The second picture is of the fascia board, looking south, where I have removed the trim. It appears that the exterior of the gutter does not fit securely against the top of the fascia board. The trim helps fill this gap, and of course, looks nicer. Then there is caulking applied between the trim and the external gutter. The bid from the carpenter does include replacing all that trim, so removing it will help them, and if I can salvage some, all the better. I'm not sure how successful I'll be at salvaging any. It's pretty fragile.
The third picture is a close-up of the asbestos cement tile, with my hand on the tile for scale. One of the things I'll really miss that is barely visible in the shot, are the half barrel hip caps where the roof edges meet. The add a lot of structure to the roof. Since the new shingles are asphalt, they'll just roll the shingles over those corners. It won't look the same at all. Short of going with tile though, I'm not aware of any way to get that look.
The last picture is a picture of the gutter looking north. The gutters on the east side of the house are in pretty good shape. I could have saved them and tried to have Roger re-solder them, but since I'm going to the trouble of ripping off the roof, I decided I didn't want to take the risk that the seams would pop again in five or ten years. In this picture its possible to see the galvanized gutter that lies between the external gutter and the roof.
Roger will be out Monday and the plan is to take a saw and cut the gutter out, while not damaging the exterior gutter. The exterior gutter will be carefully removed and set aside. Once that's done, it's time for the roofers to demo the asbestos tile. This weekend I want to remove all the trim and I need to make room in the yard for all the shingles the roofers will be unloading on Wednesday. We bought enough shingles for the garage too, so I need to make sure I have a place to store them.
On a completely unrelated note, and a nod to the fact that it's the simple things in life sometimes that can be very satisfying, my quest for oatmeal is over. When we were in Ireland, I got into the habit of having Odlum's oatmeal for breakfast with Irish cream and honey. I loved it. It tasted great, was pretty healthy (depending on how much cream and honey I added), and stuck with me for a long time, so that I wasn't hungry by 10:00.
When we moved back to the U.S., we bought Quaker Oats, which were awful, but I couldn't quite figure out why. So I began trying all different kinds of Oats, including some imported Irish oats, (not Odlum's) which were far too expensive. But none of them were quite right. Eventually, in talking to Ms. Huis, I hit upon the discovery that it wasn't the taste of the oatmeal, but the texture. It wasn't mushy enough.
So I started trying to soak the oatmeal over night. Then I tried cooking it longer. Then I tried soaking it 24 hours. But all to no avail. The texture was wrong. And then Ms. Huis suggested I try putting the dry oatmeal in a blender. Pure brilliance. That's exactly what it took. This morning I had my Irish porridge again and life was good. The only thing missing was the Irish cream, but I know I'll only ever get that in Ireland. It just gives me one more reason to go back.
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2 comments:
Okay, all the house stuff aside, your oatmeal wasn't MUSHY enough? Last winter I found out about steel cut oats, which led me to try McCann's Steel Cut Irish Oatmeal. I love it. The reason? The texture is so much stronger - more grainy. More nutty. I really thought that's where you were going. Not mushy enough? Yuck.
McCann's was one of the kinds of oatmeal I tried. It was, good, but it wasn't the same as Odlum's. When we were in Ireland, I also tried the Odlum's pinhead oatmeal, which is a bit like steel cut. It was OK, but if I wanted crunchy, then I'd just rather eat Grape Nuts. Ireland made me think that oatmeal = mush.
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