What A Difference A Day Makes

In last month’s entry, I was lamenting that June only has 30 days. A perfectly good excuse for not making any real progress. Since July has an extra 24 hours, surely I would have a long list of accomplishments to report. 

Well, the list isn’t as long as I had hoped. The list may be short but I think it is substantial enough to call July a success. At least until it rains. 

I rented a pretty expensive powered lift to help with all the high up work that needed to be done.  It was so much better than climbing up and down the ladders to nail up the siding.  And my ladders aren’t even tall enough for the second floor work. 

The lift moves really slow.  That’s good because it is pretty bouncy when it extends. If it moved any faster, a person spotless get thrown across the yard when it stopped.  

It is nerve-rackingly bouncey to a point that it took me a few days to trust that it wouldn’t tip it over. It has a low center of gravity and weighs multiple tons.  I would have to drive it off a cliff to knock it over. 

I didn’t have it when I put the roof on. That was no fun crawling onto the roof from a fully extended ladder. Hanging on to a rope on a very slippery metal roof while trying line up the roof panels and screw them.

I had to go back up this year to pull the plumbing vent and stove pipes through. I hated drilling the holes in the roof but there was no real alternative. We have had next zero drops of rain in July so the install haven’t been tested. 

On the other hand, the Skylights I put last year have gone through a rainy season. These too were put in one handed because the other was gripping a rope and are on the long way down side of the cabin.

I don’t ever want to deal with Skylights again. I thought they would add some additional light during the shorter winter days. I don’t really notice any difference now so time will tell if they help. The big annoyance was the waterproofing. I bought the windows at Home Depot and the required flashing kit in the rack next to them. However the kit was for shingle roofs not metal. A little detail I learned after I spent a week getting everything installed and the roof put down. Water would still be able to get under the roof and do what it does best. Cause problems. 

I went back up to run flashing tape around the edges as an interim solution. Everyone knows that short term fixes become long term fixes until they don’t.

I figured that since I had the lift, I would do the long term fix now. I ordered metal roof skylight flashing. I actually read the instructions (several times) and hauled everything up to the roof.  Only to find that it was flashing for my roof but not my skylight. For whatever reason, my window requires custom flashing to be built out of special flashing from the roof manufacturer. At least the $800 flashing kit was returnable.

I ordered the special flashing for $100 and a lot of tubes of Silicone caulk because this was not going to be a tight fit. Very little info or instructions on the effort online so I am hoping that Chimney flashing videos are a pretty close approximation. It took a day for each skylight but they are in and have more Silicone than a German sex shop. 

I have one coat of paint on the siding. Probably needs another while I still have the lift. I went with a shade of black.  It has a Scandinavian fishing cabin look that looks OK. It does show the dust that constantly blows around up here. Looking forward to seeing of it cleans up when the rainy season rolls in.

All I have left is to put up gutters. Definitely a job for the lift. I extended the lift rental a couple of weeks to tie up the loose ends. 

 

 

The days are noticeably getting shorter already. So it is good that I am almost done with the outside work.

On the gardening front. I did pull my Safeway Garlic out of their pots. ground. Pretty puny results. The other plants are struggling but reaching slowly to the sky. I had a big wind or an angry squirrel come through one night and knock everything over. So I have been rendering first aid to what I could and euthanized the rest. I don’t even know what’s what now because the name tags fell out. So harvest day will be exciting.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to spend August doing electrical and plumbing. All 31 days of it.