Having repaired slate and chimney flashings about five months ago, I'm applying a black sealer coat with a sixteen foot extension roller.



My ain't it purdy up here ...



It's going well. A lot of work. Somebody had to do it.

Just saying hi.

Gary

I made access to the roof areas as I've maintained the house over the last three decades. So, I've kept it as safe as possible.

Gary,

I've been waaaaay up on a ladder quite a bit lately myself. I always think about how brittle my old bones are when I'm overextending myself 20' in the air.

I may call you for some roofing tips.

Lon

Hah .... 20 feet!! They say life begins at 40!
Hehe.

Here's a tip. Stay off of ladders. "top down" .... that's the ticket. Roof hatch is the way to go. Make sure you have a secure staging area to work from. If you can't reach it from the top, scaffold. Use the ladder to get to the scaffold only. Remember, it's not the height, it's the impact.

There ya go kid. Nice and easy, see. Nice and easy.

Gary

Yikes, not even any snowbanks to land in.

I see the fun continues. Does this count as "updating" for the one size fits all questionaire?

same old contractor again then ,,,,, strange how it works out like that , at least there is no question about the quality.
and you can pay him in tea and buns.

Yeah, odd how none if the contractors with the new trucks and chrome dualies want to even give you a price. You realize that? I haven't turned down the cost. They will NOT even give ne a bid!!!
So ... Yeah. Same old broken down guy has to do what the hotshots won't .... Again.

I think the real problem is that a lot of the so-called "experts" in the field of home repair and remodeling are just too young and inexperienced. The older guys they used to turn to when they had to figure something out just aren't there anymore, they've died off or retired. The youngsters that are left know just enough to blast through a project using a slew of fancy air tools and modern materials, but when it comes to fixing stuff that's been around since the fifties (let alone the colonial era) they're pretty clueless. They won't quote what they don't know, and frankly they don't know much.The guys that did specialty roof work like slate or hand-split cedar shakes or soldered copper or lead sheathing were rare as hens teeth even back when the housing market was booming. Now that it's busted the few remaining guys that know it at all are probably booked out forever and don't even advertise at all, just word of mouth keeps them busier than they can handle.

It's not just home repair and contracting, it's all over, in a lot of different industries. The crusty old mechanics that knew how to fix the old style, fiddly, mechanical fuel injection for heavy machinery and boat diesels are going or gone. The master electricians that could do a safe work-around or an add-on for old electrical panels and wiring are retired, the new guys just want to gut it all and start over ($$$!!!). If you want someone that can do plaster instead of just drywall, good luck. The only guys I've seen lately that know anything at all about working with plaster are all from Mexico, where they still use it for everything.

Basically, if it takes years of practice with hand tools to get good results, you're going to have a hell of a time finding a tradesman that is still doing it at all, let alone doing it well. The days when you could hire a guy with decades of experience for a decent price are history, now we've got to hope for basic competence and grit our teeth when the bill shows up. I suspect that the job market will eventually catch up with demand as the reality sinks in that blue collar jobs are where the job security is these days. You can only outsource so much when it comes to the trades. No matter how many plumbers or electricians they have in India or China the guys here in the U.S. are still going to have a job as long as people still need water and power.

It's increasingly obvious that as a society we're terminally oversupplied with renaissance poetry majors and musical ethnicologists and professors and doctorate level "experts" of all kinds. Since all those fancy initials after your name come with unreasonably large and ever-more unaffordable debt loads, it's becoming more and more important for students to choose wisely when it comes to their area of study. I can see a day coming (probably sooner than people think) where the vocational part of the education mixture is going to have to be increased fairly dramatically. I think that the U.S. has gotten too far away from the original purpose of universal school education, which was supposed to be preparing our kids for the work force and give them life skills that they'll need to earn their own living. The current monomaniacal focus on academic testing and comparative school scores is only making matters worse.

I followed your thread. I agree that few have the skills to trouble shoot something outside the basic.

However; there's a world of difference between the skills needed to restore Mt. Vernon and Montecello, and the simple skills I sought. You hit it when you alluded to finding a "work around" or stripping it all back to the studs and installing the new template kit. They don't want to think. Consider that they want to come in, bid the job, and then turn it over to the clones to paint by numbers. They don't have some fifty year old to noodle it thru, and direct the laborers. They want the 50 year on in a truck signing jobs as fast as possible.

They've liscenced and insured the small young guy with one truck, out of the game.

Sean. BTW ... Not all the guys that can plaster come from Mexico. Some old white guys can plaster too. I've done quite a bit of it this week and last (as well as the last thirty years, haha). A pic of some of the third floor, where all is a study of intersecting angles. This was a rough attic with the rafters showing and the underside of the slates when I bought it. I finished the floor twenty years ago. Plaster on wood. Then, the roof developed issues and there was staining and actual damage here and there. I fixed the roof some time back, but you would not convince an insurance inspector that the visual damage is "legacy damage" prior to the roof having been repaired. Therefore; it's been necessary to restore the damage and plaster under the corrected roof

Knew you'd love some honest to goodness plaster to go with your roofing.

Don't know how detailed the pic will print, but the vertical sticks surround the wrap around stairwell. We're laminating the bent circular hand rail atop that well to complete that unfinished detail. That's Sunday's child.

Gary

I stand corrected... (are you SURE you've never been to Mexico?) That's some pretty fancy work there, when you go for remodeling you go all out!

My last house down south (in New Mexico) was built in 1951, and it was all lath and plaster inside. There's no comparing drywall with plaster, it's way more solid, though it can be a bit of a pain if it starts to separate. Back then when they built a house, it all came either out of a paper bag or was cut from a tree, hardly any sheet goods in the whole place. Material was expensive, but labor was cheap so they used basic materials for virtually everything.

A big difference from these days, when a contractor will use a $40k mini excavator to dig a ditch instead of a $40 shovel.

thats a room with character , id love to hear an estate agent describe it.

It'd be a "geometric masterpiece lavished with custom crafted details and old-world charm".

Then the home inspector that they hired (who started yesterday after reading one manual) would start right off with everything about it that "doesn't meet code".

Having bought and sold severaI homes of various vintages, I particularly love those words....doesn't meet code.

Which code? U.S. commercial standards, state, county, city, or what? From when? What's grandfathered, and what's not? Is this something you can point to in a regulation book that you can show me? Can you prove that it even applies in this case? Are you making this all up on the spot so that you can make it look like you're worth the money they pay you?

I can't even tell you how many times an "experienced home inspector" missed basic items that any competent handyman could discover in a second: missing and incorrectly wired GFCIs, aluminum wiring connected to copper-only outlets, leaky sink drain plumbing, missing vent stacks, inoperative forced air furnace, you name it.

I even had one guy that told me that he "couldn't inspect the roof, so it isn't covered". On a single-story ranch-style house, with asphalt shingles. The reason? Because he came early enough in the morning that there was frost on the shingles. What kind of dramatic corrective action was needed? Uhmmmm...come back in an hour when it melts and take a look?

Nah, too much like rocket science, I guess.

young pup for the easy track , old dog for the hard path.
as we say about these parts.