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  • Hi, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

    I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle.

    You can find me writing for HGTV and DIY Network, follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note if you'd like. I love notes.

    Thanks for visiting!

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Rad Roofing Reno (Volume 2 of 2)

September 20, 2013

The roof! BAM, there it is. If you shield your eyes from seeing the mess we made in the yard (dumpster comin’ soon), the peeling paint, and some of that rotting siding (shield hard), it might actually look like a nice little outbuilding on our property. (If you missed Volume 1, start here.)

A finished barn roof!

It’s come a long way in 10 days, and the fact that Pete was able to do it for us himself is totally awesome to me. His Dad deserves props too–having someone on the ground to constantly relocate the air compressor hose and toss up a pry bar in a pinch is terribly underrated–and if I can recommend anything to you in terms of how to replace a roof yourself, it’d be to get a buddy to help you out, one who’s cool to stay on the ground to lend a hand and get you donuts. I know I keep bringing up the donuts, but really, they’re as essential to DIY roofers as they are to cops.

The new roof is a pretty sight (and a pretty gratifying one at that), especially from within with all that shiny new plywood sheathing. There’s never been prettier plywood sheathing, am I right? (I’m shielding you from the rotting floor.)

A panorama of the inside of of newly roofed barn

He’s shingled before, but never with architectural shingles which (who knew, not me) are a bit different both in form and technique of installation than traditional 3-tabbers, so even though he had a plan of attack, Pete still began at the back of the barn to get the hang of how the courses were installed and staggered.

Installing shingles on the lesser seen sides of the barn first.

In addition to skimping on shingle quality (I say skimping because we did save $180 by getting most of our shingles from Bargain Outlet and maybe a real roofer reading this is rolling their eyes and calling us buffoons), we also made the decision to save on shingles used for the hips and ridge by buying traditional 3-tab shingles and cutting them down to size individually. They sell shingles specifically for the hip and ridge cap right at the store, but they’re twice as expensive and who knows if the sq. ft. coverage is comparable to what we bought in 3-tab packs (which was only two packages, $50). Pete did all of this cutting on Wednesday night, in the hours between 12-2am just to get ahead and be able to finish the whole job on Thursday. I have no photos to prove this, I slept soundly. Dude’s got work ethic.

Pete finished our new barn roof in <10 days.

I should probably mention that doing a roof on a one-story building isn’t nearly as intimidating as on a 2+ story building for obvious reasons, and while the scene from the front isn’t all that scary, the backside is built on a steep hill which basically drops off into a ravine about 4 stories below. Fun times?

By the time he worked his way around to the front where I could see his progress on the second day of laying the shingles, he had found a rhythm and was almost done.

Shingling progress.

It’s pretty obvious that we still have a lot of work ahead of us; rebuilding the roof was just part of it, we still have to work on adding fascia and soffiting to keep animals out. Also, the siding is a mess, the interior flooring has to be relaid from where it was effected by water damage, the garage door is dirty and rotting, and there was some mention of a joist that’s rotted out which means nothing’s holding up one of our walls. So… that’s not all on our list for this fall, but you may be reading about the developments for the next few years. For now, I’m happy to have a covered roof to store our adirondack chairs and lawnmowers during the winter.

A finished barn roof!

Can you get a sense of what it looked like before? (Even before we cleared a lot of the brush away from the front?) The remaining shingles were brittle and basically melting off.

The barn, exposed.

And now?

Barn roof, complete.
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Barn  / DIY

Emily
I'm a home improvement enthusiast, living a very merry DIY lifestyle. I've been a freelancer writer for 10+ years and you can find my work on popular home and garden sites, like HGTV.com. Follow me on facebook and instagram, or drop me a note.

8 Comments


Samantha
September 20, 2013 at 9:08 am
Reply

Looks gorg! You guys are amazing!



    Emily
    September 20, 2013 at 11:41 am

    Thank you, Samantha! I’m so pleased with it.

kimberley
September 20, 2013 at 9:42 am
Reply

That’s going to be a great little building/barn. The roof looks wonderful! Hopefully Pete is relaxing. I know I need a nap now.



    Emily
    September 20, 2013 at 11:44 am

    He claims to be sore, like just-built-a-flagstone-patio sore, which translates to very sore. We beat the rain though, that was our biggest goal! I can’t wait to see how the backyard develops thanks to the barn now being in usable condition…

Michelle
September 20, 2013 at 1:38 pm
Reply

Nice work!!



    Emily
    September 20, 2013 at 5:07 pm

    Thanks Michelle!

Tim
September 20, 2013 at 2:50 pm
Reply

looks like it has awesome ManCave potential. Pete, 60″ flatscreen, high-end surround sound, a Tiki Bar, a beer fridge and a bell that rings in the house for when he’s hungry. Is this a possibility, Merrypad?



    Emily
    September 20, 2013 at 5:08 pm

    Hell, I’d hang out there. Nix the tiki though, and just get a few comfortable bar stools to pull up to the workbench.

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  • HI, I’m Emily

    Emily Fazio

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