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Everyone will be happy to know that we have refined the shingle-dipping system. We have, in fact, brought shingle-dipping to a never before dreamed of level. If there were a shingle-dipping Olympics, we would come in…well, not first, but definitely somewhere above the Lithuanians. (With all due respect to Lithuanians. Don’t send hate mail. We’ll cry.)
But we did improve the process. Please witness:
The New and Improved Shingle-Dipping System
The components of system, listed in descending order because Cherie accidentally lined up this photo backwards (get that look off your face. It happens).
5) Shingles (duh).
4) Clothespins
3) Giant vat o’ stain
2) Cherie’s patented Stain Drip-o-Matic (also known in some parts as a dish drainer over a tub)
1) Stir stick
The process: Grab shingle. Dip in Giant vat o’ stain. Transfer quickly to Stain Drip-o-Matic. Let drip off while dipping the rest of the 15 shingles that the drainer (sorry, I mean Drip-o-Matic) will hold. Clear space on clothesline while shingles drip off by removing dry shingles. Pin newly dipped shingles. Stir stain periodically. Repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat. And, oh heck, repeat again.
Using this method, Cherie managed to dip 1 1/2 bundles of shingles in 3 hours, as opposed to 1 bundle in 5 hours. Plus, we can recover the stain from the tub, thus wasting less.
Yes, we were thrilled by this system. Yes, we know we need to get lives. We know.
Some weekends are like magic shows. We come back on Sunday and TA DA! Walls! (Have you seen the walls?) Then you all think that we are incredibly hard-working and talented people who can put up houses in a single weekend.
Other weekends are like this one. We spent long , warm, beautiful days outside and actually accomplished quite a bit. But there really isn’t much to look at.
Michael finished the dormer rafters. We put up a few of the upstairs interior walls and the collar-ties*. Cherie dipped a bundle-and-a-half of shingles. We cut out the design on the fly rafters** and painted them. Cherie managed to sunburn her back from constantly bending over the stain bucket…but we digress.
This is all a way of breaking the sad news that there was no incredible progress these weekend. So we’ll distract you with a few pictures, instead.
First, Michael’s beautiful dormer rafters:
Second, the decorative fly rafter end, including evidence of how warm it was (Michael wore shorts!):
We’ll spare you the sight of Cherie’s sunburn. But, yes, Cherie learned the hard lesson that one should always wear a long t-shirt on the job site.
*Collar ties are horizontal beams that keep rafters from spreading outwards. They also serve as floor joists for an attic space.
**Fly rafters are decorative rafters that run under the roof on the outside. Originally, they were merely the outermost rafter. In these days of insulation, they don’t serve a function beyond trim.
Have you ever dipped shingles in stain? Would you like to try? ‘Cause Cherie dipped for five hours on Sunday and only managed to do a little over one bundle. We estimate it will take 60 bundles to do the house.
And each shingle needs to be dipped twice.
And needs to dry for 24 hours in between.
You can do the math if you’d like. We haven’t done it, because we’d like to keep the strength to go on living.
The good part is that dipping isn’t hard. It’s just boring. And tedious. And did we mention boring?
It is indeed possible to get shingles that are pre-dipped at the factory, but they cost a lot more. And we could just put the shingles up, then paint on the stain, but then we wouldn’t have such thorough protection against the elements.
So dipping it is. In classic Cherie and Michael fashion, we constructed an incredibly sophisticated drying system consisting of 400 feet of clothesline and 250 clothespins.
What do you think of the color? It’s called “Bark Mulch,” which seems
like not the best marketing idea. Or maybe it is. We bought
it.
We are continuing on at a snail’s pace here. Last weekend’s cold, rainy weather was followed up by more cold and rainy weather during the week. We both had work to do for our day jobs on Saturday and…well. Let’s just say that while we haven’t had any major setbacks, we aren’t moving ahead especially quickly either. Apparently, we are in the baby steps phase.
Despite that, Michael put in some hours this week to get the roof going as much as possible. The rafters are nearly done, with just the dormer to finish up. The second floor is starting to take shape:
That gray ladder in the lower right corner is our staircase for the moment. It’s a little precarious, but it adds a certain “living on the edge” style to the decor. We’re thinking about keeping it.
So, while Michael was building a roof, what was Cherie doing? Well, she nearly glued herself to the basement wall in a foam insulation mishap and she dipped 200 shingles in stain.
Hey, little things help too.
Believe it or not some work did get done on the house Friday. 
The problem is very little of this wood made it on to the roof. The ridge is set and some rafters were put in to keep it straight.
The wall between the diningroom and livingroom was also built this week.
Figures that the weekend we need to do the roof, the never-before-seen Maine Monsoon hits.
Ah well. Might as well do something useful. We put together an album of the walls going up.
Once again, thanks to Greg, Amia and Mark for helping big time. What do we owe Mark by now for all his help? Internal organs? Hey, Mark, need a kidney?
You don’t really want to know how much work it took (hint: working until after dark in the cold rain) and how much help it took (we think we now owe Greg and Mark every favor we have to give for the next year) to get us to this point. But here we are. There’s something that looks very much like a house standing on our lot:
Details, the whys and hows, and pictures to follow later.
We didn’t mention it earlier, but Michael’s brother and sister-in-law came to town this week. Greg and Amia are serious troopers. They came from Florida to Maine in April (did we mention it snowed the other day? Oh, we did?) just to help with the house. These are fine, fine folk indeed. In fact, after the walls didn’t come on Tuesday, they stayed extra days just to help make this:
Uh-huh. That’s right. That’s a first floor right there.
The trusses are in the for the second floor, too. Here’s an interior shot.
That far wall is where the stairs will go.
You are not alone if you are wondering how we got this up so fast. Wall panels.* We had wall panels done. Why? Because they were about the same price as stick-framing would have been, but get us done in just a few days. What’s not to love?
*Wall panels, often called structural building components, are custom built by a company to our specifications. This isn’t modular building, though some purists might disagree. These panels are built essentially the same way we would build them, but since they are done as part of an assembly line, they are cheaper for the company to build than they would be for us. They are trucked in pieces, then assembled on site.
We’ve been very careful here to try not to predict publicly what will happen next. We have a timeline, but sharing it with the world seemed like awfully close to tempting fate. Which is all a long introduction to saying: we didn’t get walls on Tuesday as hoped.
The wall panels weren’t finished. We should get them Friday.
We did get the trusses for the second floor, but, of course, second floor trusses aren’t particularly useful without a first floor to attach them to.
And even those didn’t arrive without a struggle, as the 18-wheeler delivering them jackknifed on our little road, blocking access for an hour or so. See? (Taken with Michael’s camera phone, hence the strangeness of the photos. It’s hard to photograph a large truck with a teensy camera.):
If you’re thinking, “Wow, that must have made them popular with their new neighbors,” you are quite right. Quite right, indeed.
Oh, and it snowed last night. On April 5th. That’s all we have to say about that.
No time for a big update, but we did want to show you that over the weekend this big pile of wood:
turned into this:
A floor! Well, a subfloor. A subfloor! No matter, the Cement Pit/Dog Containment Unit is no more. And, no, we are not keeping the dog down there any more.
But that’s only the start of the excitement. We found out that we were bumped up the list for our wall panels, so instead of coming in a few weeks, they are coming on Tuesday. Walls! We will have walls! This week! Stay tuned.
For those who are interested, we will put together a more detailed explanation of the process of constructing the subfloor later.
