roofing the beast

Now given that we haven't seen the roof for two weeks with the incredible deep freeze Pittsburgh's been having, a post about shingling the roof seems less than timely.  So be it... 

After much hemming and hawing we ended up going with the GAF Camelot II shingle in charcoal.  We had initially called for the Camelot shingle in Sheffield Black, but that added tremendously to the price for no obvious reason other than color.  This is a slate look shingle, and was well worth the slight price difference over a regular dimensional shingle. 

The entire roof was wrapped in Grace Ice and Water Shield.  This was not only because of the relatively low slope on some of it, but also so that the sheathing would be protected if roofing was delayed. 

We also went ahead and did all the flashing in copper, along with copper ridge caps, valleys and drip edge.  Copper flashing isn't as expensive as most seem to think, and in this age of lifetime rated shingles it's foolish not to use flashings that will last as long as the rest of the roof.  While aluminum doesn't rust, it does get very brittle over time, and really can't compete.  The visible copper really adds to the roof, and is enough of a distraction that the eye doesn't immediately realize the shingles aren't slates. 

There was one complication to using these shingles that no one anticipated however, and that was the tower roof.  Our roofer (Deluca Roofing for the locals, and highly recommended) was familiar with cutting individual shingles to accommodate the curve of the conical roof, but there was no real way to cut and lay these shingles properly since they vary in shape and are layered as you can see in the above photo.  The front of the tower looks fine, and the inconsistencies are mostly hidden on the back.  It's a relatively minor disappointment, but something to consider if you're planning a similar project. 

I also restored the last antique weathervane which is mounted on the tower peak.  It's nowhere near as exceptional as the schoolhouse weathervane, but I deliberately chose something that wouldn't compete with the original spire on the main tower roof.  Not to mention the price was right, and it had it's original mount, which can be quite difficult to find. 

All that's left is installing copper gutters and downspouts.  I'm sure the price on the radius gutter will be nothing short of heart stopping, so we'll kick that can down the road as long as we're able.  If anyone's interested in the planning behind the roof check out the posts from this year.  There was a lot of head-scratching involved in both the products used and the construction. 

have I got updates for you!

I've had a few too many people complement the deck I'm building...

I'm almost to the point of laminating the historic house pictures in all their glory and mounting them in the front yard just so people stop COMPLEMENTING MY FUCKING DECK!!!!

On the other hand, the porch is coming along nicely...

I haven't been writing because the whole process has been completely overwhelming.  Decisions that should be easy are all counterbalanced by our inability to afford building things as they should be.  The starry-eyed fairy me should just be able to wave her wand and have the various woodland creatures (not to mention a toddler who may as well be a wild animal) wield the tools and get to work.  I just can't fathom why people aren't lining up to build it for me.

Anyway...

I'll do my best to start to detail the building process later this week, but for now I need some design help.  The porch roof was originally cedar shakes, these will not be reinstated.  In an ideal world I'd use the synthetic slates, which would match the main roof, but allow us to walk on them when necessary for gutter cleaning and Christmas lights.  Those however, are way out of budget.  This leaves us with asphalt.  When we bought the house we were told that very little of the original slate would be salvageable due to it's age and how much of it was coated with tar.

We got an excellent price on new blue slates, and used these on the angles not seen from the front of the house - since we thought most of the slate would be this blue slate, we used matching blue-green asphalt on the back of the house and the schoolhouse.  Well, much to everyone's surprise, our slates turned out to be Buckingham, and were in much better condition than anyone believed possible.  So, I have a patchwork roof of blue and black. This was a screw-up of epic proportions that I can't forgive myself for, and it makes choosing shingles very difficult.  The roofs remaining are the porch and front and back of the kitchen wing.  We have enough original Buckingham for the front of the kitchen wing, so the decision is whether to match the porch roof to the blue or the black.  I'm leaning towards this shingle to match the Buckingham.  It has a nice mix of dark gray and black, with a bit of red that matches staining from years of industrial pollution.

So, am I on the right track?

chim chiminey

well, hello...

Have you ever had a nightmare it which you're frantically trying to do something, but everything's moving in impossibly slow motion?  That's been the past few weeks here.  Slow.  As.  Sludge...

But there are people on my roof now, we saw the Decemberists a few nights ago, and the chimney is done.  Betcha didn't even know we were working on the chimney eh?  Well, we have been.  For months.

We're lucky enough to still have all five original chimneys, 4 on the main 1886 house, and one on the 1890's kitchen addition.  All were in danger of collapse when we bought the house, and we rebuilt the four main ones immediately because they tied into the slate roof work and flashing.  Not to mention had they collapsed they would have done major damage to the new roof and gutters.

The one on the end of the kitchen wing on the other hand was willfully ignored.  We weren't working on that section of roof yet, and other than someone parking under it, nothing would be harmed if it came down of its own accord.  Unfortunately, the spalling bricks impacted the plaster walls all the way down, but that damage was done long before we came into the picture.

the moss is a nice touch isn't it?  This is not what the inside of a chimney should look like!

So long story short, we met a new mason, he was willing to do our bidding (it's quite a bit harder than you'd think to find people willing to use the proper materials for restoration), and he didn't think we were strange for wanting to put our "collection" up top.  You see, when the top of this chimney had partially collapsed before we bought the house, it lost it's massive sandstone cap, which would have been very expensive to reproduce.  It was also the ugly stepsister to our other chimneys.  So, two house demolitions and one freecycle pickup later (all over the four plus years we've been here), and the forgotten chimney has a bit of eclectic British charm.

nicely bedded down in 4 inches of mortar

Perhaps the happiest part of all this is seeing yet more of my "clutter" get incorporated into the house and out of the way.  Unless you're in the enviable position of being Scrooge McDuck, the only way to tackle a massive project like this is to grab materials as you find them, even if it means storing them for years.  Yes, your friends and family may seek professional help for you (even though in this case I am a professional), but just remember, they're not the ones taking on an impossible project (I mean, if they truly cared they'd offer to pay right?).

the drip of despair

We've been on a roll getting stuff done around here, and the universe must have decided we had violated the two steps forward one step back rule.  Bam!  Roof leak!

When we redid the entire roof on the main house 4 years ago, there weren't many places it wasn't leaking (but because we started work in a very cold and snowy winter we had to do the electrical first, how's that for hilarious?).  Our roof was Buckingham (black and sparkly from it's quartz content) slate, which is perhaps the most desirable slate in North America. Instead of making repairs, the previous owners had been tarring the leaks for the past 60 years.  So we went from slates that should have been nearly 100% salvageable, to being able to save about 50%.

And why you ask are my black slates red?
Pollution from decades ago, this is Pittsburgh after all...

Your amateur slate lesson for the day:  A good slate like a Buckingham will last nearly indefinitely with proper care, and even a cheap slate that's installed well should last a century.  The steeper a roof, the longer the slates will last because water and dirt shed off well.  The materials that make up a slate roof will, in most cases, fail before the slates themselves do.  When that happens, the slates are carefully removed, gutters, valleys and flashing are repaired, and the slates relaid.  In this scenario, you may have to find a square or two to account for loss and rotted slates.  Doing this on a big house, even with copper everything, will cost about the same as a new shingle roof and last about a century.

  

But in our case, tar....  Tar is bad.  It is the destroyer of slates - it holds water and heats up, rotting the slate, and can't be removed.  And it doesn't even really stop leaks that well.  The slate was really the biggest hangup on us buying the house.  For what it would cost to properly restore the roof we could have finished the exterior.  That was an incredibly tough pill to swallow and we didn't feel we were up to the challenge.  If we didn't buy the house, not only would it not get a slate roof, it was facing demolition.  If someone else did save the house, they certainly weren't going to put slate back up.  The house had already lost so much, that losing it's slate would just be another nail in it's coffin.  And most of the other big homes had lost their slates - and it was an obvious loss.

We went with slate.  Or rather, mostly slate.

In every restoration there is room for compromise.  In this case, we did as much of the front of the roof in our original Buckingham slate as possible, putting enough aside to do just the front of the kitchen addition when that roof fails.  This is what passerbys see, and what we see coming home, so it was obviously the priority. 

everything that could be saved

I found some grey fishscale slates through salvage and we added a band detail to further stretch our original slates, while we used another cheap salvaged slate our slater had just taken off another house on the invisible roof angles. Lastly, there's ordinary shingles on the very back.   Why the non-matching slates you ask?  Well, our slate is the most expensive there is, and very little is still being mined (if at all, there's some debate over if what's being called Buckingham is the same stuff).  It was impossible to find anything that matched that wouldn't devour the rest of our make the house camp-able budget.  It's a big compromise, and actually something that still really bothers me.  I hope we're here long enough to re-slate the back of the roof - but realistically, it's the lowest priority on the list...

As usual though, I digress.  All that trouble, and there's a series of leaks on the back shingle section of the roof that appeared out of nowhere (not an ice dam which was my first thought).  Oddly enough, the only access to them from inside the house was supposed to get closed up this weekend, but our plasterer canceled.  So I guess that's a good thing?  Fixing whatever the problem is should happen on Wednesday, so details to follow I suppose...