Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Late Saturday afternoon, with heavy clouds cutting the heat, Lisa kitted up and went up the ladder with the plan to pour two more gallons of Gray Goo, expecting to get the newly-fabric-covered section completely covered.

While pouring the first gallon, it started to rain just a little bit. This isn't good. The Roof Goop is water-soluble until it dries completely. Fortunately, the rain was very light and lasted only a few minutes. Unfortunately, it made the roof that much more slippery, and that would prove to be important later.

Lisa poured the goop out and laboriously spread it over the remaining sections that she'd covered a few days ago, and also tried to get a second coat over areas she'd done yesterday. The first gallon went okay, as did most of the second. The second should have been easier because she could stand on the ladder for some of the time she was spreading it; however, trouble was ahead.

( Why You Must Have Safety Lines on That Roof )

( Roof Gooping Result )

Today it's very overcast and threatening-looking, but the weather forecast shows little chance of rain. A pity, really. For us, it would be a great day for there to be bright sun and light breezes to cure that roof surface.

Lisa is trying to figure out what to do next. There is still a gap of uncovered roof. You can see it between the ladder and the newly-gooped sections. To apply the roof fabric and then the goop means moving the ladders. But the newly-gooped section still needs an overcoat. Either we move the ladders and do the fabric and gray goop on the "gap," then the white goop there, then move the ladders back and finish the just-gray-gooped section, or else we white-goop the section she just did, wait a day, and go to work on the "gap." The problem is time, or lack of it. I leave next Saturday, and that doesn't leave many more days, since it's not possible to get a lot done on any particular day.

On Wednesday evening, Lisa made yet another trip to That Darn Roof, hoping to lay down one more long section of roofing fabric, tack it into place, and then set some lath under it to serve as a more permanent anchor.

( This Did Not Go Well )

( Second Time Lucky )

Due to the mishaps with tools, we did not accomplish as much on Wednesday as we had hoped to do. But we gone something done, so I guess we shouldn't be too hard on ourselves.

Yesterday evening, Lisa girded herself for another trip to That Darn Roof. I drove the big mower back to the old house (it's one of the anchor points for the safety rope), she put on her climbing harness, and went up top again. I took the photos below the following morning.

( Lath and Fabric )

After two hours, Lisa was worn out and gave up for the day. Although it's somewhat cooler in the evenings, there's still sun beating down on the roof until nearly 8 PM, and it gets really hot really fast up there. She berated herself for not laying down more fabric and putting down a layer of Gray Goo. I countered by pointing out that the work is hard, stressful, and dangerous, and that she simply can't go quickly or she'll get injured. In this case, slow and safe is far better than quick and dead.

Plan for today is for her to patch the newly-opened hole and to try to get roofing cloth down over the rest of the newly-lathed sections of the roof. If she can somehow get as far as putting down some Gray Goo, that would be a bonus, but I don't expect it to happen today.

As I understand it, Lisa wants to get the new sections completely covered and gooped, then, when they've dried, move the ladders and ropes toward the back of the roof (lined up with the new sections on which she's currently working). Then she should be able to fill in the gap you can see in the pictures above with another sheet of roof fabric, and then goop the area between the front of the house and the current new section. This is still an ambitious goal to accomplish before I leave a week from Saturday, but it does seem like we might be able to do it if the weather stays good and our energy doesn't run out.

Thanks to Scott Sanford for pointing me at Buster Keaton's One Week and the photo that I'm adopting as the user icon for discussions of That Darn Roof.

Actually, yesterday went very well. It was slightly cooler and a little overcast, which gave Lisa an extended time on the roof without sending her into heatstroke. Yesterday afternoon, after we took my van to the dealership where they will, I hope not have to charge me a whole lot of money to deal with the service-engine light, we came back to Mehama and Lisa climbed up to the roof and laid a coat of Gray Goo on the lower section of the now-covered "gap," and now there's at least one coat of goo and roofing material on the entire forward third of the roof. Now that needs to dry for a couple of days before she can go back up and put down White Goo over that.

Meanwhile, plans are progressing for laying down more roofing cloth and roof goop on sections of the roof moving toward the back. At some point, we'll have to move the ladders and ropes, which will no doubt be a difficult production, given the roof configuration. Oh, and I think we'll have to completely cut out one of the bushes at the side of the house to give us the necessary access. But that's not really a problem. It's Oregon: the thing will surely grow back in a year or two if we give it a chance.

Lisa was able to get the "gap" in the roof covering filled yesterday. See this photo for reference; the gap was to the left of the ladder. As we started to lose the light yesterday evening, she opened up the first can of Grey Goo, meaning to apply only a little bit of the stuff because it was rapidly getting dark. However, it's often quite difficult to keep things from going astray on that roof, and the lid of the can went bounding away off the roof. (This is why I do my ground-spotting duties a safe distance from the building and do not do immediately under the roof edge most of the time; I don't have a hard hat and would rather not have stuff dropped on my head.)

( Look Out Below! )

The weather is cooperating other than the fact that it's simply too hot in the direct sunlight to do the work, so our work window is only a couple of hours wide, and it's at what we normally would consider dinner time, which is inconvenient to say the least.

On Sunday afternoon, we did the initial prep work on the latest stage of work on That Darn Roof. The weather was nice enough as long as you never got out in the sun; however, the roof is getting lots of sun (which is good because we want it dried out), and thus it is much warmer there than in the shade. We couldn't work more than an hour or so at a time before having to take breaks and cool off.

( Messy details )

Because I'm here for three weeks, and because the forecast is for more weather like this, we're trying not to break ourselves by working too long at once. Monday afternoon's task, after I'm done with Day Jobbery, is for Lisa to go up with the leaf blower and try to blow away all loose debris, such as pine needles and dead moss. If we're really lucky, she may be able to apply the first layer of Gray Goo, that being my name for the first coat of roofing sealant. Since we have errands in Stayton Tuesday afternoon (such as taking my van to be diagnosed for its two different problems), getting the roof goop in place would give it a full day to dry before the next step of the multi-stage process.

I can understand why the roofers wanted $15,000 to repair the roof.

The patches Lisa applied to the roof of the old house covered some, but not all, of the holes. When some rain came along, she found new holes. But she (quite sanely) will not do any work on that roof without someone on the ground as a helper. I couldn't arrange to come to Oregon in September because I'd had to keep the month clear for potential jury duty, so she was able to persuade her friend Scott to come down from Portland for the weekend.

Then, of course, it rained. You can't get any work done on the roof when it's raining. Besides the increased danger, the Snow Roof covering goop needs dry weather to cure. So when the rain cleared on Sunday they had to rush out and do as much as they could in just a few hours rather than over three days as planned.

( Photos of the results behind the cut )

I hope the weather is good enough for us to work on this roof some more in October, because we really do need to get the leaks stopped so that we can repair the water damage on the lower floors and use the affected rooms again.

Lisa spent a lot of time on That Darn Roof today, and I've taken plenty of footage of her work, but haven't had the time to edit it all together. She got two large strips of polyester roof-patch fabric stapled to the roof covering the worst of the damaged sections during the afternoon. As the light began to fade, she applied two gallons of roof-sealing goop. The instructions said that should have been enough, but the instructions lie, and we ran out with only about 70% covered. We'd intended to spend tomorrow morning putting ladders away, but it looks like we'll need to be up and at the hardware store first thing tomorrow morning to buy two more cans of goop to make sure the holes are covered.

After Lisa climbed down from the roof, I helped her out of her safety harness, and she sent me over to the Gingerbread House for elk-burgers. While I collected the food, Lisa refueled my van from the household fuel tank and put the boxes of Match Game SF material into the van, which will help tomorrow as I pack up. Also, I'm only going as far as Central Point OR tomorrow, but that's still a couple hundred miles, so I can't stay here on the computer all night trying to get caught up again.

Today is the only non-weekday that I'm scheduled to be here in Mehama, and was also a nice, clear, windless day. That meant that it was our only chance to dig out the equipment for Lisa to get up on the roof of the old house and do roof repairs.

This meant we spent the entire day except for a lunch break getting equipment out, fixing equipment that wouldn't work, hauling it to the old house and erecting it, and then taking it back down and putting it away. And, oh, yes, Lisa spent around six hours clambering around on the roof dangling from a safety harness while I fetched tools and sent them up to her via a rope she's rigged for this purpose.

I took pictures that I will post when I get a chance of her working up there so people can get an idea of how precarious this was. The old house is a 2-plus story building with a steeply-pitched roof. Falling off this roof could be a terminal experience. Before anyone asks: Lisa's safety gear is a professional, OSHA-approved harness, with two separate connections from the harness to the heavy-duty rope. ("That doesn't mean it's comfortable," Lisa says in a pained tone as she looks over my shoulder.) Moving quickly is out of the question, as she obviously never wants to have both safety straps disconnected from the rope.

After scraping and blowing as much moss from the roof as she could, she put plastic sheeting over the worst portions of the roof to try and reduce the amount of water that is getting in. This isn't exactly a repair -- frankly, the old house needs an entire new roof, I think -- but it does try to arrest the damage, and maybe less water will drip from the interior ceilings when the rains return.

After a long, full day of hard work, we were both tired for different reasons. (I logged over 7000 steps while she was exhausting from the roof-dangling.) She went to take a bath only to discover that the gas furnace in our trailer has stopped working. The electric floor heaters can take an edge off the cold, but they aren't really enough. That means we'll have to get someone out to try and repair them, hopefully later this week. Except that tomorrow and Thursday I have to take her to medical appointments, and sometime in the next week we're supposed to try and find a replacement transmission for her little pickup truck. And, oh, yes, I have my real job to do.

Speaking of which, I have to get back to it. The client is in China and would like to have some results today, which is Monday morning their time. If I had not driven to Oregon on Friday and Saturday, I would have been working on that project instead, but now I'm going to do the write-up I promised them.