Install Doc

Here is the link to my install doc. Hope it helps - Roofing Project.

And lastly

Well, on the final day we had "fun." So I apologize I didn't take many pictures. But I'll recap the day - we started at 6:45am and tore off the South side and the biggest section by 8am. However, no sooner had we finished then thunder was heard in the distance (and guess what wasn't called for that day by the weather people). So we rushed and had to waste 2 rolls of felt to cover the roof and keep our inside from getting wet. And guess what happened - I rolled my ankle and it popped about 5 times. I'm still recovering from it and we did get water spots. After it quit raining my wife ran to the store and bought more felt. We started the day up again around noon and thought there was no way we would be done by night. However, we had 7 people by 3 pm which had us going very fast and we finished by 8:45pm that night and I was the last one off the roof. We couldn't have done it without all the help. 

And this seemed to work the best - we had one ground crew (ran and got tools, cut shingles, etc), two sets of groups - 1 nailer, 1 shingle setter, and then the one of the last people assisted the two groups and I worked on all the slow tedious stuff - the skylight, the hip caps, the vents, etc. That worked very well and we ran like a well oiled machine.

My bad ankle.

Where all three met.

Like I said before, my ridge shingles were installed wrongly. The are suppose to open up away from the wind like below. If you look at the before they opened into the wind which means - strong wind could get under the shingle and rip it right off.

 My wife and dog enjoying not being on the roof.

And on that last picture we'll wrap this up as you can see by my wife waving goodbye :)

I'll post my handy dandy cheat sheet I used to go by and based off of that and my notes here, you my friend are ready to roof.

Closing thoughts - this is a lot of work, on some days we thought it was worth it, others were weren't so sure. Even if it's 79 outside, it's over 100 on the roof. So here's some post tidbits to help you -

1. Try to do it one either cooler days or on days with lots of cloud cover and a good breeze, makes all the difference and start early as possible. 
2. Put your shingle bundles in a wheel barrow and take to the shortest height of your house and buck them up from there or pay extra to have them put up, bucking shingles sucks.
3. Be prepared to hurt. This was a non stop go go go job for my wife and I. We started Friday at 3pm and finished Monday night at 8:45pm, I had some minor things I did Tuesday, but that was the bulk of the worth. Saturday I worked from 5:45am to 12:30am with no breaks minus food.
4. Two nail guns are better than one if you set yourself up properly. There were times it actually slowed us down trying to manage two people. But once you get your pace, it's great.
5. Be prepared for the weather people to be wrong, wrong, and wrong.
6. Cut your shingles before you nail down.
7. Ensure you are nailing into the black sticky strip on the row below you. No where does it say this in the instructions, but you should be nailing into the previous row and usually around the sticky strip.
8. You'll itch bad - there's fiberglass in everything for roofing and it gets in your skin and itches.
9. Buy a pack of cheap gloves. I bought some nice gloves and within 2 hours I had holes in the finger tips. 
10. Eventually you'll stop caring about throwing stuff in the yard and want to just toss it all down, but then you have to go and clean it up later when you are completely wiped out. Just be prepared for it.

Lastly, cost update - we ended up having to by more felt, hook blades, and roofing cement, but I actually only used 47 bundles of shingles so I took back 4 (keep one just in case) and some extra drip edge. I'll post the exacts later. Thanks everyone and good luck. Let me know if you have any questions or let me here your story!

David & Rachel

Roofing Pictures of the project

OK everyone. Sorry for the delayed update. I apologize. As my ankle has been slowing me down greatly, plus last weekend was Father's Day, I have been a little slow to get these pictures up. I'll upload my document that I went off of for the install tomorrow.

This is my old skylight. I took plenty of pictures to ensure I new how it was attached. Notice all the black stuff on the left side of the picture? That's where we had all the problems with the leaking. 

Good idea to take plenty of pictures of all your vents, ridge cap directions (in my case it was put on incorrectly, I'll explain below).

 This is how all the areas met for my ridge. I did a slight variation of this.

 Here is my beautiful wife and her mother scrapping off the old roof. We had an interesting time in the fact that the roofer laid down two rolls of 15# felt. So... you're asking yourself? Well the problem was that they stapled one roll and cap nailed the other. This wouldn't have been a problem, except they used huge 2" staples to hold it down. Which means our tear off tool was hitting something everywhere. We ended up using a combination of a shingle tear off tool, a spade shovel, and a potato fork. All had pros and cons - shingle tool - great at pulling up nails, staplers, and shingles, but very heavy and got stuck a lot; spade - couldn't really get under the felt very well which meant for a lot of post cleanup; and potato fork - my favorite, light weight, got under everything easily, but left nails and hurt your back due to the small size. 

 Here is a picture of the WeatherLock and the 30# felt laid down. First we install our drip edge on the eave (bottom), installed our WeatherLock on top of it (no nails required, but cut into 10-15' sections to make it easier to manage), then installed our rolls of felt all the way up. When installing the felt you only nail the bottom and the middle, the top get secured via the next row. This helps to minimize the amount of holes in your felt. Also notice how we overlapped it over the hip onto the old shingles. This was due to we tore off over 4 days and did sections at a time.

Notice how your ridge caps are put together for future reference.

Here you can see we tore off the small section and then covered with a tarp to keep the rain off.

 When we went to install the West side we had to tear off the hip and over about 1-2' to allow us to properly overlap the shingles for weather protection. We then later cut off the extra.

 Here we are finishing cleaning up the tear off on the north side of the house. On average it took us about 2 hours per big section (West, North, and South sides, the little East section took very little time). We started on the North side at 6:45am and finished by 8am roughly.

A lot is happening in this picture.We have run a run of the WeatherLock along the eave again and just cut them directly in line with the valley. Then we ran another run down the valley with a 2' overlap at the top onto the other side all the way down to the bottom. Once we have our weather barrier properly installed for the valley, we then started to run felt into the valley and just cut them in the middle.

 My brother in law Josh is nailing the shingles while I'm busy with the valley. We are doing a 6 nail pattern. This bumps our wind resistance from 70 mph to 130 mph. Notice on the right edge that you don't see the drip edge (which is applied over the felt and WeatherLock on the rake). This is due to we have installed starter strip shingles along the eave and rake to help seal the shingles better. *Note, my brother-in-law just overhung the shingles the offset amount and figured we'd come back later and cut them. This worked until it got hot and then the shingles started to tear and stretch on the overhanging part. Make it easier on yourself, have someone cut them before you install so you can just line them up with the edge, you appreciate it later when you don't have to go back and cut all those edges, plus it'll look straighter.

 This is what happens when the WeatherLock gets hot. Hard to tell from the picture, but that's my footprint tearing it up due to the heat. Avoid walking or touching this stuff once it gets hot.

 My fireplace was a pain. The previous roofer incorrectly installed step flashing, so I had to remove my siding so I could properly seal my fireplace. I ran WeatherLock around all three sides starting at the bottom and ran it up the side of the fireplace about 4-5" to ensure no leaks.

 We nailed the top of the shingles over the ridge to protect the ridge from rain and later overlapped again.

A done two sides.

 When we install the shingles we just cut them straight down the valley to make it easy on us. Then after we were down I checked my math to make sure I expanded out1/8" for every 1' which means I expanded about 1 5/8" per side at the bottom. So I started with 2" from the center for each side at the top and 3 5/8" at the bottom. From that I snapped my chalk lines to cut out the valley.

 Here is my mother-in-laws son cutting the valley out. Be sure to be careful not to cut the metal. And don't do like we did and forget to use a straight edge ruler/level to make sure you are cutting straight lines. Opps, I forgot and my wife reminded me when we were almost done. So we used it to go back and clean up the edges. Oh and a side note - buy a pack of 50 hook blades, you'll need them a lot and they are worth it.

To properly install your ridge cap you take a cap and put it at one end bent over the middle and repeat at the other end. Then you snap your chalk line to one side of the edge. This helps you to nail a straight line all the way around the ridge.

 I used the two nail method for the ridge caps. I figured I went above and beyond for the shingles, might as well do it for the ridge caps as well.

 Here is my East and West side with new vents, and ridge caps installed. Looks pretty good if I do say so.

Wahoo!!!!!

Well, despite the rain, a sprained ankle, wasting lots of valuable material, and a short work day due to the rain; we were able to get the house completely roofed minus a few ridge cap shingles. Thanks to all our wonderful family who came to our aid and stuck with us through thick and thin. Today was a trying day, but all in all it actually worked out pretty well.

We'll see if I'm still saying that tomorrow once all the pain really settles in. I imagine my ankle will be killing me since I forced myself to work on it and I'm to the point now where I don't even hurt all over and I know I should. But, it's been a long day and the Chinese take out it starting to put me to sleep..... So I guess I'll have to wrap this up later with a post game play by play. Talk to you all later.

Oh and once again the weather people were wrong. It ended up being a awesome overcast, cool, and breezy day the rest of the day. I love that weather compared to Saturday.

Bad day

Well, we woke up early today to knock out the South side. Started well and got everything torn off. That's when my rule of - don't listen to the weather people came in. Was suppose to be cloudy and a thunderstorm came in over us. We had to rush to get felt done to cover the vent holes. It was a mad rush trying to beat the rain, thunder, and wind. Not only did we get some water damage (minor, but it's there), we had to waster 2 rolls of felt to cover the roof fast and I managed to sprain my ankle on one of my dogs holes in the back yard (there Linda are you happy now?). I still need to finish roofing today, but I think walking on it tomorrow it going to be highly in question. Fun fun fun. I decided something today - I don't like roofing. It's not that I wouldn't do it again, but its hard work and you want ideal working conditions to do it. Oh and pay to have the shingles delivered on the roof, it's worth it.

Status update

Well, after a very, very long day yesterday (5:30am to 12:30am) I can safely say roofing sucks! We were able to 2 sides done including adding 3 new vents, taking apart my fireplace siding (and breaking it - way to go tubro), and 3/4 of the other side.

Here's what I've learned so far-
- weather people are always wrong (didn't rain nor was it cloudy all day)
- when the weather says high 70s, guess what.... its still hot as hell on the roof.
- check, check, and check again before you give someone a nail gun and turn them loose.
-and lastly... you're going to hurt the next day, a lot. Not kinda sore but everything in me is sore.

P.S. don't leave your phone in your pocket with tools nearby. Tore up my screen.

Pics to come soon.. back to work :)

Cost - Part 3

Since I mention in my previous post about the extra cost savings I wanted to add to my budget -e.g. I went out and bought some new tools :)

I, like most guys, love to go shop at Home Depot! That's my new Toys R' Us as an adult. So what did I buy? I bought the following tools at Harbor Freight with a 20% off coupon (http://dealspl.us/harborfreight-coupons/224530p) - used it two times now.

Roofing nailer - $47.98
Hook blades (2-5 packs) - $4.58
3/8" 100' rubber air hose - $27.99

In case you are wondering what Harbor Freight is, let me explain. I had never heard about it until I was researching another project we did (I'll have to post about that at a latter time - hardwood floors throughout the main floor in every room minus the bathrooms). I was researching floor nailers and found they were very very expensive. Well at the time my boss brought me a Harbor Freight flyer and told me about them. I used that nailer on 1200 sq ft of 3/4" Oak floors, then my friend borrowed it for his, and I just got done doing my mother-in-laws (about 600 sq ft). These aren't tools that you buy to last a lifetime, you buy them for one time jobs. But as I just mentioned - that nailer has been through quite a few jobs and still is going strong.

So in regards to the roofing nailer -  it was $119.99 on clearance since it was last years model which they had it on sale for $59.98, then with my coupon - $47.98. You can't beat that price. Go look at any home improvement store. Cheapest you'll find is $150 for one nailer. I now have two nailers.

???? Two nailers you think to yourself. Yes this is my second. I left the first out of my budget as I used some money I made for a side project to treat myself to a air compressor finally after many many many years of pleading with my wife to let me get one. I went to Home Depot one day and they had a sale too good to pass up - a 8 gal 1 1/2 HP Husky air compressor with 3 finishing nailers for $99.99. Yes I said that right all of that for $99.99. This is normally the part in the TV commercial where they say "But wait there's more!" In this case that's it, but it was one heck of a deal so I called my wife and we decided it was a good investment (e.g. I finally got my air compressor) and with the money I had leftover still from my side job I did I went and bought the roofing nailer as well. So there you go. You have my confession about how I left that out.

But now I'm ready and expect roofing to go much faster. I'm borrowing my mother-in-laws air compressor along with mine to run both nail guns at the same time. Should speed things up. I'll let you know how the equipment does.

It Has Begun

Well, I knew it was only a matter of time before the text book perfect roofing job turned into Roofing for the Everyday Joe errh......David job. The weather isn't exactly working out, be we can work around that. But here is were we jump tracks.

Dumpster was suppose to be delivered tomorrow morning early, well they just showed up and almost delivered it to the wrong house. Luckily my wife was home and fixed the situation. Otherwise both my neighbor and myself would have been very confused after work today.

Then, my mother-in-law and her husband were suppose to come out and help tear off. Well..... they kinda changed their minds. He's not coming at all and she might come for awhile later today. Needless to say, wife and I are a little upset since we helped them on their house for the last three weeks and stayed late in the night and in return they offered to help us on the roof. Oh well, that's what happens when your help is free.

So we'll have to play it by ear when I get home today from work.

To be continued.........

Theme change

I decided to change the theme of the blog due to my current forecast for working this weekend - rain today, Sunday, and part Monday. I'm crossing my fingers that the weather people do like they usually do and are wrong. But knowing my luck..... they'll be right for a change. Saturday looks good right now so we'll just have to bust it out Saturday. It's going to be a long long day. Pictures and video to come.

Cost - Part 2

So, I have some great news. I found out yesterday when the insurance adjuster came by that we will get back more money since we are doing the work ourselves! Which means I went from being $75ish under budget to being more like $800 under budget. Wahoo!

How this works - the Replacement Cost Value for my damaged roof is $4,466.79. Based off of that they figure out my depreciation of my roof - $1276.79. Now what does that mean? That means that I'm able to get a portion of that depreciation back after I install. Normally a roofing company would do all this for you and you'd never now what it all means, except I have a new roof and just paid my deductible. Since I'm doing this myself, I can get back a good chunk of that for my labor which means I'll be well under budget and able to do a nice BBQ dinner for my crew.

You should find out what insurance policy you have if you have a ACV or a RCV. It will make a big difference when the time comes to file a claim. I recommend reading this article - ACV Vs. RCV and why you should care. You want a RCV which is what I have. I was able to recoup the full value of my roof that was damaged. I have friends that their roof was totaled by the insurance company from hail, but since the had the wrong policy, it didn't mean a new roof for them, it meant they had a check for the depreciated value of their roof and had to fork out the rest to replace it and since their roof was older.... much much more out of pocket than they ever thought.

Cost

Alright, now down to the important part. How much did I really spend and does that amount translate to - is this worth my time? I bought all my materials from either Lowes or Home Depot. I'm not going to say which I like more other than I have a Siberian Husky and a lot of my tools have his picture on it - see to the right :)

I bought shingles from Lowes because they carry Owens Corning which was rated very well by a "leading consumer reports company" - I believe that's how most people put it to keep themselves out of trouble. I originally looked at Timberline shingles, but they weren't rated nearly as well, so there you go.

Product	Price	Quantity	Total	Store
Owens Corning Oakridge shingles*	$22.95	52	$1193.4	Lowes
GAF Pro-Start starter shingles (covers 120 linear feet)	$32.50	2	$65.00	Home Depot
Owens Hip/Ridge Cap	$51.70	4	$206.80	Lowes
Owens WeatherLock ice 66' roll	$85.80	2	$171.60	Lowes
Owens WeatherLock ice 33' roll	$55.57	1	$55.57	Lowes
Vents - RT65	$5.38	3	$16.14	Lowes
Soffit vents 16" x 8"	$1.94	6	$11.64	Lowes
Pipe flashing	$6.55	3	$19.65	Lowes
Drip edge flashing (10' sections)	$3.46	14	$48.44	Lowes
Valley flashing (10' sections)	$19.38	3	$58.14	Lowes
Flashing roll (6" x 50')	$27.11	1	$27.11	Lowes
Coil nails**	$8.47	2	$16.94	Home Depot
Roofing nails	$5.96	2	$11.92	Home Depot
Cap nails for felt (2000 count box)	$22.93	1	$22.93	Lowes
Shingle Stripper	$24.98	1	$24.98	Lowes
Gloves	$19.97	1	$19.97	Lowes
30# Felt paper	$17.80	8	$142.40	Lowes
Roofing cement	$2.98	4	$11.92	Lowes
Subtotal			$2,112.63
10% off coupon card			-$211.26
Tax			$151.49
5% off $1500 on Chase card			-$75.00
Dumpster - 10 yards			$170
Grand total			$2157.74
Insurance check			$2,229.93
Amount left			$72.19

So as you can see I was able to buy all my materials, tools, extras, and all the stuff that they recommend you put on your roof, but usually most people don't due to the extra cost and still come in under budget. 

Now remember, I got lucky in a few areas. First, I was able to get some left over supplies from my sister and brother-in-law who just got their roof done. Second, I get a discount from my trash company for a dumpster. Usually, they are more than this. And lastly, I used a 10% off coupon plus this month I get 5% cash back on my Chase credit card at home improvement stores. So that all helped keep it under budget. However, this same job from a contractor would be around $7,000 roughly based on what a quote I got and my brother-in-law and sister's job cost on their house.

So based off all that, doing it myself - I'm saving right around $5,000, yep that's right $5k. What would you do if you saved that much? For my wife and myself, that was more than enough to justify the manual labor to do it ourselves.

*Note - normally they go for $25.50, but when you buy 36 or more, you get contractor's pricing.

** Got lucky in my sister had her house re-roofed and I got to grab the leftover extra nails from their project which saved me a pretty penny.

Another note - I found Home Depot accepts Lowes coupons, I didn't know that till the tail end of my buying, otherwise some of my purchases would have shifted. But considering I'm under budget, I'm still happy.

Roofing terms and what they mean to us!

For this information/blog to be meaningful, here are some terms you need to know. I put them in "English" for the rest of us -

From Owens Corning website

My house layout-

• Squares- roofs are measured in squares. One square is equal to a 10' x 10' area (100 sq ft). My house is 1,560 sq ft, so it equals 15.6 squares.
• Bundles - asphalt shingles come in bundles (usually 22 shingles per bundle, give or take a few) and usually there are 3 bundles in a square. So 3 per bundle x 16 squares - 48 bundles total. I bought 52 to account for waste.
• Rake - in our terms - the slopped part of your roof along the edge.
• Eave - the horizontal part of your roof at the bottom (where your gutter's are attached)
• Hip - an area where two sides of your roof meet at an incline
• Valley - an internal angle from two sides of your roof meet.
• Drip edge - a piece of metal that goes on all sides of the house to help get rain off the house and keeps your shingles from drooping over time. 
• Sheathing - basically plywood, it's slightly different, but for easy sake - its plywood.

You can see a full list of terms here - http://roofing.owenscorning.com/homeowner/thingsyoushouldknow/terms.aspx

But those are the fun technical terms. It took me awhile to get eave and rake straight in my head as well.

Background on the project and myself

Hi, my name is David and I live in Kansas City, MO with my wonderful wife, dog, and our cat. I figured I should tell you a little about myself before just jumping into this whole mess I call "construction/weekend project". This blog is about my adventure in regards to re-roofing my house. I have been searching and searching the Internet, reading books, watching videos, etc trying to make sure I don't have leaks once done. However, I've noticed one very interesting trend, there's lots of information, but it's all spread all over the place which makes putting it together in one easy to use How-To very very painful. So that's what I'm doing. I'm going to create this blog to put together step by step instructions, cost of project, and all the "fun" things I learn along the way - I say "fun" due to every project with my house has never once gone to plan. So this will be a good place to read if you are like me and your house isn't perfect like all the ones in the books and web articles I've reviewed.

Now about me and my skill-set. I'm 28 years old and a computer geek for the most part. By day I'm a computer programmer and night...... well I'm still a geek by night, but a handy one. During my college days I worked for a Pool Construction company for 3 years and learned a lot about construction in general. Before that I grew up living many different environments - everything from the suburbs to 40 acres in the country with 16 horses. So I developed many different skills over that time as well. Mostly I learned - I can pretty much do anything if try hard enough and I'm never above doing something I would ask someone else to do. With that said, I also like to save money and that's one of the biggest reasons for doing this myself. Lets be honest - who would want to do a roof because it's a fun job. I plan to have fun, but I look forward to the finish line. And also just to prove anyone can do this - I'm a seasonal allergy suffer with asthma and this is the worst time of the year for me right now, cottonwood trees and pollen are my kryptonite. So if I can make it through this.... anyone can.

OK, with all the details out of the way, here is the project in a nutshell - complete tear off and re-roofing of 15.6 squares (1560 square feet for the rest of us) - I'll explain squares later, in a 3.5 day span. I plan to beg and plead to have any and all of my friends and family help by any means necessary - after all, they're friends and family for a reason. Help currently consist of (two brother-in-laws, one friend from work, one friend from old job, and mother-in-law and her husband) all agreed to help a little here and there.

So far I have bought the materials minus a few last minute items and hope to install this coming weekend. Currently however - rain is in the forecast which means most likely, we'll have to reschedule. But I'm planning for the best still.

Project timeline breakdown

So, I've broken my project down into the following schedule -

• Friday - tear off day and felting. This day will start with a dumpster already having arrived the day before and my wife and her mother and possible her mother's husband all ripping off the old shingles while I'm at work. When I get home - I plan to lay down the WeatherLock, flashing, cut three new vents, and 30# felt.
• Saturday - Mon - roof, roof, and more roof. 

I wish it was more detailed than that, but that's what I got so far. I'm breaking it down into a step by step instruction sheet which will help to keep me more on track. But I have to get the roof felted Friday night to protect us from rain. Otherwise all bets are off.