You Can Never Know To Many Carpenters

Lyle brought in a carpenter, Jay, to reinstall the crown he removed from the dormers. That poor man started at 8 am and toiled in the heat of my roof for 8 hours and was only able to get two and a half of the four dormers restored. He actually tore a hole in the seat of his pants, most likely due to the extreme heat and sliding on the asphalt shingles, while doing the work. Why did it take that long to install 10 pieces of moulding? He had to carry all 16 pieces to the roof and measure each location to find out which piece went where. He had a jigsaw puzzle on his hands. This all could have been avoided if Lyle had just taken the time to keep the pieces of each dormer together.

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He planned to finish the following day, but I commandeered him to help me with replacing the crown moulding on the rear of the house. I had done all the prep work, taking down old, clearling debris that was in the crevice, and removing top row of siding the day before as I had Tom all lined up to help.

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Unfortunately Tom wasn’t feeling well and his radar called for rain all day, so he wanted to wait for another day. When the skies cleared, around noon, I called Jay to see if he could help as I really didn’t want to put it off another day. Like with Tom, I was able to learn some things by working with Jay. The 16′ length boards prevented him from being able to work by himself. We started with the right side and the first task was sticking a 5″ wide strip of R20 insulation in the open crevice. When I took the moulding down I could feel the air conditioning from inside the house. We worked four hours and we were on course to finish the entire project that day until Jay, unfortunately cut the last board short by about 2″. I had to go to Hyde Park Lumber the next morning and buy another 8′ board. Jay left, but I kept working to install the top row of siding tiles. The next day was my Big Chop day, so I didn’t work at all. Jay returned in the morning as promised and finished the project, which included finishing the last 8′ of siding and caulking. Unfortunately that took him 6 hours and the heat of the day had been reached, so he did not return to the roof to finish installing the dormer crown.

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Jay is working with another painter that is known for restoring the grand houses in Northside, so he didn’t return for a few days to finish the dormers. I think he thought and I know I thought he’d make quick work of it since he only had the four pieces on the right front and the two front pieces of the rear large dormer. Think again. I don’t know what elaborate ladder system Lyle had rigged to get the pieces down, but it wasn’t in place for Jay to put the pieces back up. The left side was accessible with an extension ladder, but the rear portico didn’t allow ladder access to the right. He could reach the lower portions of each piece from the roof, but could not reach the peaks at the top. I wish a third person was around to take pictures. I ended up using my workout bench and a stick while leaning out the top portion of the window to push up on the piece of crown while Jay laid on the very top and used his battery powered nail gun to attach the board. He got everything back in place and even caulked, but as with the scaffolding collapse I feel Lyle dodged another preventable bullet. I’m growing increasingly weary of this situation.

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