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.

Installing these is tedious, but they really are beautiful.  I got everything done up to the ridgeline, so all I need to do is install some flashing on top to complete the job.

When I was about 1/3 of the way through the roof, I noticed that the back of the tag had some instructions that just had to be wrong, since they didn’t agree with what I was doing.  They said that each shingle should get no more than 5″ of exposure, but I was setting them with 7 1/2″.  Given that they are about 15-16″ long, that meant the difference between 2 layers and 3 layers.  Since I was careful about my seams and nail spacing, I convinced myself that it just wasn’t necessary to go so overkill on a playhouse.   And besides, who wants to spend more on cedar shingles than they absolutely have to?  The partial roof had already gone through several rains without incident, so I wasn’t too concerned.

Well after getting much more of the roof done today and checking on it after a rain, I now realize I screwed up.  While there are no active leaks, the problem is actually water soaking through the shingles, causing a bunch of them to look like the picture below.  I think this will eventually lead to real leaks, so my plan now is to start pulling up nails and resetting shingles at the correct 5″ spacing.  Not fun all all, but better to do it now than rip it apart or replace it later!

Soaked cedar

A: nothing!

Birds' eye view

The cedar shingles look awesome, but they too are not very visible except along the front edge or if you choose to remove an upstairs screen and hang out the window to get a look at them.  With just a little more effort, the playhouse will be dry!   Of course, it’s taken me to the end of the rainy season, so that was bound to happen naturally, anyway

The first few shingles

The first of the larger, notched rafters in the front of the playhouse

The front rafters project out beyond the roofline

More shingles!

9/17 update: I got the main rep. from the roofing company to come up on the roof with me.  He completely agreed that the workmanship was shoddy and committed to getting it fully resolved.  Since we still haven’t paid them anything, I believe that they will.

Cracked shingles

Once I got the plywood off, it became apparent that instead of 3 rotten boards, we had 6. And actually we had more, as you can see in the photo, but the ones I left alone were only bad on the top. If the bottoms were solid and were still holding paint, I didn’t touch them. Since they are only decorative at this point and are shielded from weather, they’ll be fine. The “new” boards were from the old back porch ceiling (since incorporated into the kitchen), which I had dismantled and stored in the garage. To see them in their native setting, see this post. This was one of the first times that we’ve been able to take advantage of our stockpile. We did spend some money getting boards dipped & stripped, but it is worth it to get the lead paint removed. Since we needed more boards than expected, I had to use our Speedheater infrared paint remover to clear the paint from where I had to saw through the extra boards. I don’t like the idea of kicking out a bunch of lead paint dust, especially with kids around!

Damaged T&G boards

And without the boards

Repaired eaves

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.