One Room Challenge - Garage Progress: Week 2

It's Week 2 of the One Room Challenge!  I'm excited to have made some big changes this week, and I'm so excited to watch progress on the projects I'm following along with.  One of my favorite things about the One Room Challenge is the community-over-competition camaraderie that comes out of these projects.  We are able to bounce ideas off each other and offer support.  It really makes doing these kinds of projects less isolating and more fun!  Check out how everyone is doing on their projects over here.

I've made some big progress on the garage!  If you need to catch up, read last week's post! I'm also sharing live updates over on Instagram in stories and the "Garage" highlight.  At the end of last week, I ordered supplies for the roof from our local Menards, and I was able to pick them up the next day without any trouble. Since I wasn't sure how to measure roof area without climbing on the roof, I referred to the insurance estimate at 481 square feet and rounded up to 500.  The roof estimator on their website included an additional 15% overage, which is especially helpful with a hip roof.  Still, I chose a shingle that was in stock just in case I needed to come back for more.  With the new roof on the house and the cream of the chicken coop and playhouse roofs, I chose the lightest warm tone I could get.  I wish it were creamier, but I got what was available.  

​The roofing supplies don't end at shingles. I also ordered ridge shingles, which are the ones that go over the seams.  I'll start installing those sometime today.  I ordered 50 feet of ridge shingles based on the estimate from the insurance company.  With a hip roof, there are five ridges: one on each corner and one across the middle.  This makes the linear feet for the ridge larger than other roof styles.  Still, I'm glad I had the insurance information to go off of.  

I also am adding a proper drip edge, one feature that was missing from the old roof.  Drip edges protect the sheathing underneath the shingles by making sure water doesn't curl around the roof shingle and get absorbed by the wood.  This has been a big issue with the current roof, and there is rot in a few areas of the sheathing.  None of the rot moves beyond the eaves, so I'm not replacing the sheathing, but I'm not sure how much longer it would've lasted without a drip edge.  

The drip edge is also going to help protect the exposed rafter tails of the roof structure.  Some of these are deteriorating due to a lack of a drip edge.  Again, I'm glad the deterioration ends at the eaves and doesn't affect the integrity of the roof above the garage.  Still, I have repair plans for these spots using both Abatron LiquidWood and WoodEpox to stop any further deterioration and to structurally repair the places that have rotted out. 

The last item I needed in the order was roofing nails.  While these seem like just regular nails, it is important to get ones specified for roofing.  These have wide heads and narrow, round shafts that easily push through shingles while also holding them in place well.  I ordered a 5 lb. box, and that should be plenty.  Since I'm big on cost transparency in projects: this order cost a total of $819.24.  The only thing I know I need more of is drip edge.  I'm about 6' short.  I didn't properly account for adding drip edge along the side of the addition, but that's an easy one to grab!

​Now that I've started on the roof, things are already going really smoothly! Roofing is hard, physical work, but it is incredibly rewarding.  What I have found, as someone who doesn't fear heights but respects them, is that it's much more nerve-wracking being on the ladder than being on the roof itself.  Since the roof deck is in decent shape and I'm doing a roof-over installation with a second layer of shingles on top of the first, I had very little prep to do, and I don't have to worry about being very high while working.  

So far, I've completed one side of the shingles, and I'm about halfway through the second.  I plan to add ridge shingles on that corner before I move onto the third side.  At this point, I'm in pretty good shape to finish the roof by the end of the week.  Unlike when we did the roof on the main house, it looks like the weather is going to hold out in our favor.