Gettin' there!

Last night, it finally felt like we made some progress. Demo is always fun and you feel like you're accomplishing a lot, but putting what you've torn down back together is the real challenge.

Last night, we put half of the roof back on the covered patio.

And it looks glorious.

Horrible pictures I know. But we were working in the rain and it was gloomy and approaching 9pm. It's been raining ALL week. Thunder, lightening and all. I usually love thunderstorms but not when I'm trying to get an outdoor project done!

So first we set out half of the panels on the lawn (only the lower half's worth) and made sure that they were the right size including overlapping.

Each panel is a little over two feet wide and each roof joist is two feet apart, so the panels allowed for one "wave" (or I suppose it's one wavelength...nerd) worth of overlapping. Using seven two foot wide panels, our 14' wide patio roof was just covered by the panels.

First panel on...

We added a much longer overhang than the old roof (which didn't extend past the end joist at all) to protect the wood and brick a little more.

To install the roof, we used special screws that have washers already attached...

Home Depot sells these in the same section as the roofing panels........so buying them was a no brainer.

Once you screw them through the metal panels and into the joists, the washer squishes - technical term - and creates a watertight seal.

We couldn't be happier with how easy this was and how great it looks. The second half goes on tomorrow!