We've always been a do-it-yourself kind of family. No, I didn't homeschool my kids. I was happy for them to get out of the house and learn Italian and .... I didn't want replicas of me. God knows I'm not perfect. We were so isolated on the farm it would've been just me and them, nope not for us.
But everything else, yip we did it ourselves... growing food, killing chickens, making wine ... building a house, building another house, you get the picture.
So, last summer we needed to fix up the roof on the barn. Here it is in pictures. Cautionary note: do not try this at home. Put this
playlist on loud so you can get in the groove of what it was like. Every day, we woke up, had some breakfast, and got out into the boiling sun to wrestle with beams. Enjoy!
A day in the life... mama is cooking lunch and the guys are grooving to Led Zeppelin and moving homemade scaffolding around. Yeh! We took down the old roof, created steel-reinforced concrete supports, put up support beams, structural beams, panels, ceiling ... all on a stone structure from a couple of hundred years ago, that was CROOKED!
The Roof:
The Materials:
and a lot of sand, cement, bricks, and pasta!
The Players:
Two lanky but energetic teenagers, a power-lifter Classics student, the Boss, and me, yours truly, 62 years old former midwife, cafe owner, and long distance runner.
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| Blues Guitarist and Chef-to-be |
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| The Boss and Right Hand Man |
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| Coolest Dude on the Mountain |
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| Pumped!! |
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| a moment to relax |
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| Taking down the old roof |
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| Only the beams are left, the corrugated metal and the insulating straw are gone |
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| Scaffolding and support for the end wall |
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| That was before he fell |
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| But he's fine! |
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| We call it the wonk |
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| One beam down! |
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| Taking down the rafters |
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| Hmmm half a beam left. |
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| One beam to go! |
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| Deconstructing the roof |
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| Scaffolding |
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| Building up the stone wall to create cements rests for the new beams |
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| Painting the metal supports |
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| bolts ready for metal supports |
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| Metal supports in place |
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| The first support beams! A whole day of figuring it out... we did it! |
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| It's actually happening! |
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| Ok, the main supports are done... time for a beer. |
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| The monolith |
Rafters in place
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| Planks. Home-made ladder. |
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| That night they worked late! |
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| Planks Done!!! |
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| Ceiling |
We still have to put the metal panels on top of the wood...no time left in 2019! Back in 2020 to finish the job!
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