PBW: Under Construction

My mother is a woman with a vision, and that vision is easy access to our roof.

Allow me to explain. Our house, a Spanish style stucco model, has a mostly flat roof. The walls all rise above this roof, and at four different points there are drains leading to gutters. Leaves accumulate, and one of my responsibilities is to clean out each of the drains. To do so involves lugging a 20 foot ladder up from the basement. In their younger years, my folks would hoist a larger ladder that reached the top of the exterior wall, and hop over on to the roof. I’ve been up there a few times, and usually became petrified when it came time to swing my legs over the side and back on to the ladder to get down.

We don’t use our front entranceway, just below a hollow turret. My folks use it as a “cold” closet to store various cans, bottles, and snacks. It occurred to my mom within the last few years that, if we built in a ladder or staircase within the closet adjoining this entranceway, we could climb up into the turret. Then all we’d need was a hatch up there, and we could get to the leaves, and examine leaks much easier. This week’s Photo Blog Wednesday will start with the scale model she showed various carpenters before finding one within our price range that was willing to do the job. You can really see where I get my artistic “talent”. From those shots, we’ll move on to the various stages of gutting and, hopefully, by next week I’ll have images of the finished project, and maybe some shots from the roof!