Roofing continues

The roofing guys are putting in a lot more work than they had bargained for, but it's turning out nicely.  It turns out that all the lumber supporting the edge of the roof on the inside of the soffits had been toenailed into the top of the old shingle siding.  One of the guys said this was standard practice in the 1930s to make the walls waterproof.  But now it means all the boards supporting the soffits had to come out in order to get all the siding off.  On the plus side, they are ahead of schedule getting all the old siding off.  On the minus side, they are behind schedule on finishing the roof, because they were forced to get all the siding off in order to finish it.

Today they got almost all the way around the roof with the new soffit supports.  The new shingles almost cover the whole top roof now, just a little bit on the very top remains where the new ridge vent goes.  The little stubby roofs on the first floor (over the kitchen extension and the library) will get stripped and reshingled tomorrow.

The new supports under the eaves (left) are much sturdier than the old toenailed supports (right, but hard to see in the shadow).  The edge of the roof won't sag anymore.  The guys working on the roof said that the planking under the shingles was is excellent shape for a house of our vintage, except for right under the attic dormer where they had to replace a few rotten boards.  I suspect the old leaky attic window which used to be in that dormer before we replaced it.

The exciting part tomorrow will be when they open up this part of the roof over the kitchen extension and we find out what kind of shape it's in.  After stripping everything off the sides and bottom of it today, they confirmed that it was never ventilated when it was built.  It's a funny roof, and doesn't match the rest of the house.  I think it was probably one of the earliest remodeling jobs done to the house.  That hole in the soffit turns out to be the bathroom vent exhaust, which they are going to reroute to a more standard location.