House Extension Update: March 2022 (The Roof!)

The beginning of March started strong! I actually took a trip by myself to Florida for a college reunion with my girlfriends. During my trip, Mike Sr. and Sue came out from Augusta. It was amazing having them both here to help with the house and the girls. Mike's dad is a workhorse! He worked super hard and was an amazing help to what my Mike thought was the hardest part--tying the existing roof into the new portion. Once I got back from Florida, they stayed another week. The first two weeks of March were very busy!

It started with completely removing the makeshift roof that Mike and I had built. The tarp came off, the the plywood and two by fours stripped off, then it was ready for walls :)

The last picture with NO WALLS. Thanks Natasha!

First wall goes up!

After the walls went up, a few guys helped to get the gable end secured. It took a little longer than expected, but we owe a lot of gratitude to our friends who have been so generous to us. Mike Sr. who came for two whole weeks to help. Ben, one of Mike's college roommates who came from Arizona not necessarily to help, but ended up being a Godsend at the perfect time on vacation. Also Jaydee from church who took multiple days off of work to get this big task accomplished and brought his boys Drayton and Jairson to assist.

The next phase of building was HUGE! It involved six trusses and about 15 people who graciously came to help. There was a team of about five people down on the ground to lift the trusses up to the second level, and about 8-10 people on the platform part to receive the trusses and help get them tied in. Only a few could do the nailing and securing, so everyone else was very patient in their helping. It was one of those things that may not have seemed very hard to one person, but we could NOT have accomplished this without everyone's help! 

Thanks to Mike Sr, Ben C, Mitchell, Jordan, Alex, Tucker, Kawika, Jaydee, Drayton, Geoff, Ka'i, Mattaniah, Caleb, Ben L, and Jonathan. 

After the trusses went up, Mike (and Ben and Mitch) had to finish the roofline with the same shape.

This was the weirdest part, but it had to happen to make the shape right and for the water to run off properly. After everything was set, the plywood went up.

This is the view from the street.

This is the upstairs.

This was Mike's least favorite part--being on the roof--but he was a champ! I even helped him get the tarp laid down.

The next phase we will hire professionals to get the tiles up on the roof and secure them with watertight materials. If Mike didn't have a full-time job he could have done it no problem, but with these big jobs it's getting harder and harder to work them into the margins.

Here's what the house looks like now at the end of March with all of the tiles in place and ready for the roofing company.

House Extension Update: February 2022

We didn't really do any work on the house in January. We had the false roof covered enough to get by and the can lights were installed back in December, we were able to ride out the month pretty easily. 

In February, however, Mike started the process of tracking down all the extra roof tiles we would need to complete the roof. Tracking down Monier tiles was actually a trickier process than one might think. The original tiles that cover the roof are no longer manufactured here. So, we had to settle on newer narrow valley tiles that don't quite match (style and shape wise). Thankfully, there's also a guy named Bernard on island from West Oahu Roofing who has a huge stock of used Monier tiles. We were able to get the edges and odd shaped ones from him, and for the new addition we just ordered the new style.

To get started, Mike thought it would be a good idea to paint the tiles in the yard before they go up on the roof. Unfortunately, we got the wrong color paint from the roof store and only realized it was wrong after her painted the majority of them!

We were able to ask some of the young men at our church to help out moving the tiles up and down a few different times that we needed them in different areas.

In all, there were about 800 tiles that needed to be moved and stacked, twice.

House Extension Update, December 2021

Ok, so again these pictures are out of order, haha. Maybe next time I'll remember what order to select them in. Anyway, these first few pictures are just to show our use of the space even while it was incomplete. It has already been used to hold Cary's bday, Emma and Joy's bdays and to have friends over for lunch ;) We are thankful for all the stages! 

Well, after we finally figured out how to make a temporary roof and got the tarp tight enough to keep the water out, we had the electrician come and install the can lights. 

Nobody will understand the beauty of this makeshift roof except for me and Mike. Once we had the platform complete, we thought we could just add some Tyvek at a slant and call it a day. Except--have you ever heard the sound Tyvek makes in the wind? Yeah... it was bad. The night we put it up was exceptionally windy too! Long story short, we spent the afternoon putting it up, then the wee hours of the night (1-2am) ripping it all down. Ugh! Mike took the following day off of work and we reconfigured the makeshift roof to include plywood and a huge tarp instead. As you can see, it isn't the most beautiful set up, but it mostly kept the rain out. It leaked just a bit up at the top where it connected to the house, but Mike fixed it up the following day (in the rain). All in all, we had a few stressful days and nights, but finally by God's grace got it squared away!

House Extension Update, November 2021

Ok, these are so out of order and I can't figure out how to effortlessly reorder them without a big headache. But I wanted to document the progress we have made on our extension so far. These were all taken in November of 2021. 

We started by getting a bunch of lumber and plywood delivered to our drive way. It was rather excited to see the big truck drive in and off load the pallets of wood with a small little forklift. 

The first step was ripping the siding off of the lower half of the back of the house. 

Next, we framed the double wall that the extension will sit on. That meant taking the windows and door out and then putting them back in after the framing was done.

Then, the post got set and the outline of the second floor was erected!

These pictures were supposed to be at the end, but they show the finished work underneath and on top.

These below were more of what it looked like before we put the plywood up.

These pictures below are the fabulous construction that Mike and I erected before adding a tarp to keep the water out. I'll try to write more about that later. It was pretty epic.