Chapter 10: A Roof and a Floor

"Pa had taken the canvas wagon-top off the house, and now he was ready to put the roof on. For days and days, he had been hauling logs from the creek bottoms and splitting them into thin, long slabs. Piles of slabs lay all around the house and slabs stood against it."


Laura and Mary are busy every day; they are never bored. After they help with chores, they hurry into the tall, tall grass to hunt for birds' nests. They see prairie chickens running here and there, and slithering grass snakes hunting for mice. Sometimes they find soft gray rabbits huddled perfectly still in the grass. And all the time they are minding Baby Carrie so Ma can do her work. No, there is never time to be bored on the prairie.

Pa is busy, too. He is beginning the roof of the little log cabin. He begins at the bottom edge of the roof and fits a slab over the rafters, then fastens it to the roof using real iron nails that Mr. Edwards has loaned him. Nails are very precious, and if one of them jumps out of its hole and sails through the air, Mary and Laura watch until it falls. Then they must search the grass until they find it.

One by one the slabs are hammered on until the whole roof is finished. Pa makes a little trough from two slabs and covers the peak of the roof. Now no rain can get in and they are snug and warm. It is time to make the floor.

Pa splits each log down the middle using his ax and wedge to drive a long crack the length of the log. After all the logs are split, Pa drags them into the house and lays them split side up. He uses his shovel and hollows the dirt out so the round side of each log fits firmly into the ground.

He uses the head of his ax and makes little, careful chops to smooth out any rough places on the wood. It takes a long time, but when he is finished the wood is smooth with no splinters to hurt little feet. Ma tells Pa she is glad to be off the dirt and puts a nice, red table cloth on the wood table Pa had made her.

The last thing Pa does is chink all the cracks between the logs. He fills them with thin strips of wood and then plasters them with mud. No wind can blow through those thick, warm logs and Pa, Ma, Mary, Laura, and Baby Carrie are ready for winter.

Thoughts:
Hmmmmm. Putting in a roof and a floor. Fortunately for me, though unfortunately for this blog, my house came complete with roof and floor. There's no time for me to build a roofless cabin, so I had to improvise. Thankfully, my roof is not without its....er....problems in need of repair.

Actually, my whole roof needs to be replaced, but the finances say that won't happen for a year or two (or three or twenty). But there were a couple spots where the shingles had completely blown off the rafters. I could have gone all Polyanna and tried to convince myself that they were skylights, but I'm kind of a diva that way. I actually want my roof to keep out the blizzards, not welcome them in.

The area to be repaired was about 3'x4', and close enough to the edge of the roof that I could just stand on the ladder for the repairs. Good news, because that meant I didn't have to try and get any scaffolding up there. But it would have been nice to have a solid platform under me. Have I mentioned I don't really like heights?

Actually, I don't have a problem with heights as long as I stay in them. It's that rapid descent from them that I have a problem with.

It actually looks much higher in person.

 My dad came out to supervise, because this may surprise you, but I don't actually know what I'm doing when it comes to roofs. My dad would do great in quality control, because if it ain't done right, you're gonna do it again.

Under his supervision, the first step was to fasten a piece of tar paper over the roof-less section. First, I used liquid tar to stick it down around the edges. Liquid tar is a very messy substance that sticks to everything, except possibly your roof. But it is very important, and in spite of its messy nature, it is used everywhere. I ended up with tar on my fingers, tar on the ladder, tar on my clothes, tar all over the ground, and tar my dad's nail gun. I even ended up with tar on my dad, a fact that was not received well by Mr. I-Can-Do-All-This-Without-Making-a-Mess.

"Pa reached down and pulled up a slab. He laid it across the ends of the sapling rafters. Its edge stuck out beyond the wall. Then Pa put some nails in his mouth and took his hammer out of his belt, and he began to nail the slab to the rafters."

Then I got to use the nail gun to tack down the tar paper and put on the shingles. Using the nail gun is exciting because it has a hair trigger. As you stretch out to the limits of your reach (because you are short and shrimpy), and gingerly squeeze the trigger while trying to stay balanced on top of your ladder, it gives you quite a thrill to have 3 or 4 nails shoot out with a noise like a machine gun. Under the circumstances, screaming can be helpful to relieve feelings.

After the tar paper was down, it was time to put on the shingles. Shingling is pretty fun. You glop your shingle up with tar, then plop it on the roof and nail it down with the nail gun. It's important to alternate the pattern of shingles so you don't end up with straight lines going up. It's also important to stick the edges down well with tar, especially around here where 95% of the year is hurricane season.

"The roof was done. The house was darker than it had been, because no light came through the slabs. There was not one single crack that would let rain come in."

My repair job turned out pretty nicely, if I do say so myself. I even did a couple of spots on the other side of the house once my dad left, but without my quality control inspector here they didn't turn out quite as nicely. In my defense, it was starting to rain, and the wind was starting to blow a lot harder. Not a good time to be up on a ladder, especially when---did I mention it?---I'm not very fond of heights.

"There," Ma said. "Now we're living like civilized folks again."

Just like the Ingalls' house, my home is really starting to come together now. Of course, it's been almost 2 years since I moved in, not one short summer season, but in my defense I have to be both Pa and Ma to my family. That does make things take a little longer. But I can still identify with the thrill of accomplishment that comes from making things better with your own hands. People who can afford to simply hire someone to do their work are sure missing out on a lot---a lot of blisters and aching muscles, true, but also a sense of competence and confidence that no amount of money can buy.