Oh My God it's a ROOF!

Yes friends, the actual project that I had wanted to complete this year has finally begun—the installation of the new, improved, higher-than-before roof.  Let this be a lesson to anyone who thinks that a house that needs a completely new roof is going to need only that.  The amount of things that had to be done first (sills, wall height, leveling—sort of—floor and insulation, foundation re-cementing, chimney supporting, carrying beam-installing) has made me question whether this is, or will be, worth it.

But for a brief moment today all was well—the birds sang, the mice stopped chewing—as I beheld the first new rafter on the Ivy Palace.

 It looks as though the loft will be high enough, with the 10' beam adding to the height, and the pitch is not as steep as I imagined it would be, although Ev says he had to make it a bit steeper to accommodate the quarter-round windows.  Hopefully this week the work will continue, rafter by rafter, complaint after complaint about how the whole house is sagging this way or leaning that way . . . all one can do, at this point, is lavish praise on one’s carpenter and hope he doesn’t quit.

Here is Ev on the left doing window-placement so we can sort of get them looking as though they’re centered (the operative word is “looking” since nothing is really even here and so the left “triangle” is a little bigger than the right one.  So the window will come out from the chimney a bit more to give the appearance of symmetry.  (It looks like I'll need another 18" of chimney and then the chimney pot.)

 On the right hand side a 24” x 18” casement window is being installed, as far right as it can go because as you will recall, this will eventually be bumped out 8 feet, and that window will be above the sink.

I did not want any other windows on this, the north side—just the eyebrow windows above—but it was one of our many battles and this was one that Ev won.  He wanted me to be able to have a view of “the entire perimeter” so I could see who was walking up the road, and along the Air Line Trail.  I tend to agree now, although it’ll look a bit weird.

“You’re worried about weird?” he asks me, gesturing grandly around the hobbit-sized space.

 

A battle he did not win: the front of the house.  Although here, I fear, I will not be able to get the fabulous left-over-window deals that have made up all the rest of my purchases (those quarter rounds normally cost about $600 apiece and I got them both for $75).  I went to Home Depot (ick) yesterday to price Anderson awning windows, 24” high and 35” wide—there will be three of them across the front, so that plenty of light will come in but no one can really see you from the road—remember, this cabin is only 35 feet from the road, as you can see in the above photo.  Granted, only 4 cars go by every day, but still.  Ev thinks it will look stupid.  He thinks that the “cottage feel” will be gone.  I think it will be lovely—the awning style, with the judicious use of window boxes to “pull” the window down, will be fine.  There’s no door on this front side, so that’s all there is.

  It’ll be great.  Should I not go mad before it's done.