Shortly after we moved into our new house, we found that the roof in out sunroom was leaking. It was pretty minor at first, just a few drips from where the top of the wall joins the ceiling. I figured it was ice damming with the melting snow. I cleaned off the roof, which seemed to stop the problem and didn’t think about it until some time later when it rained, and it again leaked. So I bought some roof patch and patched some areas that seemed like likely culprits (the sunroom is only 6’x18′, so the roof is pretty small). Next rainfall showed that the patching was no avail. This continued a few more times, with me trying something and it not working, until I finally just laid a steel roof over it. No more leaks. That cost me about $700 in materials.
I also had to buy a Skil saw to complete the roofing project, as I only had a small and weak battery powered one. I got a decently made 7 1/4 corded saw for about $50. I’ve already used this saw for other projects, and I expect to get a lot of use out of it for many years to come.
I threw together a quick outdoor compost bin, as the worm bin needed a break from daily dumping for a while to let the worms get established. I think the materials cost me about $60, with the majority of that being hardware cloth. It turned out that I probably didn’t need to build it yet, as about the time I got it done the chickens got to a size where they began to go through food scraps much more quickly. I also put up another set of robe/towel hooks in the bathroom, and replaced a failed toilet paper holder.
When I put the steel roof on the sunroom, I had to special order sidewall and endwall flashing, as the roof over the sunroom is a hip roof that joins a higher wall. The flashing came in a protective box made of several 12′ long 2x6s banded together. Not one to let good lumber go to waste, I used these, together with a few pieces of scrap laminate countertop that I’ve been holding on to for a while, to build a rough but usable temporary kitchen counter setup. There was no kitchen counter when we moved in, and only 2 double-door steel upper wall cabinets. We’ve been using a folding plastic table as our countertop, but because it was several inches lower than a typical countertop, it hurt Courtney’s back to do too much cooking, canning, or baking at one time. The new setup is definitely “rustic” in appearance, but basically doubles her available work space and undercounter storage space while actually making the room feel bigger and more open.
Stay tuned for the the next project and purchase update, which will likely include the installation of a garden.