Studio Phase Two!

I drove up the driveway and was delighted to see Phase Two of the great studio project well underway. Despite the rain that began several minutes after they started work this morning, Bob and Joe managed to remove one course of tar paper and particle board from the old carport roof. Remarkably, the stuff is all coming off quite a bit easier than we could ever have hoped. The fear was that the tar paper was glued down  terminally to the particle board and that the particle board was nailed every few inches with nails shot by a nail gun. In other words, it would all have to be chopped up with a saws-all and it would be majorly labor intensive. Instead, Joe stood underneath and used a post (the first upright leaning against the wall in the above picture) to jam up against the ceiling and Bob pried it from above. It popped apart nicely!

It was oddly gratifying to see light coming in through the roof- the reverse of what is typically desired. If it hadn't rained, Bob and Joe would have easily completed the removal. They'll resume work tomorrow, hopefully with more cooperative weather.
This was a piece of luck in terms of recycling materials, too. The particle board, while not the highest quality stuff, can be reused for other projects around the ranch. Bob has wanted to construct a roof over the fire wood pile (instead of the billowing tarp) and these sheets of particle board just might do the trick. It's surprising that the particle board (which is the building material equivalent of scrapple) held up so well and as long as it did. After all, it is made of wood bits and loads of glue. We're going to re-construct the studio roof using heavier, exterior grade ply wood.