Casa de las Ratas 2/15

Casa de las Ratas Week 3

February 16, 2002

On Wednesday, we passed the first inspection with flying colors with the City of Chino Hills for the roof sheathing.
Inspector Chris really liked the work we did.
Thursday 2/14/2002 we filled up the first of many 30 yard roll offs.
Saturday 2/16/2002 came the hotmop crew to apply new roofing to the flat roof section.

Sammy the Roofer and his crew arrived on time and fully prepared. Here you see the first layer of building felt being rolled on while Sammy prepares flashing for the a soil stack.

Each bucket of tar was hauled up by hand. No big deal for these guys. That bucket of molten tar was heated up to about 500 degrees.

Jose Martin lended a hand to cut the opening for the main drain so it actually would line up this time. This mis-alignment was part of the problem before.

Not that there wasn't only one factor that destroyed the old roof...

The second layer of fiberglass reinforced underlayment was rolled on and applied with the hot mop to the building felt..

...before the final capsheet was also applied with the hot mop.

Meanwhile, my Roof Rat Crew began stripping the clay tiles on the front part of the house. We planned to only strip out the two valleys and repair them, but when we saw how filthy everything was under the tiles, and how worn out the building felt was underneath we made the decision to also re-roof this whole section as well. Do it now or have to do it again in a few years.

Because there was no bird/rat stop at the ends of the tiles, all the critters had made little homes under the tiles dragging in leaves and dirt over the years.

This is a baby rat found in one of the nests under the roof. Neither eyes nor ears were open yet.
Mama rat showed up later to check on it, but too late. One less rat to worry about...

You can see the eaves were all dry-rotted out at the end of the valley. We need to do a little carpentry next week to fix all this up.

That's the golf course parking lot out in front of the house. Los Serranos Country Club has the longest black tees in the state of California.

Need to fix up the fireplace flashing a little bit.


Stripping the tile roof, adding drip-edge and applying 30# felt, double coverage.

Meanwhile me 'n' my other Rat Crew were playing with the sub-floor in the kitchen. In tearing out the former linen closet and alcove in bedroom three to frame an area to put a laundry area, we noticed that one section of the kitchen had tongue-and-groove flooring. The problem was this stuff was thicker than the diagonal sub-flooring. In order to get all the sub-flooring at the same level for future finished flooring, out came the tongue and groove. Off to the lumber yard to buy more 1 x 6...

Here is Manny breaking yet another pipe cutter...

Ooops... looks like this pot metal sewer pipe is also trashed....

But at least the floor bracing is well done...

Sometimes it is easier to strip the walls and start again... this little hall inside the back door housed the old fuse box. Since all that is coming out and a new breaker box will be installed outside near the power meter, it was easier to just strip all this out.

We are also killing off the former kitchen pantry and making the rear entry altogether bigger and more open.