It's slowly coming down

It's been nearly three weeks since my last posting. Funny how time flies when you're exhausted.

Since then we have made four more trips to the barn, each less than three full days. Most of the siding is now off the first level. Some has been left near the corners to provide stability for a while longer. About half of the higher levels of siding is off also. Some had to be left in place for now because some of it is holding some bad beams in place.

All of the flooring has been removed and almost all of the joists in the lofts. A few have been left in place in case we need to walk around up there when the frame is being taken down. One of the beams collapsed as I was removing flooring from it. It turns out about 4 feet of it had completely rotted away. The floor just dropped about a foot while I was ripping up the boards. Talk about a fright!

Wednesday we started working on the roof. On the fourth try, I was able to toss a weight over the top of the roof with a string tied to it. Then, after tying my 100-foot climbing rope to the string, it took just a minute to pull it over the top, tie it off, and walk back to the east side of the barn.

We were ready to remove the roof but I found it too steep to climb onto. After an evening to think about it, I devised a way to use our two large aluminum ladders to support a third ladder that reached almost to the second pitch of the roof. The picture below, "the ladder stack," shows what we did. With the two large ladders weighted down and slanted to be flat on the roof, we dragged a third ladder, nailed to a wide board, up onto the ladder jacks. It was easy then to climb the first ladder, clip into the rope with my "figure eight", and climb the wooden one.

From its top, the second pitch was an easy crawl. Once on the top slope I could comfortably walk around, sit down, even occasionally set the crow bar and hammer on the surface without their sliding away. Those were the only tools needed for the roof.

It's possible to walk around on the roof on the steep slope, but without some mechanical advantage, it was not possible for me to walk up the slope. Climbing ascenders might have helped, but I don't own a pair, and it wasn't worth the cost to buy them for a single climb. Once the panels start to come off, the purlins make a great ladder, but one has to get that first sheet off.

The same picture below also shows the purlin grid that underlays the tin sheets. It is easy and safe to climb around on it once exposed, so the work was not particularly dangerous. I used a section of old hose to protect the climbing rope from most of the rubbing back and forth on the tin and the exposed purlins.

Since the sheets were put on from side to side, bottom to top, they must be taken off in the reverse order. It is possible to remove one from below another, but it means prying up a corner of the higher sheet to get to the nails that it covers in the lower ones. And even then one must hold up the covering sheet high enough to allow prying the nails underneath. It's not worth it.

On the steeper slope, since it is difficult to slide across the lower sheets as one could do on the top slope to reach the far line of nails, it was easier, despite having to lift a corner on two rows, to take off each "column" of sheeting from top to bottom. Also, the temperature was above 90 degrees. I don't want to guess what the roof temperature was in the full sun in mid-afternoon.

The good news is that in less than two full days, one person, gaining experience as he went, was able to remove a full half of the roof. Next trip the other half comes down. After that, the purlins will be taken off, and, while up there, I'll disconnect the top of the highest siding.

Stay tuned.