The Guest House, Trash or Treasure?
The Attic

The attic of this small house is quite large. The ceiling is high enough to turn this space into a loft area for sleeping. But not this time around. One of the pleasant surprises was the flooring in this attic. It is solid red oak 2x6's and 2x8's. These boards are rough-cut 114 year old planks and only toe-nailed at the two ends. I have saved every board.

I insulated the rafters and laid some 3/8th inch waferboard. Notice the door going out the side of the attic (watch that first step!). I'm going to re-hang this door and replace the steps on the outside of the house some time next year. This will give me an opprotunity to get rid of the pull-down stairs in the center of the room.

While I was working up here I pulled some of that wafer board into the porch area as well. This will give a good solid working area in the future if I need to string some addition wires out there. One of the money saving things we did was to keep the best of the two heat pumps from the main house. You can see it placed in the attic of the guest house here.

It is massive overkill for this little house. Heat wise it will be great. The danger is that it will cool the house so quick it will not have a chance to take the moisture out of the air. I raced to get the AC hooked up so it would be opperating when we drywalled. The weather was the hottest it had beed in years and we were in our second drought in two years. The AC unit worked great. I plan to add a bedroom to the back of the house on the next few years and this unit will still have power to spare.

The Roof

The roof on the guesthouse was 5V roofing. This is what I had always called "Barn Roofing". It was clearly not the original roof. As we tore off sections we came upon the original red standing-seam roof under slabs of patching tar and asphalt paper. The Seams had been hammered flat. I would love to know how long ago the Standing seam was covered up. The ridgecap for the 5V was so old I have been unable to find a source for it in two years.


Here is that brilliant solution to the leakage problem I mentioned earlier. You can also see the solid red oak ceiling boards here. It was a good thing this little house was built so well or it would have fallen down under so much rot and neglect.

Not wanting to have a repeat of the leakage problems, one of the overkill things I did was to cover the entire roof in peal and stick Ice-Dam. This was some sticky stuff! It is so gooey that it is supposed to "reseal" around nails and screws. I will put 5V back on the roof for now due to budgetary reasons but I do plan on reinstalling a standing-seam roof just like the original back in 1888.

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