Sunporch Roof

The sun porch was another of those not yet projects.  It was down the to do list  a fair ways, with several what we thought were more important projects ahead of it.    Eventually, the idea is to insulate the sunporch and turn it into my studio.  For the moment, it was mainly storage.   It has a northern exposure, a full wall of windows and 3 skylights.  Unfortunately, the skylights looked to be another handmade, makeshift project.  They had these odd frames of 2x4's, which seemed to funnel water inside!  As well, last spring, when we had the first real thaw, water streamed into the laundry room/sunporch wall, where two differently sloped roofs met.

 This spring, I had to keep buckets, well my dye pots actually, in various places to catch the dripping, every time it rained.  We planned and when we finally had all the materials together, plus a weather forecast of 5 days in a row of sunshine, the work commenced.   Now my boys have done all of our own roofing in the past.  After hours of hacking away at a few shingles, I was asked to go pull nails.  It turns out that they'd cleared the shingles off of whole roofs in less time than it took to remove 3 rows of shingles on the sunporch roof!  They were stuck on, breaking into soggy little pieces and none of the nails were coming out.  So yes, I climbed the ladder and started pulling out nails.  
The shingles were all a sodden mess.  They'd been layered in places above and below with some sort of flat roofing materials and then tar had been dripped on edges, I'm guessing in hopes of sealing out the water which was coming in around the "skylights".    This was instead of just putting proper flashing around the skylights and the several different roof angles. 




Instead we've had to take it right back.   The skylights came out, the roof decking has been replaced, wood replaced and all new drip edge, all new facia, loads of flashing.  They are laying down the membrane right now and then the shingling will commence. 

Of course the 5 days of sunshine in the forecast was changed the moment they got the first row of shingles off.  We've had two major rains since then.  One of which was kept at bay by judicious tarping.  The other rain storm was accompanied by wind and tornado warnings.   The rain came sheeting in the one wall, requiring lots of towels, a large plastic bin and a handy dye pot.  Luckily the plastic bin was in the laundry room, full of clean medieval camping clothes, which hadn't yet been put away.   I upturned the clean, folded clothing and used the bucket, which worked beautifully.   

Hopefully this sunporch roof will last a while.   The removal of the skylights has definitely changed the light levels in there.  I've been told though, that when it gets turned into a studio, if I need the light, we will put in new skylights, properly installed :)