Ed Gets A Wedgie or Working Without A Net

Saturday we drove to Portland to visit family, and on the way home we stopped at Lumber Liquidators to pick up our flooring. That in itself is a story, which includes but is not limited to, a very tired Dodge Intrepid with a trailer, an entire forklift full of flooring that fell (nobody was hurt), and a very nice young couple from Sandy, Oregon with whom we chatted for the better part of an hour. Finally we were home with a very full pick-up truck. Who knew you could fit an entire apartment floor into a truck?

While the weather has been beautiful, cool evenings and warm days, Ed wanted to get that chimney finished before the rains start in ernest. Last winter he wrapped the plywood with roofing paper to keep the bulk of the water off. But to shingle it, he wanted to take off the roofing paper, wrap it in Tyvek and then put the shingles on. This is a very tall, very steep roof, and the chimney is way up above all that. Needless to say, it's a little scary. Ed came up with a great idea to take some of that very heavy vinyl lining that was used to line the pan under the balcony and wrap a wood wedge with it. The vinyl made it much less likely to slip on the shingles.Then he put two huge eyebolts on the end of the wedge, looped a rope through the eyebolts and around the chimney. Now he had a level place to stand and work, and was (some) less likely to slip off the roof. Not exactly OSHA standards but, hey, this isn't a union jobsite. I'd be happier if he had a net.

Once he could work in relative safety, he tore off the roofing paper, put up the Tyvek and started shingling. Since the chimney is tapered, almost every shingle had to be cut to fit. Did I mention the warm days? Yeah, it was way past warm.

See that ladder? No..the yellow one against the chimney. Yeah, that one. Well the shingles go all the way to the top.

After the chimney was shingled, Ed went after the rest of the west side. He wanted to get it all done and get the staging down and out of the way before the doublewide gets moved. And check out that finished chimney!

Then yesterday, the fateful phone call. We got word that the doublewide will probably go this Monday or Tuesday. That's like...four days! OK I knew it would be soon, and I knew I had lots of stuff to do to finish getting ready. I had already scheduled a garage sale for this Friday and Saturday, and I'm now frantically and randomly throwing stuff into boxes and taping them shut.

Ed kicked into high gear and finished shingling the west side yesterday, and will be taking the scaffolding down today.

By Sunday we will probably be living a much more primitive lifestyle, although better than many in the world, and ours will only be temporary. But the computer will be in one of those haphazardly packed boxes I mentioned and we will be off-line for several weeks. Wish us luck. I'll take lots of pictures of them sawing the doublewide in half..or however they do that.