Thursday, October 22, 2009

The Garage Demise, part 5

The second weekend in October we tore the roof off the garage. It was leaking like a sieve, and we had no idea what to expect. There were several places that were 'squishy' to walk on, and I was concerned about falling through.

About half the shingles are off in this picture:
You can see here that Matt has punched through all the places that were soft. That way we can visually identify them and stay away from them. He did partially fall through one hole up to his knee. He has a unique way of finding them!
Into the pickup the shingles went and down to the dump! Took two trips and 1260lb cost us around $50. Not bad.More shingle ripping:

We took up the rotting wood first, then moved on to the more solid plywood.
You can see the more rotted stuff here. It was like sand, it just fell away when you touched it.
We also found out that the roof of the garage was attached to the building...by absolutely nothing. Just the weight of the roof, that's it. The wood is not connected, not even touching the concrete block in this area, as you can see in this picture:
I just love it when he sits like this, I think it is so cute.
One of my jobs was to remove the nails.
Just one more bit to go here:

Now, finally we have good light in the garage!
Matt's mom even came over to help. Matt taught her a new curse.*
Matt decided to use the joists (above) for concrete forms, which is something else we won't have to buy now.

And in part 6, the walls all come tumblin' down!

*Dick bag!

5 comments:

Angie said...

NOTHING bound the roof to the rest of the garage!? What were the builders thinking? This, combined with the bad concrete mortar, makes me wonder if the builders knew what they were doing.

Me voici ∞ Here I am said...

Damn!

Jody M said...

Just the weight of the garage. We've had high winds here before, but nothing moved. If we'd had tornado- or hurricane-strength winds it probably would have come off.

The garage (we guess) were built by the same people who built the house, which also has some, ah, whimsical features to it.

Jody M said...

Did I really say 'were built?'

Mama Pea said...

What a mess. It's amazing, isn't it, when you actually see how some things are put together that they stay upright for a number of years? I get exasperated with my husband because of his "over-building" but I guess it's better than being the other way. (Although I often kid him saying his structures will fall down from the mere weight of all his reinforcing.)