Tuesday, December 17, 2013

Rebuilding Dilemma or Why Does the Flashlight App Have a Disco Setting?


The good news:  The 2nd floor came down in 2 days.  The not so good news:  With the house open to the elements, we got a weather forecast predicting the first major storm of the season.

The dilemma:  Do we just strap giant tarps down over top of the house and wait a few days, for the weather to pass?  Or see if we can get enough of the roof up, to weather the storm?  

(For those of you that have read this blog for awhile, you may remember our experience last winter when we had a blue tarp over rafters and ended up running back and forth to the project every two hours to dump snow off the mountains of snow between the rafters.  We were determined NOT to do that again!)




The decision:  Move forward!

Front and Rear Walls Going Up
The team from Waterhouse Builders moved into high gear and quickly got the walls in place.  Thankfully, they had pre-built the window units during the ice storm on Monday (sigh…..it's going to be one of those winters….), so that helped it move very quickly.  They sheathed each wall and wrapped it, prior to raising the wall.  Next step, getting the rafters for the shed dormer in place. 
As they started installing the roof sheathing, the radio blared with one of those public warnings - the snow storm was now going to bring 12-18 inches of snow and include very high winds.  Yikes!  So now we needed gable protection in place as well, to protect from the winds.  So they started cutting plywood to start sealing up both ends of the 2nd floor.

Next problem:  It gets dark really early in December in Maine.  And as the sheathing went up, the space was getting darker and darker.  We hadn't thought to bring lights on site that morning, and didn't have time to run and get them as the sun started slipping over the horizon.

The not so great solution:  I tried out my new iPhone flashlight app, to provide some illumination.  But the darned think was stuck on the 'Disco' setting, which created a strobe effect.  So imagine this, you're using big scary power tools to cut plywood, and the light keeps flashing on and off, on and off.  Somehow, the guys just kept going, to get everything under cover before the storm.

The slightly better solution:  I tried one last search in the basement and found my daughter's old desk lamp, squirreled away in a box.  I brought it upstairs and suddenly its 60 watt lightbulb sent, what seemed like, a huge amount of light throughout the space.  The guys were able to finish the sheathing and we pulled one last piece of plywood across the opening to the stairwell to secure it from the storm.  Hooray, done in time!!

24 hours later…… and 12 inches of snow, the space looked great - with only a trace of snow that made its way through the eaves.  












And the desk lamp?  Well it looks kind of pretty with a dusting of snow that blew in during the storm!


































Next challenge:  4-8" of snow tonight!  It's gonna be a long winter!!






Pin It

4 comments:

  1. you guys are amazing!

    ReplyDelete
  2. That is one amazing construction company! What an awesome work ethic! Worth their weight in gold!
    Denise

    ReplyDelete
  3. Yes indeed! They are amazing :-)

    ReplyDelete
  4. Wow...where there's a will, there's a way and you found it! Stay warm.
    Candice

    ReplyDelete

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...