A Roof Over our Heads

Our Contractor has had a couple of major milestones in mind since our project started, and they were both very much weather-related.  First he was focused on "getting out of the ground", i.e. getting all the concrete poured, thus getting us out of a potential mud hole.  Second he focused on "getting us under roof", i.e. framed and weather-protected.  Until the roof is on the house several of the trades cannot start their work. 

It took about three weeks to get all the structural wood framing in place, along with the exterior wall sheathing.  As soon as the plywood roof sheathing had been installed the roofing contractor arrived and laid a layer of underlayment roof felt. This only took a day.


Layer of roof felt is installed first

Of course, before the roof could be installed we had to pick a shingle color!  We had already specified the type of shingle we wanted, and the contractor was planning to provide "Certainteed" Landmark series architectural style shingles.  We looked at half-a-dozen shingle colors, and drove around the neighborhood looking at roofs, to get comfortable with the grey/brown color we were leaning toward.  We know what color we want for the stone at the front of the house, and we have the color range for the siding narrowed down but not selected.  We want the shingle color to compliment both the stone and siding, but without having real samples of those materials it was hard for us to select the roof shingle color.  We decided on "Driftwood", but couldn't help being unsure until we actually saw it in place. 

Landmark series, "Driftwood" shingles



Roof shingles arrive

The carpenter was working just a day ahead of the roofers, to get all the roof overhangs, edge details and fascia boards in place.  From start-to-finish the roofing took about five days to install.

Half the shingles are in place, on the main roof of the house

Somehow it didn't register that at the same time the roofing was going up the windows would also be installed.  One day we walked over to see the roof progress and more than half the windows had been installed!  One of the features of our house that makes it a little different from a "typical" house is the preponderance of windows.


Roof shingles AND windows!

So now we are almost entirely "protected" from the weather.  We still need the doors, which are due to arrive in about 2 weeks.
 

More windows than wall area?

The irony to me is that Steve and I started down our l-o-n-g road to a new house with the simple desire to replace the roof and windows in our house.  Well, it took awhile, but we finally have a new roof and new windows.