The roof, she is new, yes?

The single biggest thing that we knew was wrong about this house coming in was the roof. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons we could afford this house at all was because someone else had put in an offer on it, but the deal had fallen through once the potential buyers found out that the roof would absolutely positively need to be replaced within the year. So Frank, the owner, promptly dropped the asking price to account for the cost of a new roof, and the house fell right into our wheelhouse.

Needless to say, we'd been dreading this particular chore, and not only because of the price. Both the War Department and I have done roofing before - not a whole lot, mind you - but more than enough to know that there was no way in hell we'd be doing this job ourselves. We'd have to hire somebody, and that meant dealing with quotes, supervising gangs of deadbeat roofers and their delinquent helper monkeys, and all the other fun, fun, fun stuff that goes along with it. Not to mention the possibility of having to use vacation days to make sure the company we would hire was doing a decent job.

So imagine our surprise when we were absolutely inundated with recommendations for good roofers! There was only one company we were strongly warned away from, and having seen some of their work on houses in our old neighbourhood, we hadn't planned on even contacting them anyway. This was almost an exact opposite of the situation when we were looking for movers, by the way; in that case, we had exactly one recommendation, and uncountable warnings of shiftless deadbeat assholes. (For the record, the movers we hired were fast, on time, and generally awesome - and charged us LESS than the quoted price. Yeah. Just about gave me a heart attack.)

Well, we got a couple roofing quotes (one from the company our Crazy Neighbour^TM across the street used), and eventually picked the company who gave us an itemized quote and came with a hearty recommendation from some friends. (And also took the time to point out how our neighbour's roofers had screwed up, and how they would do it differently and why.) I must admit, I was a little concerned that the company we hired wasn't actually listed in the phone book, but they'd been in business for 25+ years based solely on word-of-mouth, so that had to be worth something, right?

Turns out, it WAS worth something: they did a hell of a good job. It took them a little longer then they had anticipated, partly due to getting some wrong materials from the supplier, and partly because of the BRUTAL temperatures during the first week. It was so hot, the shingles were melting! Well, okay, not melting, but walking on them would have scuffed them up too much, so they had to wait until later in the evening before they could lay out the shingles. On a couple of nights, they couldn't START shingling until seven p.m. (There was also a small incident with the War Department's favorite garbage can - don't ask - but that was resolved and it's all better now.)

Just for reference, here's the shabby mess we inherited from Frank (as usual, click any picture you want to see it embiggenated):





Yeah. Twenty-year shingles after twenty-five years? So not good. Very ungood, in fact.

Anyway, I could go on and on about how things went, but I figured pictures work best in SOME situations, so... here's a photo essay on the whole process - in chronological order. Enjoy!

Day One: Materials arrive, along with a garbage trailer (but no roofers, yet):



Day Two: Destruction!
I'm still completely amazed that they didn't break anything. Not even the statues, sadly.





Day Three: The first shingles (at 7pm):






Day Four: More destruction, more shingles








Day... Five? I dunno... I lost track about this point, actually. Why don't we just skip to the end? Here's the finished product.





God damn, that looks good, eh? The guys we hired were fantastic, and I'm pretty sure they got more work in the neighbouhood from neighbours walking by and admiring the result. I mean, why else would they leave their sign on our lawn for two weeks after they finished? Anyway, they have no web presence at all, so here it: Saanich Shingling Service - they're awesome, and I highly recommend them. (If a Google search brought you here, feel free to ignore the rest of my ramblings and just hire the roofers, mmmkay?)


But wait, there's more! That's right, it's the long awaited return of everyone's favorite feature (I'm assuming that This Week in Mayonnaise has not yet surpassed it, anyway),

The Injury Report

I bruised my thumb really badly the other day. That in itself is not exactly noteworthy, but as with the vast majority of my injuries, the humor is in the acquiring of the injury, not the injury itself.

You see, the crazy neighbour who lives up the hill behind us (the really crazy one, not the Crazy Neighbour^TM from across the street) found out we were giving away some of the statues and quickly volunteered to take them off our hands for us. Well, how could we say no?

So I helped load up her car with the crappy little mermaid, and the squirrel birdbath, and offered her one of the two peasant girls. Of course, she said yes, so I tried to move the closest one off its pedestal. Well, it was on there pretty tight (Frank must have used extra mayo) so I clambered up through the brush and weeds to the one in the back to see if I could get it off its base any easier. Unfortunately, the piece of statue I grabbed onto and pulled came right off in my hand, and whacked me in the thumb pretty good.

Still, this story does have a happy ending. First, I managed to get the other peasant girl off its base with a couple delicate taps from the Ol' Persuader, so the neighbour went home happy. Second, the statue I broke looks WAY better now, I think:



I've started calling it "Mary No Head", much to the War Department's chagrin. Come Hallowe'en, that thing is going to look damn freaky...

So, next post, I explain why these two unobtrusive, unassuming, unimposing vents in the middle of the roof (on either side of the vent stack) represent such a major effort on our part.



Stay tuned...