SKYLIGHT REMOVAL - The End

Too tired to do anything but post this picture of the finished roof. I need to go up again tomorrow morning and put in the replacement for the support block, which Barron kindly cut for me to match the original, and to clean out the gutter. I decided to buy a couple of tubes of roofing cement and use a caulking gun to squirt a line of black goo along under the lower edge of each tab so if we do get a good wind there will be less likelihood of it getting under and ripping them off. I also found that bare feet are much better than shoes for roofing, but next time I may try a pair of cheap "water socks," flexible shoe thingies with a grippy rubber sole.

As for the investigative aspect of the project, I found that the cost came out to about the same as using pre-cut shingles would be. I spent about $30 more total for roll roofing than I would for shingles, but have half a roll left. This house will have to be re-roofed before I die unless I die in the next year or so, in which case it is not my problem. If I do it within two years the shingles will still be in good enough shape I can just put the new ones over them. If I wait much more than that, they will get warped and curly enough that they will have to be stripped off and replaced, which would just about triple the work involved. It takes about an hour and a half to cut a whole roll of roofing into these two tab hex shingles, which covers about 50 - 60 square feet. I will see how this holds up over the winter and if it doesn't suffer any major failure I will probably use this technique in the future. About half of the roof is not visible from the street so I would use uncut roll roofing, but for the visible areas I would like to do something interesting and I think a two or three color treatment of this would be pretty cool.

SKYLIGHT REMOVAL PART THREE - interlude

Here is my secret - everything I know about roofing comes from this article in volume 4 of the Popular Mechanics Illustrated Home Handyman Encyclopedia & Guide. Since I had to re-shingle part of the roof I wanted to take this opportunity to experiment with an old shingle design from this book. It is the second one down in the diagram on the right, the 2-tab hex shingle. I mulled it over in my mind a lot for the past week or so to come up with the best way of laying out and cutting the shingles.

Here are some tools I thought I might need today. I used the meter stick, iron square, chalk, triangle and linoleum cutter to lay out the pattern for my master shingle and used it as the template to cut the rest. I was having so much fun I forgot to take a picture of my setup for cutting the roll roofing into shingles. I got to work under the tree in the back yard a few feet away from the bird bath and feeders, and enjoyed the company of a pair of nuthatches for a few minutes as I worked. I will take a photo when the time comes to start cutting the second roll.

Here's the concept. I don't know if this will ultimately end up being much cheaper than using standard shingles, though roll roofing only costs about half as much as pre-cut. I have to cover 130 square feet and three packs of shingles will cover 100 square feet, ideally, at $25+ per pack. I figure I would have to buy at least five packs. I bought two rolls of roofing at $49 each and will see how it goes. Standard shingles have a line of tar applied to the back that seals the lower edge down to keep them from blowing off, and I will probably apply some roofing tar under the lower corners. I found a gallon can of roofing tar in the shed when we moved in and have been using it ever since. What I would really like to do is use two or three colors, but I am just going to see how this goes. Imagine it in white, brown and green. That would be amazing.

This is what I cut the shingles with, a nice looking old linoleum cutter I found in the street one day while biking. I cut from the back side and the angle of the blade is just right for that purpose. By the time I got done cutting one roll it was almost noon and almost 80 degrees with the sun just starting to hit the west side of the roof. I start to wilt when it gets over 70 and I am sure not going on the roof at this point. I'd really like a couple of overcast days on Monday and Tuesday to get this done so I could work longer.

Here's all the stuff for the job - uniform size shingles and odds and ends will all be used. I got a new piece of flashing for that vent pipe - the silver thing with the black rubber circle. To the left is the roofing felt which you put down first to help keep things watertight. I have been using the shorter one for years since I got it to re-roof after removing the other skylight. The longer roll is another thing that was lying in the street one day. I strapped it on the back of my bike and brought it home. Tomorrow I want to go out early and get some blackberries, then Zombie Croquet at the Mystery Hole in the afternoon. Have a nice weekend!

SKYLIGHT REMOVAL PART TWO

Yesterday I pried the skylight off and lowered it inside. It was stuck down with a whole lot of transparent silicon adhesive and a whole lot of caulking that I had put on to try to keep it from leaking. The adhesive along the upper edge was entirely covered with roofing grit that had washed in over the years.

Better replace this doohickey while I am at it. The rubber seal is split and will let water in.

This is the edge of the hole as seen from inside. The outer layer is sheathing plywood on top of the old horizontal boards the original wooden shingles were nailed to. The thin innermost layer is a decorative application of thin cedar which must have been really expensive. Behind that is a surprise - the sloping ceiling is covered with horizontal tongue-in-groove boards, the original early 1900s building technique. The room below also has a couple of walls of this. The opposite side of the room had been re-done with sheetrock and I had assumed I would find that under the cedar. I would then fill in the hole with a scrap of sheetrock and paint it all. I will figure out something else now.

Open to the world. The cedar is attractive, but a white ceiling would be a lot better.

Seen from outside - I have put 2x2 around the edge to screw the patch onto.

The patch ready to go, cut to fit. Thanks to Barron for this scrap and for cutting it to size for me. I pre-drilled and stuck screws in, and pulled it up from the outside, laid it in place and drove the screws in with my cordless drill. I was too tired to take a thrilling picture of the patched hole for you. I have about four good hours of work in me per day, plus another hour of not so good work, and the roof at 2 p.m. is not a good place for me to be, with half a headache and the sun beating down. Next comes re-roofing.

SKYLIGHT REMOVAL PART ONE - a photographic essay

First an historical diagram. This house is so weirdly complex it is hard to grasp its structure, even for me, and I have been in every place a person can get into here. In red is the original structure. Yellow is the first expansion, raising the roof and building a new stairway on the east side. The little yellow section on the east side is where they raised the roof for the top of the stairs, and there was a time when it stuck out alone, before the blue section was added. The original stairs were at the back of the house, to the north. The various blue tones followed - I don't know what came when, and the porch may have been added when the roof was raised and the basement was expanded. I know the wing on the east side, which contains the upstairs bathroom, came after the stairs were added, because in the attic there is a weird little area where the yellow, blue and red zones meet, and I found exterior siding on the north side of the area which comprises the top of the stairs. The green square is what interests us today.

This is how it has been for years. When I uncovered it today the overcast light of morning was so nice I almost forgot why I have kept it covered and looked forward with eagerness to the day I would get rid of it. Then I remembered that a foot-wide beam of sunlight creeping across the workbench does not help at all, nor does having things get dripped on and mopping up under a hole in the roof all winter.

Moss on the outside, mold on the inside. I tried many times to seal it from inside and outside but never succeeded until I just stapled a sheet of plastic over it.

Tools for today's work - climbing harness and rope, belt bag for nails, and demolition bar. The rubber mallet was not needed.

Here it is. As you see, the plastic skylight is much larger than the opening, overlapping it on all four sides. It is glued on, and held down with strap iron that is nailed to the side of the box.

Here is how I remove the shingles. Safety apparatus in foreground. I thought I might salvage some shingles but they are too old to re-use, but I like to be orderly. Unlike professional roofers who have a crew of five and a drop box to throw everything in, I can't just scrape the shingles off with a shovel and dump them off the roof. I remove the nails and put them in my leather belt bag, and try to drop the shingles so they don't get all crunched up in a heap.

Maybe this was why it leaked. You are supposed to layer those pieces of metal flashing (that's what they call it, flashing) so they match the layers of shingles. It comes in a roll, 8 inches wide by 10 feet long. I know because one piece had the sticker on it. If I were doing it, I would cut them all the same size and add one with each layer of shingles, to ensure that water rolled off and down the roof, instead of seeping in and wrecking somebody's bookbinding supplies.

And what the hell is this sticking out? There is one on the other side too. The skylight is made of two sheets of plastic spaced about half an inch apart, with these sort of gas vent things similar to a tire inner tube filler. The knurled cap screws off and there is some mechanism inside. It looks like this was actually built as a window of some kind, to be filled with an inert gas, but it was probably picked up as salvage and used on our house. The skylight at the front of the house, which I replaced years ago, was also two layers but more obviously faked up than this. Note the sophisticated attachment technique with the strap iron. That will keep it on.
Another interesting feature at the top of the house where the newer structure meets the original wall. This cannot be blamed on the skylight builders. Here the flashing should be fitted to the siding, slid up under each piece of siding and fitted to the roof to prevent water getting into the crack. You really don't need that under an 18 inch overlap because it would take a hurricane to get water back there, so maybe that is why they just crapped it up with a bunch of pieces at random like that. You can see a spot of bare wood on the underside of that beam, indicating that there was once a support piece resting on the roof ridge below. I painted the green parts and you can see where I stopped, because you actually have to be right where I was when I took the picture to see it.
Here is another thing farther down. Only about half of this support block is left, and I will have to cut a new one. It was pretty loose and only nailed to the roof. Nothing will collapse without it but I don't want to walk on that overhang until it is replaced. You can also see this in the first exterior photo of the skylight, above.
Today's mission accomplished. Most of the shingles are stripped off except for the ones behind the skylight and under the overhang, which I can't get to until I remove the skylight.

Here are the shingles stacked up. I will have to figure out how to dispose of them. Next step - demolition of the skylight.