We rarely get to see photos of the blogger as I am normally the one taking them. But here we see him in his natural habitat with sawzall in hand. (note the ambassador bridge in the background! great view!)Great day. After shoveling 8" of snow out of the 2nd floor. The weather broke to a comfortable temperature and we worked a good strong day. The love poured forth as 6 of my buddies showed and we tore it up getting the roof fully sheathed by days end.
Oh and there were some unsafe acts of construction including but not limited to walking on snowy roofs, almost shooting Joe with the nailgun, sawing towards myself, aiming the nailgun at my heart and using a ladder that was far too short to get off the roof.
Thanks to Keith, his son Keith, Joe, Jack, Andreas and Tiley-T! Awesome work guys.
One 'frustration' that I'm still not used to is all the "custom" work that needs to be done. Ive probably had my hand in 150 new homes with the Habitat for Humanity. And when you build everything from the ground up, everything is plumb, straight, square, and level. As a result everything can be cut ahead, and things fall into place with very little modification. With this house it is quite the opposite, Every part is custom to make it fit or look correct. I'm getting used to it, but I just need to add 50% time for any task on a new house.
Another interesting and very unexpected event happened today at the house.....The previous owner showed up. She and her husband pulled up and jumped out of thier vehicle and greeted me with exuberance. She was overcome by the changes and seemed overjoyed. It sounded like she owned the house perhaps from 1990 until recently. She was happy to see the house getting new life.
I did feel a little awkward though as I did buy the property from a bank, meaning that it was foreclosed on her. I don't know the circumstances, I think she had other properties but I don't know. I also felt strange since I basically tore any 'newer' work she had done up, I trashed her garden, cut down some trees she had planted and tore off the relatively new roof. (although it had FIVE roofs on it, not good for hte structure by any means.).
Anyhow my fear and hesitation was overcome by her genuine friendliness. I showed her through the house and she and her husband were ecstatic at the work that had been done. I gave her my card an the link to the blog so she could read up on it.
And interesting thing she mentioned was that she had it featured in the metro times on the cover in the early 1990's. I'm going to do some archival research to see what I can learn from that.Anyhow, great day.
