Monday, July 7, 2008

Stucco Removal Machine back in action

I got back to removing the stucco on the back of the house on Saturday. It was raining pretty much all day, so I worked on the section at the back porch. It's probably only a 5'x7' section of wall, but it took me about 6 hours, including pulling all the nails and cleaning up. I got a bigger more sturdy pry bar, made by Fat Max, it's 24" but it's really beefy, and it doesn't dent the siding if you're careful. When prying a bad spot, I'll pry against a scrap of plywood. The cedar shingles are in good condition underneath, I'll just be replacing the top row where insulation was blown in. I've been using spray foam to fill the holes, I'll wait until I have more holes before I fill though, since I think there's only 4 or 5 holes on this wall. So there's only the one wall on the nook to finish the north side of the house. It might be a little difficult to do with the ladder, I can do some of it from the deck. If it's too difficult, I'll wait until we can get some scaffolding to do that part. It'll be easier to pull off the stucco, fix all the nail holes and paint, when it's done from scaffolding. We're thinking next year for the scaffolding, to do the gables of the house, since they're about 30' at the peak. Then we can do the soffits and fascia boards at the same time.

I need to redo the floor here as well. I'm going to pull off the plywood, and maybe the subfloor as well (1x8 fir). I'm thinking of using concealed nail roll roofing, it's not as good as torch-on or epdm, but it's easier to find and put on. There will be a floating cedar deck on top. This porch only gets wet when we have driving rain, and we don't get that too often. Snow melting could be a problem too, we don't get much of that either, and as long as I shovel it off. Since the roof deck will be covered, and doesn't get any sun, I think it'll last a long time. The room under it is only storage, although we do want to keep it dry too. Now we have to figure out how to get the stone off the front. That's going to be a hard job.

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