Replacing the Porch Roof

A couple winters ago when we had a ton of snow, our porch roof was leaking--there was a lot of snow packed under the eave where the porch and house met, so we figured it was due to that.  Scott put some flashing under there the next spring, and we re-painted the ceiling and posts on the porch (we had painted them not too long before that, and the leaking had caused a bunch of rust streaks).

This spring and summer we noticed that there was still quite a bit of water coming through the ceiling.  Scott crawled up on the roof last week to see if he could patch up the roof, and instead we decided we needed to replace it.  Of course, the roof on the house was replaced about 7 years ago, but they didn't do the porch.  And the porch roof was "repaired" about 5 years ago after a large branch fell on it, but in hindsight we're not really sure if they even did anything more than straighten the gutter.  

Anyway, like the rest of our house, when we started the work, we discovered that someone previous to us had done a really crappy job on the porch roof.  It was covered with the big sheet/roll shingles, so Dad and Scott first removed that.  Mom was the babysitter, and I was the "go-fer."  We started working at approximately 8am.

Dad removing some of the sheet shingle.

 We had bought enough supplies to fix anything last Friday, since today was a holiday and most of the places here in town would be closed--we can return anything we don't use.  This included buying enough plywood to fix most of the roof, just in case.  As you can see in this picture, the middle part definitely needed to be replaced!

 Some of the plywood on the side was also pretty rotten, so we decided to just cut out a chunk the size of a piece of plywood, and put a whole new sheet down.  Easy peasy, right?  If only...

Super Dad!

Found a robin's nest inside the roof, eggs included.

 When they cut off the old plywood along the left edge, Dad and Scott discovered that there was not even a 2x4 or brace along the edge of the roof.  They had nailed the facing wood directly into the plywood, and there was really nothing much to hold the plywood up!  We delved into our wood pile and found a piece that they were able to use as a brace along this edge.  Unfortunately, we were not so lucky on the other side!

We also found an old utility knife in the roof.  It was pretty rusty.

As you can see from this picture, when the roof was "repaired," they apparently just nailed some new 2x4's right next to the old, crappy, rotten ones.  And apparently they are not the correct spacing.  And they didn't put any on the ends.

 On the right side of the roof, when they put the new brace in, the whole fascia separated from the house and threatened to fall off.  Turns out it wasn't really attached to anything either, just nailed into the trim piece!  Around this time we took a break for lunch, and our friend Jake showed up.  We're really glad he came, because he has more roofing experience, and came up with great ideas for how to "fix" the roof to make it usable and sturdier.

Dad, Scott, and Jake working on the edge of the roof.

 Since all three of the guys were engaged on the roof, I got to take over the job of cutting the plywood with the circular saw.  Hooray for ladies using power tools!

Here is the edge of the roof after our efforts.  It is not pretty, but it is sturdy and  not going to fall over.  We put the edging board over it, and voila! Looks perfect!

Mom and Laurel did come outside quite a bit to watch us work.

 Finally around 4pm we got started on the actual shingling.  We had thought we would be totally done around 2pm today, but obviously that did not happen!  Mom and Dad left just before we started shingling, as Dad's knees were shot, and they had some other stuff to do at home.

The underlayment is down!

 Scott had been working on the roof all day, and I had been helping out, but also had some breaks when I fed the baby, so I told him I would be happy to go on the roof and help with the shingling if he would do baby duty.  So Jake and I started on the roof and got it about half way done before Laurel decided she needed to eat again.

 Scott and Jake finally finished the roof shortly after 8pm.  I helped put some stuff away while they were working, but only the stuff I could carry while holding the baby.  I also ran to Taco John's and got a couple 6 packs and a pound (tacos and potato oles, for the non-Iowa folk), and we finally got to eat that after 8pm.  Laurel was so tired she went to bed before everything was done.

We still have to go up on the roof and put flashing in where the porch roof and the house meet under the eave again.  We also bought some new gutter guards that we need to install.  And we have to take the truck load of garbage to the landfill, and return all the stuff we didn't use to Menard's.  So we aren't completely done, but we finished the shingles and the roof is now (hopefully) waterproof.

A big thanks to my parents and to Jake for coming over and helping.  We could not have done it without you!  Also a big thanks to SS for letting us use his roofing nail gun and compresser.  And a big thanks to our neighbor DD who let us use his hose so that the nail gun would reach the roof.

PS--apparently this isn't the worst my parent's had ever seen.  On our house in Elmhurst they went to replace the roof on the family room ad-on, and discovered that the people who built it had not even put down plywood but had just stretched the tar paper across the 2x4's and shingled over that.  Yikes!

PSS--I'm so tired I made about a million typos in this post and had to go back in and edit.  Time for bed!