Miller's Historic Mansion

Well, here it is Labor Day weekend and I know everyone took some time off do relax, maybe at the beach, lake or just with family over a BBQ. Here at the Miller's house we've been hard at work. We managed to complete the shingling of the roof up to the D rings for the safety gear on the back of the house. This changes the look of the house and makes it look something has been completed. We also managed to complete the roof over the north side of the house and get it dried i...n with underlayment. Rain is coming and so is cooler weather, yay! We are gonna take some time off to repair our F350 dually so we can haul off garbage which has been piling up. Enjoy your time off and have a happy Labor Day.

It's been one month since our last post and we have managed to get closer to roofing this side of the house. As everyone noticed from last post we had to upgrade the floor in the attic from a 2x6 to a 2x8 to make it livable. So we have finished the attic joist and built a wall to help support the 2x4 rafters at about a half way point. This stabilized the roof. We then jumped back out on the roof and finished decking it. This has been a great challenge for us as everything is ...25+ feet in the air. We installed the fascia boards on the east side and have the gable ends to do yet before roofing can begin. We also framed in the window for the upstairs bathroom since we had to wait for rain storms to roll thru. Right now we are converting the gable on top of the east roof from a gable to a hip roof. It will change the appearance but it will look like the front of the house. Within the next two weeks we should have underlayment down and ready for shingles and cooler weather preferably. This is only 1/3 of the roof but it was in the worse shape. So it should go faster on the other two thirds We tore out the servant stairs, new plan coming for stairs in the future.. Hope everyone is staying safe in this crazy world.

Well, here we are six weeks later and I have a lot to share with everyone. First of all we lost the lift for 3 weeks and decided to do some demo work since we couldn't get on the roof. I get to more of that in a moment. Second we've been having vehicle troubles and our dually decided to stop running and is currently parked at work for the last two weeks. Which got us down to two vehicles. I finally got another back up and running last week. Now, on to the fun stuff. We have m...anaged to replace the rotted out spots in the decking of the roof and some of the 2x4's that were also rotted out. We started laying decking down with some boards we pulled up out of the attic. That's when we lost the lift. We jumped down to the second story bathroom and started demo work there. We tore out the door leading to the attic and the wall that was on the side of the attic stairs. There are big holes in the floor and had to lay down OSB to keep from falling thru. We managed to move the large clawfoot tub out into the bedroom across the hall. We are knee deep in lathe and plaster since the truck is down. When the lift came back we started back on the attic/roof. We are replacing the top 2x4 on the west wall as it was burnt over half way thru in some spots. To do this we had to remove all the floor joist in the attic. We are also upgrading them to a 2x8 from a 2x6 per inspector. We completed most of that today. As soon as the floor joist are in we will cut the gable overhangs back to 12" and put up our facia boards and finish decking. We will then be able to start roofing the back section of the house. We are making progress but it's very hot, low to mid 90's and quite a bit hotter in the attic. Some days I'm covered in sweat. We can start the next section as soon as we complete the back half.

********EXCITING FIND OF THE DAY!*********** I was working in the attic today, knocking down some lathe and plaster so we could replace later on and my wife came over after work and i took her to the attic to show her what I was doing. I told her I was keeping an eye out for things dropped, such as coins. I figured a 130 years of standing there should be something up there. Low and behold I spotted something round while were stranding there talking. I picked it up and it was an Indian head penny from 1899. Oldest coin to date, 10 years after the house was built. That made the end of my day even more glorious. We are tarped down again for a tropical storm headed our way from the gulf coast. Will be working in the attic the next few days, hopefully more treasures will come out.

Ok, we've been tarped down waiting for the storms to roll through while working on the gable end on the north side. We managed to enclose the end and frame up the rafters for that room. Next will be sheeting and laying shingles. Since the rain storm let up this week we decided to re-tarp the house and run it length wise to use only one tarp. After we completed this we started de-nailing the roof of all those small nails that didn't come up with the shovel. Then we moved on t...o cutting out the bad areas and removing the eaves. We still have a lot of work to do before we can start roofing. I am cutting the eaves back to 12 inches and due to fires from the past, I am having to replace the two top plates of the wall before I can start sheeting the roof. As you can see there was a lot of fire damage left when they rebuilt it. Rain coming again this Thursday for the morning and then we are going to get hot. I hope everyone is safe from the protesting going on. Stay safe and we update again in a few weeks.