Sunshine and highs above 50… it didn’t take much to get us outdoors, where we started on the long-awaited project of removing and replacing Bob’s roof.

We began by building a scaffold around back. The scaffold components fit together like very heavy K’nex, with pins between vertical sections and x-braces for lateral stability. Two platforms sandwich a ladder, and some deep planks span across the lower roof to a third platform. Together they give us a place to stand along the full length of the dormer eave 15 feet above ground level.

The scaffold is a lot of fun to climb.

The old roof was standing-seam aluminum, attached via hidden clips to the plywood below. With no need to puncture the metal, these clips were key to the water-tightness of the roof. Not that it did much good: the plywood was completely rotten and we were careful to step only on the rafters. Everything came off! For a couple glorious hours the home interior was bathed in sunlight, a lid off a jar.

But with rain in the forecast overnight, we needed to install a new lid quickly. We built it out of Advantech, same as Colin’s house. I have a bad habit of calling this stuff “plywood,” but strictly speaking Advantech is something else. It’s an engineered panel made from wood strands and resin pressed together under heat. 10½ sheets of 4-by-8-foot Advantech nicely covered the 12-by-30-foot dormer roof, and with ring shanks in the nail gun and a bead of adhesive on every rafter the crew resheathed the roof well before sunset.

Advantech sheathes the roof. Great view of Sugarbush.

The old roof sagged quite a bit at the eave. While the rafters were exposed, Mark pulled a string across the edge and cut shims to fill in the sag. The new sheathing follows a nice straight line at the eave, and for our next step we installed fascia across this line. Directly in the path of water coming off the roof, the fascia is extremely vulnerable to rot, so Bob chose a plastic product called KLEER with an imprinted wood grain. It looks like painted lumber and cuts as easily, but it requires no maintenance. It’s also as floppy as a stick of string cheese.

KLEER installed – the white woodlike material around the upper eave.

Hans and I held up the 1×12 KLEER to run straight along the eave and took turns with the drill to secure each piece of fascia. We used finish screws with threads that run both clockwise and counterclockwise on the same shank. This innovation helps squeeze the fascia to the lumber behind, but it’s a huge pain to remove a screw once it’s in… so we try to get it right the first time.

Tarp on for a rainy night.