Friday, July 6, 2007

July 6 Update

The storms of July 4th roared in and despite the tarps the house got pretty wet. We were mighty impressed to see the Phillips Renovation crew working the morning of the 4th of July. But in the afternoon heavy storms were forecast and the crew tarped the roof and understandably took off.


When the storms arrived rain poured in through the future balcony area. Even where the tarps did work the water simply ran down the side of our house since we have no gutters on the new portions of the roof. So despite the drain system I installed a couple of months ago, water was once again a problem in the basement. This is a photo showing us at the house during the storm. To the left of our friend Brian you can see outside how dark the sky is. This is at 3:30 in the afternoon!




In a way it was worse in that we were actually at the house during the storm as we watched the sheets of rain pour down, soaking parts of the interior. The good news was that since we were at the house, we could position a few buckets to catch water where it penetrating the tarps. In all, we probably kept about 80 gallons of water from soaking into the house.


Yesterday saw just a small drizzling rain with didn't cause any water headaches. The crew started to install the wood decking on the framing, making the house walls take shape. I spoke with Caroline and Ray about some framing details and I am impressed with their eye for detail and creativity in solving small problems.




The roof shingles are also on site so it is my hope the house will be under roof before the next storm hits. The roof shingle selection process was typical - obsessive over-anaylisis. We reviewed a number of options for shingles via the internet and decided on one color, Onyx Black. Despite its extremely dark sounding name, it actually appeared to be a dark charcoal to mid gray shingle. It appeared a deeper, more complex color than the Estate Gray shingle. We thought that would look good. But I kept worrying about the name... onyx black... onyx black. Why would they name a gray-tone shingle onyx black? So I checked some local building supply stores and went to see the shingles in person rather than on my monitor. And after that, I now understand when websites say the color may be different than that shown on your monitor. While onyx black is still not a true black shingle, it was very, very dark and the estate gray option appeared closer to our desired color. So I called our contractor, telling him we had changed our mind. Thankfully he had not ordered the shingles yet, so estate gray it is (or will be).


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Glad to hear you survived the storm even if it was a little worse for wear. After putting our new windows in we didn't completely rush to finish the caulking, etc because we didn't think it was supposed to get so nasty. Fortunately Tina decided to button it all up on Tuesday or we may have been in some real trouble too. The front of our house looks so much better now though, take a look:

http://elephantsonbicycles.teenymouse.com

The Martineaus said...

Andrew, congrats on the new house look. The roof and windows are great, and the painted shutters tie in the roof well. As for us, we really have been very lucky with rain, so I can't complain about 1 storm...hope that doesn't jinx me.
Eric