Fun fact: the title of a J.D. Salinger book keeps randomly popping into my head -- "Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters." I used to have this book but can't say for certain that I ever read it. Maybe now is the time, although all of my books are temporarily stacked behind a couch in my living room and there's no way I'm digging through that mess.
But I digress. On Tuesday, December 15th I got another delivery, directly on to the second floor. We are thoroughly ensconced in "traveling pet medic" season (Roxie is on an every six hour medication schedule) so I took this picture out a wicked dirty guest room window mid-afternoon.
Oddly, I like that picture. And them there are wall studs, folks. We're about to gain more elevation. Here's 7:45 the next morning.
And here's the view a mere 45 minutes later.
At 1:30, we've got a new bathroom window.
That is a poorly framed picture - the dark edge on the right is part of the guest room window - of a newly framed wall.
Progress was quick, perhaps because it was VERY cold outside. So cold that my pipes froze again Tuesday night, not even a trickle Wednesday morning. The water lines that feed my house are in the wall behind my kitchen sink, which has always been an interior wall (my kitchen on one side, the trailer bathroom on the other). So when the trailer was demolished, that interior wall became an exterior wall. Which is no bueno in a Vermont winter. I left a portable heater under my sink cabinet all day with little hope it would do any good. It didn't.
Thursday the 17th it was still VERY cold outside and I still had no water. I also had a heart-stopping moment when Mike began cutting in to the eave of my house right outside the hallway window while I was standing in the hallway - it was quite startling. Since the new build is going flush up against the existing, part of the eave has to be sacrificed.
Here's a view from the road on my way to work that shows the super weather situation.
In addition to getting more of the upstairs walls standing, there was a concerted effort to close in the space behind the kitchen wall. That's my future laundry room and also where the new pressure tank and all the water stuff will live. The baby trusses and sheathing for that section of roof went up, the space was temporarily "walled in" with house wrap, then they fired up a salamander heater to toast the crap out of it. Which did in fact work. The weather was still cold and gross at 1:30 when I came home for Roxie's meds - here's the view from the guest room, bathroom, and hallway.
Friday the 18th was the day of Baker Builders' pseudo holiday lunch party (in my dining room - they had to cancel the official party) and also the day Roxie had her canine tooth extracted. I missed the party but Bryan left me a present. When Roxie and I went to work in the morning, Mike was on my roof and Dan was in my bathtub because this was the day I had to say goodbye to the bathroom skylight. Once the eave is hacked off, the skylight is just a couple inches away from where new build meets old. It's a dicey roof situation there so Bryan thinks they need to put in a cricket. (Wikipedia: A cricket or saddle is a ridge structure designed to divert water on a roof around the high side of a chimney or the transition from one roof area to another.) The only pictures I took are the before and after. The "before" is on my way to work - look closely, it's Mike peeling the metal off my roof to get to the skylight.
The "after" is an interior shot.
Bonus content: the actual skylight. It was a double extraction day and the skylight came out easier than Roxie's tooth.
Oh, and I had no water again when I woke up Friday morning. Dan had some choice words to say about that situation. Bryan called mid-afternoon to let me know the pipes weren't actually frozen this time - a new pressure switch Jason installed on the tank last week had gotten stuck. With temps forecasted to dip into negative numbers, I'm going to leave the kitchen faucet dripping all night just in case.
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