Patio Remodel: Episode 9

I am so glad the concrete work is done. With that, the actual build is so close; I’m getting excited to get started.

I needed to work on the part that the patio cover attaches to the house. To do that, I needed to tear down the second half of the old cover, the last of my glorious shade in the area. I ascended the Little Giant to start tearing off the rolled roofing.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I was going to do once I tore off this section of the cover. I’d need to keep the existing roof intact to a point. I snapped a chalk line, several generous inches further out than I thought would be needed. I could always remove roofing later, adding it would be a big deal.

I’ve tried cutting roofing with several methods in the past. The best, by far is using a multi-material cutting blade in my oscillating multi-tool. This combination is a shingle-cutting beast!

It’s like a vibrating knife, which slips easily through thick, rolled roofing and shingles. It moves about as fast as you can crawl along the deck, with very little effort.

After a couple passes along the roof deck, I rolled a section up like a sleeping bag and lobbed it over the edge.

The plywood was in relatively good shape. Other than a few minor areas of old rot at the outside edge, It looked decent.

I dug out a few nails, but once I got up under the edge, it was easy enough to pry and wiggle a sheet up and free.

Over in the corner, I found old damage from insects and rot. Roofers had framed around it over a decade ago. It was really bad. I could poke right into it with a knife and splinter pieces off.

With several sheets off, the structure beneath my feet kind of felt a little loose. It made me uneasy to walk around. It was past time to get the thing down.

I kept to the side that my ladder was on and wiggled the last piece out from under the roofing flap and pulled it up and away. Things got really shaky from that point, so I pried the remaining pieces off from below, but before a dust stopstorm blew in.

I came out the next day and started removing rafters. They were just toenailed into the side of the house. Some splintered and broke as I pried them free.

I smacked the old ceiling fan down to the ground where it shattered into splinters. It was so old and rusted, it wasn’t worth trying to save.

I pulled the PVC conduit free of the wiring that had fed the fan, lights and an old receptacle. That wiring will feed two future fans and six LED can lights I plan to add to the new roof.

I smacked and pried each of the rafters with my FUBAR, one after the other until I could leverage them off the house.

I left the last remaining bones of the outer structure in place. I really don’t want to do a complete teardown all at once. I’d rather neighbors see this as an improvement than a new construction project, while I focused on the roof edge next.

I had created a massive pile of refuse to cut up for the next curbside bulk trash pickup.

We headed out for a two-week, cross-country vacation at this point. I left the mess and pushed the project out of my mind.

It was nice to leave the old, fixer upper home behind and take our brand new, second home on wheels all the way to Michigan’s upper peninsula and back on a 4,500 mile round trip.