I’m not sure what it is about reroofing a building at Nature Camp, but it seems there is always rain involved at some point during the process. This time, as in May 2009, it was just after we had removed the shingles on Thursday evening. Charlie had a dump truck parked by the side of the LS on Thursday September 17th. Starting at about 1:00 pm on Thursday, 8 of us (Doug, Ellis, Flip, Joe, Lyt, Matthew, Walter, and I) removed the chimney flashing, and 2 layers of old shingles and roofing felt for about 4 hours until it started to rain so hard that the folks in the kitchen could hear the rain hitting the top of the ceiling. We covered the roof with plastic for the night, and Kat, Maggie, Cindy, and Joe prepared Thursday dinner for those of us that stayed. This was the third weekend we worked on reshingling the LS, and we had hoped to finish the roof this time. However, once we started to deal with the chimney, I decide we better not strip the old roofing from the section of the LS closest to the road. I’m glad we didn’t do that section, because we would have been there even longer than we were. As it was, 4 of us were still at Camp working on the LS roof on Monday. The most difficult and time consuming portion of the project was reflashing the rock chimney. That took 11 hours with as many as 3 people working on it at a time. Of course, since it is at the peak of the roof, we had to wait until all the rest of the roof was finished before we could start on the chimney flashing.
We had a skylight near the chimney for awhile. The old flashing around the chimney had leaked and the 1″x6″ sheathing boards had rotted over the years. That was one of many places that slowed the whole process. We started on the chimney flashing about the time everyone usually leaves on Sunday afternoon. None of us had ever put flashing on a rock chimney. There are no straight lines on a rock chimney like there are on a brick chimney. At one point, we dug the old flashing out from under a mountain of old shingles in the back of the dump truck to get an idea of how it all worked. Of course, since the chimney was at the peak of the roof, the flashing was the first stuff into the dump truck and was thus on the bottom of the pile.
Ellis, by studying the old flashing, was able to figure out how to make the new flashing work. We finished with the flashing and caulking at 5:00 pm on Monday. The hero awards this time go to Ellis and Flip for being there to the very end. The 3 of us stretched our 3-day weekend into 100 hours. Matthew gets an honorable mention for being there Monday, but he had to leave Monday morning. There has been a few rain storms since the new chimney flashing was installed, and there were no leaks, so perhaps we got lucky.
We had a long list of other project as well and accomplished many of them. We replaced some rotten benches; added a new section to the compost pile so it has 8 bins now instead of the original 4 bins; collected trash along 608 and up the New Road; cleared the culverts; cleaned up the vegetable garden beds; smeared some sheetrock mud in the Staffhouse; removed much of the ivy from the Chapel and a bunch of invasive weeds in and around Camp; used pipe clamps to pull the Library bench back up to the wall; and cleared a trail through the woods for the well truck that will come this winter to drill a new well.
Of the 53 folks who attended, 6 had never been to a previous Service Weekend, 13 folks were on Staff this past summer, and 2 folks were campers this past summer. We have now had 317 folks who have attended at least 1 Service Weekend.
Katie and Nell were chief cooks and bottle washers with help from Kat, Maggie, Cindy AmyKG, Cathie, Ginna, Shirley, and others. The meals were, as usual, just fantastic. Ellis had brought 5 pounds of his home grown shitake mushrooms to contribute. We had shitake mushroom gravy on biscuits for breakfast, and shitake mushrooms on pizzas and in salads. It was a real treat, as were the rest of the meals and especially the desserts.
We played music and danced a circle mixer and several other dances in the LS on Saturday night.
Thanks to Adam, Amy, Amy, Amy, Annie, Art, Benjamin, Braxton, Cathie, Charlie, Christopher, Cindy, Doug, Ed, Ellis, Flip, Ginna, Heather, Jason, Jenny, Jim, Joanne, Joe, Joey, Kat, Katie, Kim, Larry, Lucas, Lucy, Lucy, Lyt, Maggie, Maggie, Marc, Matthew, Mike, Mitchell, Molly, Nell, Paul, Peggy, Peter, Powell, Rob, Robert, Ryan, Shirley, Stephen, Steve, Tony, Walter, and especially Charlie. I had a wonderful time.
Amy K Gonzales has invited you to look at her photos from this past weekend. She has them posted at the following website:
http://share.shutterfly.com/
Jim Brooks
NCF Service Committee Chair