We have a new roof!!!!  I can’t take a picture of it because it’s white and absolutely blinding!  I crawled up there with no sunglasses on and thought I was going to die!  Thank goodness it was a cloudy and overcast day.

The roof had many layers of material on it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These were pictures from earlier in the summer when Rob was patching the old roof.  It was black and cracked and thick and tar covered and it needed to go.

So that’s what we did.  Rob and a couple of guys spent about a week removing the old roof.  It is not fun.  It is hot, miserable and dirty work. You have got to remember it’s late August and early September in Oklahoma.   This is what they found underneath layers and layers of roof.

 

 

 

 

There were many spots in this beautiful old roof top that required  new patching and had been patched over the years.

                                                                                                                                                                                    This one really shows how 98 years can wear on lumber, even though it’s been covered up with layers upon layers of roofing material.

Here is a shot of the stripped front area of the roof in the midst of prepping and patching before the new roofing materials went in.

Here are the lightweight Styrofoam type sheets that will become the new roof of The Mac.  This is a component of the TPO Roofing System that Allen Lewis Roofing.  TPO stands for Thermoplastic Polyolefin and is a single ply roofing membrane.  It has gained broad industry acceptance for its performance and installation advantages.

So in layman’s terms…..this is what they did.

After tearing off the old roof, they patched all of the holes in the  roof with tin.  Then they took these lightweight foam type sheets and attached them to the roof with screws. It was all then covered with a rolls of a white, membrane.   It kind of reminded me of white rubber wrapping paper laid out on top of the Styrofoam.   Then, once the whole surface is covered, they come back in and melt the seams together to form a water tight barrier.

                                                                                                                                                                                         Here they are piecing together the Styrofoam underlayment. This is part that didn’t take very long.  It was like laying out puzzle pieces as you want to vary the seams on the pieces so you don’t end up with a bunch of straight seams.

Did I tell you that these guys were getting up and working 5:30 am – 11am days and then returning last evenings for more until the sun set?

I couldn’t decide what was worse in the heat: the old black heavy tar covered roof or the new bright white highly reflective roof.

These guys stuck with it and got the front half complete before the holiday weekend.  With rain in the forecast, they made a patch between the old & new roof areas that should have gotten us through the predicted light storms that weekend.

What we couldn’t predict,  and were in no way appropriately prepared for,  was the 3 inch in an hour rain that fell on the Tuesday morning after Labor Day.

                                                                                                                                                                                   This is the nightmare we found on the 2nd floor of our girl that morning.  I bet I carried fifty 5 gallon buckets and dumped them out of the window trying to keep the kiddie pool from over flowing.  As soon as the rain stopped, we broke out the shop vacs and started sucking as much water as we could off of our beautiful hard wood floors.  Within 2 hours of an appeal on Facebook for fans, Nancy Gleason (granddaughter of Thomas H. McBrayer) was on the scene and loaned us all of her fans that are used in her family’s carpet business.

But the good news is that the floors have dried out and the damage is minor so we should be able to salvage and repurpose all of the hardwoods upstairs.

And since it leaked through to the downstairs, we’ve pulled up the carpet and started taking town the suspended ceiling tiles exposing incredible tin on the ceilings.

                                                                                                                                                                        Discovering all of this was our prize for surviving the week of water upstairs. They are in such beautiful shape.  The patterns are intricate and detailed. The trim molding is in the shape of hearts.

And the Lewis Roofing crew got right back up there, finished up the back part of the roof and got the new skylights installed.  We did a walk through last week to check their work and were pleased that the leaks were few and far between on Monday when it rained.

                                                                                                                                                                                   Thanks to the guys at Lewis Roofing, our girl has a great new hat; a layer of protection to protect her from the elements.

This is the first major step in bringing her back.

We are in the midst of completing permit  and scope of work information.  We will be starting on the 2nd part of our tax credit application process. We are making contact with specialized trades to determining what can be saved and rebuilt (windows) and what has to be replaced.   We are getting bids on the electrical, plumbing & HVAC.  The day will soon be approaching when we will remove our first set of original doors & windows on interior office suite walls to reconfigure for living quarters.  I already know that day I’ll be a nervous wreck.

It’s still such a thrill to take friends, both old and new on tours of The Mac.  They nearly all have the exact same expression on their faces as they round the corner and see the central hallway upstairs for the first time.  I’d like to install a camera to capture that look that I’ve seen so many times.

And we’ve weathered our first storm.  It was stressful.  There were tears shed.  There were many moments of frustration.  But it all worked out, and for that we are thankful and ready to see what the next steps take us.