Up On the Rooftop......

I am in a shingling mood today. I sat and cut big shingles into quarters. Then I cut points on a lot of the quarters. I am tired of doing plain square shingles. Why am I cutting points on the shingles? Because Tessie told me to do it.

I went looking at half timber houses and saw lots of different roof styles on them. I imagine that some of them have been re roofed over the centuries, so I think that it will be OK to play with the shingles. It is amazing what you can find if you just go to MSN or Google and push the "images" button instead of the search!

Anyway, we settled on a slate roof with some straight and some pointed shingles. By the way, if you decide to try the pointy shingles, here's a handy tip. Get yourself a pair of scissors that you can use on wood. Then use those to cut the shingles. It is much faster than trying to cut them with a knife, saw or even a chopper. Just remember to cut the pointies from the outer edge towards the point on both sides. Flip over the shingle to do the second side of the point. You will get a lot less splitting if you do it this way.

Here's the roof with three courses of straight and two courses of pointy shingles. As you can see, I put diagonally cut shingles up the slanted edge of the roof line. This gives me a kind of starting point for each row. Also, there is a small piece of wood at the bottom edge of the roof so that the first course of shingles will lay at the right angle instead of being flat against the roof. It does make a difference. If you don't put it there, the first course of shingles look droopy.

I worked all morning and I don't have a lot to show for it. I did three straight rows, three pointy rows, five straight rows, three pointy rows, I am now back to the straight rows. I think that it will take me about five straight rows to get to the peak of the roof.

I now have help........I am not sure if this is going to make getting it done faster or slower. I saw Tessie wandering around the Witches' Warehouse and wondered what she wanted to buy. Lo and behold! Who knew that they carried what she calls "Magic Hammers"? She is now playing "Director in Charge of Shingling". She is great at making up new titles, but not so great at using magic hammers. She puts shingles here and there all over the roof and I have to tear them off so that I can put on straight rows. She keeps dangling her bare feet down where I am supposed to be putting on shingles. Someone may have black and blue toes before this is finished. I claim NO responsibility!

I can see that this is going to be one of those tasks that takes approximately ten times the time estimated. Strike that. With Tessie's help, make that twelve times. Back to work!

See you tomorrow.