It's a Roof!

At the start of this summer, we had one mission in mind: put a new roof on the porch so the roofer can come in and "marry" a new roof to our existing structure.  To do that, we needed to do much more work than I originally had thought.

We ended up completely taking down the old roof and the entire roof structure.  We removed all of the screens and the three walls of the porch, leaving only the corner posts and the center supporting post.  Then we started to rebuild.

The roof structure came first.  We used screws instead of nails, and we supported the roof every 24 inches which is far more study than the original structure.  Then we added treated lumber to rebuild the walls, fastening them into the concrete with Tapcons to keep them secure.

From that point, we finally were ready to add the roof panels to complete the roof.  We started that two weeks ago, took a week off to go to Mayo for Rick's back, and came back to finish the roof this week.  Today we reached our goal.  We now have a secure, completely covered patio once again.

The roof is complete, and the patio furniture is clean and back into place.  Summer can
officially begin for us again.

The next step will be to purchase the screening system and to get screens back on to enclose the walls.  I really never realized how many bugs we have by our back flower gardens until we have had to deal with them this past month as we worked! Getting the screens back on will both keep the bugs out and keep the yard debris from blowing in. Hopefully, we can come and go again soon without dragging leaves and dirt into the kitchen while bugs follow us in to make themselves at home.

We have to contact a gutter company yet, but we cannot add rain gutters until the new roof is complete on the house.  We hope that will happen soon, too.

While I spent the day doing touch-up paint on the new structure, Rick took some soap and water and scrubbed down our patio furniture.  For the first time all summer, we actually can sit out on the patio and enjoy the breezes... as long as the bugs do not get the better of us.