Goal
: keep the rain on the outside of the building
Build time: one weekend
Features:
low slope peel and stick roofing
Bodged:
1) fell through roof 2) roofing buckled in a few spots 3) order enough roofing material
low slope? no slope!:
Our cottage building is evidence that we inherited our tendancies
toward
slapdash construction from our ancestors. This is the first
building our grandparents built. What we now call a cottage was
once a shed that housed their canvas tents. This shed
beginning is evidenced by the tallest,long peak down the middle.
Our grandparents later built on some porches, added a bedroom,
a bathroom , kitchen - voila, hodgepodge cottage. The catch
is, all the additions, with the exception of the bathroom (except the
shower, it too was an add on), are low
slopes to meet up with the original shack roof. This roof has
always leaked - like the worst rusty seive you can imagine.
Countless puzzles and games have been ruined by water getting in.
The good news is with low slope the risk of sliding off while
replacing the roof is minimal...though we did fall
through it once or twice.
last roof: We have
traditionally covered the roof in rolled asphalt shingling - every 5
years or so! Rolled asphalt we learned recently is about the worst
thing you can put on a low slope roof and we wanted something that
would last at least 10 years. The plan has always been to replace
the cottage with a more sound structure at that time. This was
our to be our last roof on this particular cottage. It took a lot
of phone calls to find low slope roofing material that was not
ridiculously expensive like steel. We found a product here in
Ontario,
that is actually made in Montreal - it is some sort of rubber like
polymer empregnated with ashphalt. The great thing is it is peel
and stick (though we added plastic ringed nails on the advice of the
manufacturer).
"I see stars!":
When you don't have an attic or insulation, you can see
stars through the gaps between the roof boards! These gaps
between the boards meant bits of pretty much everything from the roof
fell into the cottage while we worked - pine needles, nails, bottle
caps, gum...the plastic mounted hastily on the inside proved fairly
feeble for catching the mess. This is what brooms are for.
beat the clock: We had 48 hrs
and 9 labourers (which included the two of us) and it rained most
of Saturday. We removed the old shingles, took them to the dump,
replaced several rotted sheething boards (found the hard way), and
installed the new roofing material - this was the fastest we have
ever worked. Not impressed? Well sure, since this suff
is so easy to install, the same sized crew of real roofers probably
could have covered the parliament buildings in the same time frame.
But, we had a band...
Haliburton Sweaters - band: The
key to any good work weekend is to have a band to entertain the
troops. Though the band did not really come to entertain us
specifically they gave us something to look forward to at night.
The bass/keyboard player (red ball cap), our cousin, even pitched
in on the roof (double pun, triple if you consider the ball cap).
leaks? -
No, funny enough. So far at least. We replaced the roof in
2004 and this was written in 2012. We started saving for the down
payment on a new cottage...but uh, we already have spent that $ on a
water slide and bunkie...okay so maybe this cottage building isn't in
too bad shape, we can squeeze some more years out of it...and maybe in
a few years we will try to beat our 48hr roofing record.
"I see stars!":
When you don't have an attic or insulation, you can see
stars through the gaps between the roof boards! These gaps
between the boards meant bits of pretty much everything from the roof
fell into the cottage while we worked - pine needles, nails, bottle
caps, gum...the plastic mounted hastily on the inside proved fairly
feeble for catching the mess. This is what brooms are for.