This weekend i got the shingles off the bottom of the addition including in our shed. All that is left is the top half of the back of the house (well, and the east wall, but that is a stretch goal). My goal is to have that done by the end of April because the chimney guy is coming in May and once that is down to the roofline I have a ton (several tons most likely) of work to do to take it down within the house. The weather has warmed up and that is going to be brutal work in the attic. It is also going to start to affect our living area as i am going to have to open up the wall in the kitchen. I don’t know if Sarah has realized that yet. She must have. I guess i will find out soon enough.
We have always known that the little kitchen addition was a bit of a hack job. It is the main reason we started this project as we want the space but replacing just the addition didn’t make any sense. The addition was built on slab with no footings and some of the posts have rotted and it has a totally sketchy little cold room under it that we never use. The rats and mice love it though. Taking the asbestos shingles off it was a real chore. They didn’t have any of the give that they have over the cedar shingles or lap siding so most had to be broken to get off. I hate doing that as it is more likely to create dust, but i had my trusty spray bottle and kept the surfaces damp. Slow going. The nails I could get at mostly snapped off which was unusual. When i finally got the shingles off i discovered that the walls were built of dimensional lumber stacked on edge. This is solid old growth fir in widths from 2×5 to 2×10 but I guess back in the day lumber was pretty cheap. This is not just cladding either, it is the entire wall, just 2 inches of lumber. When they got to the top of the wall and it was too narrow to put another board, they just left a gap. Tar paper and shingles hid it well enough i guess and on inside the tarpaper was painted white. They weren’t total savages at least! Luckily i have a scrap pile and was able to patch the holes temporarily until we do the demo. I nice little distraction.
I also managed to do some more prep for the next dump trip. I don’t want the same effort i had last time which was brutal so am doing a few bags at a time and have 6 bags ready to go. I can do a couple every evening now that the weather is better and since it is already bagged i don’t have to get into all my PPE.
We also talked to the architect to get a bit of a timeline and expect to meet either late this coming week or early the next to see some preliminary drawings and discuss refinements. We are both really excited about this and it is taking everything in our power not to pester him. Sarah has booked a trip to go see her parents at the end of May so we want to have all the design decisions done by then. We also finally signed the contract with the builder after a bunch of back and forth on a few terms.
The soufflés were from Claire Saffitz (formerly at Bon Appetit, now with her own channel and recently published Dessert Person). Super easy.
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