Here’re a few pics from the ongoing “big dig” in the crackhouse:

The roof over the kitchen and master bedroom–the only single story part of the house–was deemed a lost cause and a bizarre plan was hatched: to saw off the uppermost portion of the old roof, and then build a new, steeper roof on top of it. Here you can see “Sonny” and “Little Sonny” in process. They’ve removed the top portion of the old roof, revealing the old rock wool insulation within.

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With the main portion of the old roof gone, we’ve now got this lovely open air effect in our dining room.

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In addition to a large section of the old roof, they’ve also now removed the upper portion of the crackhouse’s flu chimney, since it was no longer in use (our new furnace is super-efficient and just vents via a PVC pipe) and would obstruct the new single-piece roof going in over the old one.

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We’re not planning to park an M-1 Abrams tank on the roof, but as you can see from the way they’ve framed this up, if we wanted to, we could.

For a more complete document on the crackhouse project, please visit Katherine’s newly updated website at: http://personal.lig.bellsouth.net/f/r/fraserk/