overbuilt?

Well, Dylan's friend Steve (who's helping Dylan with the demo) has been a contractor for thirteen years and he said today, "This is the worst roof I have ever seen. Ever."

And then there's this:

That's my son hanging by one hand from the porch ceiling. After the joists have been cut through.

So there wasn't much hope on Saturday that any real progress would happen. But they persevered. And by "persevered" I mean that they got really mad and started whacking at the thing with axes and sledgehammers and pulling on it with giant crowbars and cussing until the air was blue.

And between all that on Saturday and further serious effort on Sunday, the porch looked like this:

All of the roof gone but the very edges, where the joists stick out over the fascia. (Is that right? Fascia?)

They cut those "roof edges" into chunks with a Sawzall and pried them off.

And now, about 95% of the roof is gone. Hooray! And my front door is open, to keep from breaking the glass in it. Not just to "cool the outdoors" as my friend Chris said. (Yes, it's already warm enough here for A/C.)

See those clapboards above the porch posts? Next workday, Dylan and Steve will cut through those (they're not original to the house) with a chainsaw and take out that part of the structure in small pieces. To avoid breaking either the posts or the decorative brackets (which Mare hand-made) they'll cut close to the ends of the brackets and take out post and all in a chunk.

I was so delighted that the roof is gone that I almost forgot I had to go to work Sunday night, so I didn't have time to clean up the demolition mess. This is what the porch and the front yard looked like when I left:

Whoops.

Biggerer

Hey, look! The hole in the porch roof is bigger! Or, as I said to one of my friends when I stumbled over my words, "biggerer".

It's really hard to take a decent photo of the porch roof--or what's left of it--while standing on the porch. I should send my camera up on the roof with my son so you can see the progress better, but in the meantime this not-very-good photo will have to do.

The porch is L-shaped, and now the roof over the longer end of the L is gone. All that's left of the roof is that area over the front door that you can kinda see in the photo. Hopefully, that will be gone soon. We have to work around the weather and our weird job schedules to get anything done.

Our fervent hope is that, once the roof is gone, the rest of the demolition will go pretty quickly. The guys took the gutter off a couple of weeks ago, and as soon as the roof's all gone, they'll start sawing through the edges and take them out in big chunks. Or that's the idea, anyhow. The reality might turn out to be something completely different. Along the way they'll save those porch posts (which aren't old; they're from Home Depot) and the decorative brackets next to them that Mare made so we can re-use them. And then I'll have to track down Mare, who's been MIA since the demolition started, to see if he's still going to build the new porch.

How I Spent My Vacation

So I took a couple of vacation days, and apparently that vacation extended to the blog, too. Oops. Here's a promise I'll post more often, and a rundown of what I've been doing so we're all caught up.

I should not be left unsupervised on rainy days when there's a paint rebate going on at Lowe's, because this happens:

My kitchen went from yellow to blue. I've wanted a turquoise-y blue kitchen for several years, and now I have one. (The color is Lake Country by Valspar.)

After my son scolded me for never doing anything fun on my days off (what?? scraping paint is fun!) I saw the wisdom of his advice and my mom and I went to Hilltop Farm & Greenhouse and bought the stuff to make fairy gardens.

Here's hers:

And one of mine that she helped me with:

And another one I made later after getting home and wishing I'd bought that cute little gnome with the lawnmower (I just had to go back for him!):

It wasn't all fun, though. I had to go to the Courthouse to straighten out my personal property taxes. Ugh. As usual, I got distracted by the tile floor in there.

Isn't that beautiful? I love that Greek key border.

The balusters on the railing of the staircase to the second floor courtroom caught my eye, too.

And look at that decorative trim along there. Little details like that just aren't done much anymore. The Lafayette County Courthouse was built in 1847 and is the oldest courthouse west of the Mississippi still in use as a courthouse. I've been in it thousands of times, but I still gawk at the architectural details of it.

I caught up on all my tv shows on Hulu. Wasn't the season finale of Scandal just jaw-dropping?? I like Olivia with Jake. I think. That whole show is just cah-razy. Once Upon A Time is my current favorite show. That guy who plays Captain Killian Hook....drool-worthy. And now one of my friends has gotten me hooked on Resurrection. I have a feeling that's a one-season show.

Of course, it wouldn't be days off without at least a little paint-scraping.

That bottom part is ready for primer, so the nail holes and cracks jump out against the white primer, and then some caulk. Jan said I need two good work days and I'll be done with the front of the house. I think I need two good work days, a taller ladder, and counseling to help me overcome my fear of heights.

Work continues on the front porch demolition. More about that next time.

You Sure It Was A Rat?

One of the advantages of living in a small town is that sometimes I meet people who used to live in my house and they tell me stories about when they lived here. From 1970 to 1976, the Jeske family lived in what's now my house, and since Mr. and Mrs. Jeske live just a block or so away now, I see them a lot and I get to hear little stories about the house now and then.

A few days ago Mrs. Jeske was walking her dog and stopped to say hello. "I heard you found a dead rat in the ceiling," she said. (Apparently she heard this story from my sister-in-law Kristy, my little brother's wife.)

I laughed and told her that I did indeed find a rat and that (so far) that's the yuckiest thing that's happened to me.

"You sure it was a rat?" she asked.

"Oh yeah," I said, "it was a rat. Big teeth, nasty little claws. Yuck. It was a rat."

"Sooo...how big was it?"

Now about this time I began to think that maybe Mrs. Jeske had lost her mind, or perhaps she possessed a sick sense of humor that I wasn't previously aware of. I stuck out my foot. "It was about that big, as big as my foot."

She considered this. "Hmmm...did it have a tail, or no?"

"Yeah, it had a tail. A big long tail wrapped around its hiney. It was gross."

"Oh. Well, that's too bad," Mrs. Jeske said.

Huh?!? Too bad??

She must've seen the puzzled look on my face because she provided an explanation.

"Yes, it's too bad. See, when we lived here the kids were little and they had a pet hamster. It was my son Benny's hamster. We went on vacation and a friend of ours was taking care of the hamster for us. Somehow, that hamster got out of his cage and we never did find it. Benny was so upset. He cried and cried. I was gonna tell Benny that you finally found his pet hamster after all these years. Too bad it was a rat."

We Have Determined...

You'd think, after a little more than seven years of living here, that I'd get used to things not going well. I mean, things never ever ever go as well in reality as I imagine they will in my head. And yet, every time I start something, I'm amazed all over again when I run into obstacles. Folks, the learning curve around here seems to have flatlined...

Anyhow, I went into the porch demo full sail and with flags flying three weeks ago. I had a plan: first I'd take out the screened panels, then I'd strip off the roofing with a tear-off shovel, then I'd cut through the roof decking with a Sawzall, then Dylan or someone with a chain saw would cut through the joists and then the sides so we could take them out in chunks, until finally only the porch posts would be left standing.

The screened panels came out really easy. Actually, even easier than I thought they would. That was probably an omen that the rest of this demolition was going to be horrible.

First off, I couldn't find an edge for my tear-off shovel to get under, and it wouldn't poke holes in the rubber roofing. That's when Dylan came over with his ax. We were thinking that he'd start a hole and then one of us could get under the edge of the roofing and strip it off. Except that there are two layers of rubber roofing up there, with an underlayment between them that appears to be made of kevlar, copious repairs to the roof made with shingles, and a bottom layer about an inch thick that's entirely hot-patch applied directly to the roof decking. There's no getting under that.

Then Dylan tried to saw through all the layers of roofing with a circular saw. He managed to make a pretty decent cut...and then the roof caught fire. Seriously. It caught fire. So after he hopped around on the roof like a madman to stomp out the flames, our hell-with-it level soared and we went and had a couple of beers.

This week Dylan's friend Steve came over to help. Dylan told him all about our troubles the previous week and after careful consideration Steve said: "We have determined that this sucks."

Yes. Yes, it does. It was, however, a little less sucky with him around because he and Dylan worked out a system.

Steve sawed through the joists with a chain saw

and then Dylan came along with an ax and chopped away the roof

until pretty much all of that side of the porch roof was gone.

Then they carefully pulled off the gutter.

(which we'll cut down and re-use on the new porch)

They put plywood over one of the windows

and next week they'll put plywood over the other window,

and the front door and its transom

to protect all that as they get closer to the house.

I took that last photo today after I'd cleaned up all the demolition debris on the porch. Three 33-gallon bags of trash, plus a giant pile of stuff too big to fit in the trash bags. I stacked all the big stuff on a piece of the roof decking and dragged it around to the side of the house so the front yard doesn't look so junky.

And then I walked across the street and looked at my place with a critical eye.

Scrap lumber stacked in the yard, peeling paint, house two different colors, wicker furniture stacked on the porch, the gutter in the front yard (lower right), the little flowerbeds covered with leaves...

Oh well. At least the porch floor is nice and clean, right?

Please Pardon Our Progress

Weather, work, and sleep got in the way of the porch demo until today, and weather cut the workday short today, but Dylan made a fair amount of progress on the porch demo.

The "skylight" is much larger now.

So is the pile of debris I need to scoop up and throw away.

People are starting to drive by slowly and stare...and not in a good way. In a way that says plainly, "What the hell is she doing now?!" and "Look at that mess!" I'm giving serious consideration to making one of those COMING SOON signs like at commercial construction sites, or at least a PLEASE PARDON OUR ~~MESS~~ PROGRESS sign, so that folks know the house isn't always going to look so ugly.