Roof Watch Part 3: New Roof’s Eve

The roof’s going on tomorrow! We’re prepared.

Previously, we removed the roof that was over the deck. The deck had this awful roof on it that was actually built on top of the house roof. Jamie and our handyguy Gary tore it down—a huge relief—then rebuilt the eave (where the roof had been attached)…aaand I don’t have any progress photos. But it’s done, hurrah, and here’s a crappy picture of the after(-ish):

This is where we left it last:

Looking so much better, right? If you’re observant, you might have noticed that our house looks partially painted in the after(-ish) photo. More on that in a minute!

While they were at it, rebuilding eaves and such, they also repaired the damaged eave over the front door. Here’s the before:

So there’s the ugly gutter situation, but also what’s happening behind the gutter, which was a lot of rotten wood.

Again, I’m missing the progress photos (I bet I will find them the minute I publish this post), but the broken corner is just a hint of what was behind! It was all rotten inside. Jamie and Gary replaced two of the soffit boards (the underside), the vertical siding on the sides of the eave, and the fascia. The holes in the fascia board on the left were caused by carpenter bees, and we replaced that as well, because of the holes and the rot behind the gutter.

Here’s the after(-ish). The roof will be replaced tomorrow, and the gutters, some time this week.

I mentioned painting. This was a total saga of anguish but in a nutshell: we’re changing our roof from brown to gray, the brown gutters are out and red gutters are in, however! the red gutters did not match the red of our house. We were planning to paint at some point but decided to push painting to now so as to match our gutters. Yep. Also, the previous paint job (before us) had neglected to paint behind the gutters and downspouts (the house used to be brown, it was obvious), so painting those areas was a priority.

SO, here we go power wash:

The house was FILTHY.

(Yes, we have to replace that door.)

After waiting out multiple downpours—seriously it rained for two weeks straight—we finally got a few clear days, the house dried, and we started painting. I focused on staining the siding where the downspouts will be, while Gary painted the fascia and soffits with latex (for extra durability).

New house color (the burgundy shade) against the old (the farmhouse red shade):

After 9 hours of work today, the house is maybe a quarter painted? But there are two coats of stain on all downspout areas, meaning we’re ready for new downspouts, and all of the fascia boards are painted, meaning we’re ready for new gutters.

And we’re definitely ready for the new roof.