Insulation and Sheet Rock

First, we put up the insulation. We stapled black plastic to the top of the ceiling framing and then put 8 inches of polystyrene on top of that. Made sure that the two layers of polystyrene overlapped, so the joints are covered by the layer on top.

We then put up the sheet rock on the ceiling and interior walls. And all of a sudden, there are two rooms separated by a hall with stairs. It's also now holding in heat and is very comfortable to work in, even on cold and windy days.

We started taping and filling the joins and screw holes, but didn't get that finished.

More photos. For some reason, Blogger didn't want me to put a photo on this post... not sure why.

Pouring the roof

The roof is now truly underway.

Abe and a couple of others put 8 inches of polystyrene over the whole thing and covered that with black plastic. They then put rebar and remesh over the plastic, and tied that into the metal framework of the gutters.

I'm still not able to help much on this kind of thing after my operation, and I hate not being involved. However, there were a couple of days when I was kind of glad - the days when they were up on the roof and it was 100 degrees in the shade (it's usually low 90s at the moment). All of them looked like they'd just spent a month at sea!

On Wednesday, 6 people came to help. We had two on the mixer, one moving the wheelbarrows to where they were needed, two passing the concrete up, and two on top, trowelling. I kept waters filled and got things people needed, Leo perched on my hip.

The mix we do is 12 shovels sand, 4 shovels cement, a big handful of concrete fibers, and a handful of a waterproofing additive. They did 47 loads in a little over three hours, giving us a brand new concrete roof. They then poured and trowelled the slopes of the gutters - a two inch rise over 30 feet. It was a good day.

We'll put another cap on the whole thing before painting it, but this was the big hurdle. At least we'll be able to walk on it without scaffolding for the next layer.

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Roof begins!

We gave up waiting on the wind and decided to start the roof anyway. We are beginning with the roof on the building we're living in. (photos)

We did it in sections, 8 foot at a time.

We lay 2 layers of 4" polystyrene down. The wind caused less problems than we had thought, although several pieces did fly off and down the hill! We then covered this with black plastic, and put remesh over the whole thing, tying it into the gutters. At this stage, it was all held down really well and the wind ceased to be a problem.

We put bits of polystyrene under the parts of the remesh that touched the black plastic and poured a concrete slab over it all. The concrete was a 3:1 sand/cement mix with fibers and a waterproofing agent added. We will later put another layer over the whole thing once the gutters are done. 3 of us got 16 foot doone in a day, a tiring day!

It has begun!

We have already noticed the difference in temperature inside the room.