What’s for supper? Vol. 445: Follow the fellow who fixes your roof

Today’s food post will be mainly a roof post! That’s how it be sometimes. 

So, here we have a representative sample of some of the wood we pulled down from the roof. Just in case you were wondering why it seemed so urgent to do this project.

We’ve had a leak for quite a while, but we had a storm a few weeks ago and it busted right through the living room ceiling. So off we went. 

We started on Thursday of last week, and pulled off the old shingles, edge, and flashing, and opened up the eaves to see how bad the damage was. It was actually not as bad as we feared! But we did have a bit of a tough moment when we discovered that 2x4s are not actually two by four inches. I guess maybe you knew that, but we didn’t — mainly because the existing trusses were rough-cut wood that actually does measure 2×4.

So that added a few trips to Home Depot, and a lot of staring up at the roof and saying, “But . . .what? What??” 

This is a roof over the first story of the house only, but there is quite a steep drop-off in the ground on one side. I stuck mainly to the less-scary side, and Damien worked on the more-scary side. He discovered that whoever fixed the roof last ran out of flashing and used a bunch of metal newspaper printing plates from 1976, so that was kind of neat. 

There have been a few other spot repairs on the roof, we discovered as we tore layers away. Some of them looked vaguely familiar; some of them had clearly been done by other boneheads. I think it was on Friday that we realized we have been living in this house for almost 20 years, and it was really time to stop calling the previous owners “they.” As in, “I can’t believe they did it this way” and “I can’t believe they just left it like that.” Because, like I said, for twenty years, it’s been us. There is no they. They are we. 

I masked up and clambered around pulling all the horrible old moldy, mousy insulation out

It was also very much we who did a terrible job putting tarps down, so there were rusty nails and scraps of rotten wood and bits of chewed-up insulation all over the place, in among the tall grass and wet blackberry thorns and whatnot. So I wandered slowly and furiously around with a magnet for a while and got most of the nails and crap cleaned up, and redid the tarps, so there. I’m making it sound like I did most of the work, but actually Damien did most of the work. 

SATURDAY

Saturday, Clara’s boyfriend came over and did a ton of work replacing and shoring up trusses and laying down new decking, and talking us through the rest of the project. Then I went back to Home Depot for some more wood and dropped a 8×10 sheet of plywood on my foot and broke my little toe, which is something I like to do from time to time. My toe is now more or less pierogi-shaped and permanently grey, and the toenail grows in three distinct pieces. All just part of my feminine mystique. Then I went to Home Depot a few more times and also got pierogis, and we had that and leftovers for supper. 

I was a little bummed to be missing the No Kings rally, so I went out with a staple gun and gussied up my skeletons. 

So there. 

I think it was on Saturday that Damien fell off the ladder. He tumbled really well, and didn’t hurt himself, thank God. But it was a good wake-up call for us to both be super super careful! 

SUNDAY
Beef barley soup and pumpkin muffins

Sunday we went to Mass of course, and then stopped at the store for some meat and milk and whatnot to help us limp through the week without actually shopping.

Corrie has been aching to learn how to make her favorite meal of soup and muffins, so I gave her a very little bit of direction, and off she went making beef barley soup

Jump to Recipe

very much enjoying the process

My recipe calls for diced tomatoes, but she doesn’t like that, so she skipped it. 

Then she started on the muffins

Jump to Recipe

and everything turned out great!

Nothing like sitting down to a delicious meal you made yourself. 

Damien spent the day fitting plywood onto the roof for decking. It is, like everything else in our house, oddly shaped, so it took a long time! But he got it done and then absolutely swaddled and taped the heck out of it, because the rain was on the way. And it rained all night and into the next day, and man, that was nerve-wracking, listening to the rain fall. We both kept looking up at the ceiling, hoping and praying everything would stay dry. 

MONDAY
Roast chicken, peas, noodles

It did stay dry! Wonderful. While Damien worked on the eaves or something, I went back to Home Depot for nails or something. I think it was also Monday that we got the drip edge on. The days really blurred together this week. I did see a nice rainbow at Home Depot, so that was something. 

I roasted the chickens following Ina Garten’s super easy recipe. I didn’t have all the ingredients, so I just threw the garlic and lemons in there, and had the seasoned butter on the top, and they turned out absolutely scrumptious. No searing or flipping or basting or anything. They did take a little longer than expected, but it was worth the wait. 

We didn’t have much in the house for sides, so I just cooked some egg noodles and served them with butter, and heated up some frozen peas. Unsophistication at its best. 

I was looking at this plate and trying to think what it reminded me of. Then I realized: Toy food. It looks like toy food. 

Not a thing wrong with that! 

TUESDAY
Chicken quesadillas

I guess it was Tuesday we got the drip edge on. I don’t know. I’m probably forgetting a bunch of things we had to do. Damien had a bunch more carpentry to do, because the eaves and soffits and whatnot are in tough shape in spots. While he wrestled with that, I went upstairs and caulked the frame of the window (we suspect water is getting in under the siding from the window frame) and loosened up the siding around the window, much to the consternation of Maggie the Cat, who mostly lives in that room.

Then I swept all the crap off the roof, which was harder than you’d think! I don’t know if you’ve ever swept a sloped surface above your head, but it makes you feel like your arms are just about useless.

Then, o then, we finally started on the water and ice shield! This was exciting, because it meant the structural part is basically done, and also because it was going to rain again. It is fancy self-adhesive stuff, and BOY IS IT ADHESIVE. I guess I would kind of like to draw a veil over Tuesday, but the upshot is that we went up and down the ladder 923 times

and we kept at it and kept at it, and by gum we got that roof and part of the wall covered with high quality water and ice shield. 

and then it DID rain again that night, and the roof did stay dry. WHEW.

The kids made chicken quesadillas for supper. I purposely made two big chickens so there would be leftovers for that, and the kids did great. 

WEDNESDAY

Wednesday Damien and I were both just so freaking exhausted, we decided to just stick to our day jobs on Wednesday, and we both got some writing done. Damien has been going back and forth from working on the roof to doing all his regular work all this week – pretty amazing. That evening, we dressed up and drove to Concord for the tenth anniversary party for In Depth, which is one of the papers Damien writes for. The snacks were quite good, but we decided to stop at Burger King on the way home anyway. 

I had bought sandwiches, popcorn, and Swiss Rolls for the kids at home, so they didn’t have to cook. I think they spent the evening working on Halloween costumes. We got home late and collapsed. 

THURSDAY

Thursday we had school conferences, which I went to 

while Damien started in on the tar paper layer.

In the morning, I had fried up a bunch of Italian sausages, cut them up, and put them in the slow cooker to stay warm all day. So when we got home around 5, all I had to do was cook some spaghetti and then discover that yes, I had turned on the slow cooker, and yes, I had plugged it in, but! the power strip I had plugged it into was not plugged in. No.

I didn’t really think we needed to dine on All Day Room Temperature Sausage, so we just had plain spaghetti, and it was a little sad. But at least we had tar paper. 

FRIDAY

Friday Damien finished the tar paper and we started in on the step flashing between the roof and the house wall. For whatever reason, I got the heebie jeebies and couldn’t get myself to get up on the roof, so Damien ended up doing most of it.

Then we ran out of flashing, briefly considered putting the newspaper plates back up, and decided we should just go back to Home Depot. So I’m gonna do that after adoration, and he’s gonna finish putting them on, and we may or may not be able to get the waterproof tar sealant stuff on tonight. I don’t now what’s for supper, and I’m struggling to feel like this is my problem. I will probably pick up some tuna. 

AND THEN, the only thing left is to put the shingles on! And of course reattach the siding. And rebuild the soffits and fascia boards, and a few other miscellaneous things, and of course haul away all the debris. I’m sure in a few weeks, when it’s really truly done, we’ll feel proud and relieved, but man, this project has really taken it out of us. It’s only about 115 square feet of roof, and we’ve been thinking it would be sort of a test project to see if we could fix the whole main roof on the rest of the house in the spring, which, I don’t know. Maybe. It’s pretty high up there. Lotta roof. Much ladders. Keep hitting our thumbs with hammers. You know. 

It’s our 28th anniversary tomorrow, and you’ll never guess, it looks very much like we will be spending most of it on the roof. Better than in the grave!

Well, goodbye!