The south face of the roof addition was a cinch and took about two hours to sheath and it looked great. The seams between original house and addition were, well...Seamless. Everything lined up beautifully.
The north face of the addition...Well it was the polar opposite (no pun intended) of the south face. Nothing but trouble, headache, extra work and much grumbling. I think I already mentioned that when the concrete guys poured the foundation, the north east corner ended up about 1.5 inches lower than the rest of the slab. The change is very gradual and doesn't show up well on a 4 foot level, but its there. It's most obvious when you look at the wall as it doesn't line up properly with the existing house.
If I'd ever built a house before (or an addition) I may have known and had the foresight to frame that particular wall using longer studs, cut to the appropriate length. Doing that would have made the wall line up properly. But I didn't, and the result is that when we put the trusses in, the trusses also did not perfectly line up vertically with the old roof pitch, etc.
And so it goes, the guy I hired to do the roof sheathing all of a sudden had to spend time removing the hurricane ties, jacking up the trusses, shimming between the truss and the wall top plate with 2x6 wood, re-nailing (I hope...guess I need to double check) and re-attaching the hurricane ties. The end result was a much improved roof line that matches with the existing house.
Mission complete - Roof sheathing done, and we checked fascia and soffit vents off the list too!
Over the weekend, we decided to put in the new door. There was already a door there from the previous owner's crappy bathroom addition, and upon inspection, we found that when they put in the door, they never put a lintel in place to hold the weight of the house above from collapsing down into the doorway!! Go figure! This is soooo unsafe. Thank god the wall held up! It showed obvious cracking where the blocks were settling/sinking at the top of the opening.
So before we could put in the new door, we had to put in a steel lintel. I enlisted the help of Maurice (the same guy I used for the roof sheathing). Between the two of us, we got the lintel in place and the door hung. It looks out of place in the dingy, under construction bathroom, but I really needed the opening properly sized so I can fur out the wall.
We also spent a good chunk of the weekend checking the roof sheathing nailing to make sure everything was extra secure. I used a long 2x4 to hit the boards from underneath to make sure everything was nailed, then marked boards that needed nailing. I then got up on the roof and marked nails that needed replacing while Jason located and tapped up nails that had missed the trusses. We removed as many missed nails as we could find to make the job look nice and clean, then drove nails into all the spots I previously marked.
The rest of the day was spent cutting the holes for the two tubular skylights, the bathroom vent, plumbing vent and marking the spots for the new dormer vent and turbine. I also spend a couple hours figuring out how to best bring the plumbing vents up into the attic and out through the top of the roof. I managed to glue the main intersection together and secure the 3 inch pipe going through the roof.
Monday morning at 7:15am, the roofing crew arrived. I had just made it out to the kitchen when the doorbell rang. I went out and greeted the project manager, and with that, his guys set loose on the house spreading tarps and getting prepped. The had originally told me the job would take them two days. But with rain in the forecast for Monday at 4:00pm, they wanted everything done ASAP! So instead of their regular 4 man crew, they had 9 guys working! They were up on the roof at at work before the sun was even fully in the sky.
The crew had the old two layers of shingles completely stripped in less than two hours. They had one guy running around the whole time marking decking (1x6 boards) that were damaged and needed to be replaced. Another guy followed him around and cut out bad board (and some were VERY bad...my foot went right through the roof in one place) and another guy running around replacing open spots with fresh 1x6. All in all, they replaced about 130 linear feet of 1x6 decking and about 20 feet of 1x8 ship lap which is what the house has in the porch and eave areas.
I went around and set the flashings for the various roof penetrations in place and mostly just watched. It was quite interesting and very exciting! The flatbed/conveyor truck arrived and the driver and his help began unloading everything onto the roof.
The end result is a vast improvement over the old white 3-tab shingles with the ugly clay tile ridge. And the seam between the addition and the house is completely smooth and unremarkable. Once we cover up the wood wall sheathing with brick, I doubt anyone will be able to tell by mere sight that there was a 12 foot wide addition built onto the side of the house.
The week/weekend, I hope complete all interior framing (shower, fur out block wall, bathtub area), finish the plumbing vent connections in the attic area, put in the window and get a layer of tar paper up on the exterior of the walls. We'll see!
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