Crash! Thud! Bang! Is That Santa On Our Roof?

By 7 this morning, the roof at That Old House
was crawling with men who are far, far braver
than I . . . that roof is high! . . . as the first stage of
Operation Roof Replacement gets underway.

Thank you, Superstorm Sandy,

for stepping up our timetable for this project.

While our roof was certainly old, it was still keeping us dry.

June 2011

After Sandy, not so much.

October 2012

Howard snapped a few pictures from the cul-de-sac as

he was leaving for work this morning.

That is one big dropcloth.

I could paint a lot of old furniture on that dropcloth.

If you look at the front of the house, on the right of this picture,

you can see the old wood roofing shingles, the brown cedar shingles

that are believed to be the house's original roof.

That makes them 180 years old.  Not bad.

I wish we could have somehow preserved

and repaired that old wooden roof.

Much of the roof will need new sheathing, and we therefore

will go down in history as the first homeowners to put

any plywood into That Old House.

(Not something I want in my obituary, if anyone's making notes.)

What looks like plywood on the rear of the house, above, on the left, is not plywood.

It is wide boards, or -- late 19th century sheathing; it was done in the 1880s.

Some of that may be still useable.  Fingers crossed.

Have you seen what plywood costs these days?  Sheesh!

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In our Dylan Dog's little world,

the advent of strangers on the roof is quite exhilarating,

and good reason for barking and making nose prints on the 

window panes, and being told to get OFF the windowsills . . . .

One of Dylan's issues is leash-biting, and we've made

really good progress in extinguishing this behavior (as the

trainers say), but it still surfaces now and then.

Like yesterday.

Anne got a picture of Bratticus Finch, AKA Dylan,

with his lead firmly in his teeth, trying to initiate a tug-of-war.

Of course, like a 3-year old child who defies a parent,

Dylan has no idea how cute he is when he does this,

or why we are not completely intimidated by his power.

Sorry, Dylan, we don't do tug-of-war with bratty boys.

We ignore bratty boys!

And then, they give up, cause then it's not fun anymore.

It really is so rewarding, and such fun, to watch Dylan blossom.

Even when he's still an occasional brat.

I hope your Tuesday is bright, as I'm sure our gray and damp

day will be, eventually; I'm seeing bright sky in the distance!  -- Cass