Today (Friday) they worked on the northeast corner.  Slate on the east side is now done except for the top section near the ridge, so the slate installation is almost complete.  Then we lost another day to weather on Saturday.

The crew worked all day on the southeast corner.  My contractor told me that he instructed his foreman to do everything possible to minimize waste, which means fitting the tiles very carefully.  He also said that there has been less breakage than the slate supplier says is typical.  So that's all good, but it does make for slow work.

Notice the shiny copper edging on the south gable (left in the photo); first time I've seen that installed so far.

Here are some tiles stacked next to the lift they use to take slate up to the roof:

Not much to say today except that the slate keeps going on.  The west and northwest are all finished now.  Here's the west and south:

And here's the northwest corner all done:

While working on the west reverse gable, the crew noticed that the structure was a little shaky.  My contractor and his foreman looked inside the attic and found that the gable rafters had detached from the main structure at one point. 

They dealt with this issue by shoring up the center of the attic with 4 x 4 s and adding some additional collar ties in each gable and in the center of the roof. 

I had thought in the past that the roof framing didn't look as robust as I expected.  There were a few ties but not as many as you'd find on a new structure.  Of course, this is probably old-growth wood that is stronger than what you buy nowadays, and the 2 x 4s are really 2 x 4.  And the roof has held up for 115+ years (unlike a house I know about that was built in 1990 whose entire roof had to be replaced because of poor construction).  But I am just as happy to have some reinforcement; can't hurt. 

Today they made more progress with slate on the west face of the roof:

My contractor doesn't normally work on Sundays, but since we lost three days last week he asked if I were OK with working today, which I was.  They finished the slate on the south and started on the west face, completing about half of it.

Here's a shot of today's work (zoom in for more detail):