I had intended to purchase a couple of moderately sized skylights, say 2′x4′, but the roofer we used had a much better suggestion.  He came up with the idea of framing out 4×12′ boxes, which then could be covered with a single sheet of polycarbonate.  By running the panels under the eaves and all the way back to the house, no flashing would be necessary at the top, and by extension, no leaks should ever develop.  Another perk of doing it this way was that for the same $$ as what we would have paid for 16 square feet of skylights, we ended up with at least 80 square feet!  The patio is now WAY brighter, and we are also getting much more light into our kitchen and family room.  A win-win.

Pile of old aluminum panels

Since the roofers left things half-done during the rainiest day on record, I had to create an aqueduct to channel all the runoff

LIGHT!

View from above

This is what it looked like a few years ago, when I had to cut the hole for the upstairs drywall. The roof would then spend the next 3 years being covered with a (barely effective) blue tarp.

This weekend I cleared out all the tools and remaining materials so that they’d have space to work.  I also went ahead and cut a hole in our patio cover and added plywood to make a standing/walking surface.  My initial plan of gracefully removing the panel in order to be able to reinstall it did not pan out.  The nails wouldn’t budge, so plan B was to rip it to shreds.  They’ll have to start with the “fun” job of lifting bunches of sheets through the slot and feeding them into the back bedroom through the window hole.  And that’s after carrying them up our front stairs and all the way to the back of the house. An elevated lot is a major pain.

I used a conduit bender (for the wiring) for the first time, and the thought it was a lot of fun. Earlier in the year his company remodeled his office, and he was able to salvage tons of old electrical conduit and boxes. That came in handy for all the practice he needed to get it right.

Yet another place where we spent much more than we wanted to, but where it was worth it in the end.

We had originally planned to put in french doors, since we really preferred them to sliding patio doors. But once we really started thinking about how we would be using the doors, we realized that a sliding door would make more sense. Having a screen that you can slide into place is nice to have in the summertime, even though we really don’t get all that many insects here. In the end, we found these Marvin doors that were fiberglass outside and fir on the inside (“Woodclad”). Since we’d be able to stain them to match the rest of our fir trim, we thought that they would look fine in the kitchen. And they really do. We have had several people comment about how they didn’t think they liked sliding patio doors, but they really loved these.

The football field size cover over our back patio.  It is a fantastic thing to have in a rainy climate!