#new roof

PART ONE: The To-Do List

When it was over, at the end of my post, I posted some To-Do's:

Call Plumber - Done, and I thought the problem would be solved for another year or more.

Get garage door serviced. Done. The guy I called was clearly trying to rip me off. He told me immediately that I needed new springs, and when I pushed back and pointed out how shiny and new my garage springs were, because they were less than five years old, and they just needed to be tightened, he tried telling me that it's not possible to tighten garage door springs, something I knew for a fact was bullshit. I pushed back on him and was about to tell him to just leave when instead he had me sign a thing saying that he couldn't promise that fixing the springs would fix the problem and if I called them out again it would be another service call fix instead of guaranteed work. In the end, I got what I wanted but paid too much and marked that company in my phone as "never call again." The work they did do was fine, but screw them.

Get Handyman to take care of the fallen tree - Check, a day or two after power came back. I tipped him extra for it, too, because he always takes care of me. My insurance lady told me what I paid was quite inexpensive for the job.

Work with Insurance - Yep! We'll get to that.

Talk to my neighbors about the fact that I’m going to get a wood fence put up to replace our chain link one. YEP. We'll get to that, too.

Get the electrician back to wire up the house for a generator. Nope. Not yet. But someday.

Buy a generator Not yet, but again, someday.

Clean out the garage, for real. Maybe when it's not 100 degrees out every day again. But yeah, on the list, for multiple reasons.

So yeah... the last six weeks or so have been a trip.

PART TWO: Getting Money

One of the things I did when I didn't have power was see that we could file a claim with FEMA for disaster assistance. I figured... why not. A day or two after I got power back, a FEMA inspector lady called and then came to the house. I pointed out all of the things. I ended up getting a little bit from FEMA. Not a ton, but honestly, I was grateful. Anything helped.

Later that week, or maybe the next, my insurance sent an adjuster. Crazily she was flown down from another part of the country, she was living in the exact town that I grew up in. Like it is not a huge town. Not "small" but also just not somewhere you'd expect to meet someone from on the reg. So we had a good time chatting about the city when she came to inspect the house.

Insurance gave me an OK amount. My roof was old so they only paid out 40% of the replacement cost. And yeah, that's about what I got from them them with the final price when it was all said and done.

PART THREE: Finding Help

My roofer initially seemed great. I was excited to work with him. When the insurance came, instead of him coming, he sent an "assistant" who didn't really seem like he knew much of what he was doing or was very helpful. But hey, you know what? right after a storm like that, they're gonna be busy.

Several times over the next couple of weeks I texted him asking how things were progressing on just getting me a quote. He sent a whole other guy over like two weeks later for the fence quote. He barely seemed interested to be there. Um, okay. He also wouldn't even give me a ballpark at the time. Whatever.

Two weeks after that I hear from the roofer that he's almost done with my quote. By then it was the weekend before July 4th.

I'd gotten the money from the insurance. I'd sent the documentation of their payout to the roofer and made it clear I had a sum of cash above that (not exactly how much) to come out of pocket, and a priority list for the work to be done. My best guess is that he figured my business wasn't worth as much time as other people's, so I kept getting shuffled to the bottom of the stack. OK. His prerogative. Fair. But I was at the limit of my waiting, considering how bad my roof was.

My across the street neighbor had told me that she had her roof redone a year or two ago who she said did a good job, and he'd come to see how her roof fared from the storm and told her to give me his number if I wanted him to look at it. So when I didn't hear from my roofer after July 4th week, I went and asked her for the number, then texted Joel, the new roofer.

Anyway, Joel came out the next day. I showed him all the work I'd been approved for. He and I negotiated a price and materials for the roof. A price was set that was right about what I thought it should be.

Still had some money leftover in the budget so I asked about a fence, specifically an 8' Cedar fence. His quote was $1k more than I was hoping it would be, but honestly, still what I thought was a good deal.

He also mentioned a price for the patio roof. I was at my hoped-for spend limit and would get back to him about the patio roof.

In the end, I pulled a little more money together and told him to go for it.

That was Tuesday and Wednesday.

Original Builder sent me my quotes on Wednesday. How nice. Too late. Also they were like 30% higher than what I settled on with Joel. He just emailed them, didn't even bother to follow up with a text.

I had a polite response planned out in my head if he'd texted or called. But he didn't. Oops, I guess I didn't see that email.

PART FOUR: The Survey Drama

Thursday, Joel and his main builder came out, tore out the chain link fence and started putting up 10' poles for the 8' fence (2' of which is buried in concrete in the ground.)

Joel also told me that he needed a copy of my land survey for the build permit, which I should have from when I bought the house.

I spent a good hour searching through every document I had from when I bought my house in 2003 looking for it. And I felt I'd pretty much kept everything. I had my bids on houses I didn't win in there. I had notes that I took back then.

I did not have a survey. Well... shit.

So, I started by looking at the city website online. The city does not keep copies of surveys.

So I tried calling my mortgage company. Except oops they went out of business in like 2010.

Getting real panicked, I threw a hail mary and went to look up my Title company. They'd been bought out in like, 2007. But there were a couple of people working under franchise names of that company still. A total longshot, but I called the person nearest me.

That very nice man said he couldn't help me BUT I should call the home office. He gave me the name and number of a lady named Kim.

So I called Kim, and she was very very sweet. And extremely doubtful she had anything on file, but she would get with the records department and look.

A half hour later she called back. THEY'D FOUND IT. Holy crap. Even she was astonished.

I thanked her profusely and asked her to thank the records department. A few minutes later, the survey was in my email. And hey, it had my signature from 2003 on it! I sent that over to Joel and we got the permit. WHEW. Work continued.

I printed out three copies of the survey and emailed it to myself at two other email addresses.

PART FIVE: Communication

I texted my neighbor on the side where the fence would be built (the other neighbor had built their fence, also an 8' cedar fence, like 20 years ago, so hey, at least I only had to pay for two full sides and two fronts.

Technically I text with their daughter, as her parents don't speak English. They knew that this was coming and were cool with it. They knew the fencer would need to do some work in their yard and that there would be no fence for a little while. I asked Joel to please help minimize the time there was no fence for their dog (a pitbull, she's very sweet) to be penned in by.

Just want to say my neighbors are saints. They were very cool with everything, though I sent them many apologies. It was especially frustrating because we took the fence separating our yards down on Friday and there was no full fence put back up all weekend. It couldn't be avoided, though. Just wish the days had gone by faster. They could only let the dog our on the leash for those days. I asked (daughter) several times what I could do to say I'm sorry and thank you and they were really just kind and chill about it anyway. I am still thinking of something I could do for them, though, once this is all over. My initial thought is a small basket of dog toys and treats for the pupper.

I also started discussing paint stain colors for the fence with Joel, and let my neighbors help me make a decision, since they'd have to look at it, too. In the end, we decided to go with the same brown color that the fence on my other side already was. I kinda wanted to go with maybe a dark grey, which would also match the neighbors house well, but that's what they wanted and having a color match was my other main choice, and probably the right one, even if it doesn't match with our houses.

Mostly I'm glad my good relationship with my neighbors is intact.

PART SIX: CONSTRUCTION BEGINS!

Okay yeah so Thursday some poles got put up. Friday the rest of them got put up. Joel is mostly coordinating everything, the main builders are Jose and his wife Maria. Neither of them speak English and my High School and College Spanish were uh, 30 years ago but I retained a decent amount. Mostly though, we communicate through whatever sentences I can piece together and a lot of Google Translate. We have had entire conversations through Google Translate. It's great.

Saturday the work on the poles were finished and Sunday no work got done... I mean... it's Sunday. It was only annoying because of my neighbors having to take care of the dog and I felt bad about it.

Over the weekend I also picked out roof shingles. I got an architectural single, which is a nicer shingle. I wanted a medium-grey color -- I never liked the light grey my old roof was, I didn't pick it out, though I know lighter is probably cooler. I picked what I thought was a nice compromise.

PART SEVEN: Roof Day One

AKA my new Skylight.

Monday I woke up stupid early for no reason. But it was fine that I did because at 6:30am the doorbell rang. The roofers were here. And they got started right away.

It... was loud. I knew it would be but I don't think I was quite prepared for how loud.

But I had little to do after welcoming them, so I mean, when it was time for me to work (my job is 100% WFH still, yay!) I just got to work, doing my best to ignore the noise and hoping they wouldn't fall in on me. The cats were terrified and hiding, curled up together under my recliner in the living room, their normal safe place. I put food, water and their litter box in there, closed the door 90% of the way, and let them be.

Anyway, here I was, working away in my office and at about 10:15 am, there was a bright light and a foot in my ceiling.

First and most importantly, he is fine! He slipped and his leg fell through. It wasn't the end of the world, and MOST important, he CRAZILY fell through right above my very tall bookcase, the tallest piece of furniture I own. Instead of falling completely through the ceiling, he "stepped" two feet down, and his foot caught on the bookcase, and he pulled it right back up. If this had happened ANYWHERE else, it might have been a LOT worse.

Joel and Jose came in and assessed the situation and Jose said no problem. For about three hours the hole remained, until Joel came back from Home Depot with some drywall, and I had a funny story to tell all my friends, co-workers and family. That angle in that pic up there is literally an angle from where I sit while I work all day. Lots of fun comments about my new skylight and terrible puns from my brother.

It currently looks like this:

You can see the scuffs on the wall from the guy who fell's shoe!

Jose came in and got the drywall on and the spackle in. There was a crack already from the window to the ceiling, from the house settling, so he just went ahead and spackled that, too.

I actually have the paint can for that paint in my garage, so I handed that over to them to paint match.

Honestly, aside from being glad the worker is OK, I do not get upset over stuff like this as long as it gets fixed, and it well, so it's fine!

There's a similar hole in my garage ceiling, too, which still needs fixing.

The roof workers worked from 6:30am until 9pm. It was 100 outside that day. They were amazing.

This was taken Mid-day when they were eating lunch.

I not only was getting new shingles, but new decking (aka the wood that the shingles rest on that is connected to the rafters. I know they didn't redo the decking in 2003 when I bought the house and they put the cheapest roof possible on it before selling it to me. Joel confirmed that there were several rotting places in the decking and I saw a few pieces myself. And under in the attic the decking they installed a Thermal layer for more insulation that wasn't there before.

I did have good insulation installed pretty early, like 2005, so at least when the power has gone out since it's stayed nicely warm/cool depending on the season.

I had some old whirly type vents coming out of the house. Several of them were either broken or uh... very squeaky. Especially when it was cold, one of them had a definite squeak that you could hear outside and it was mortifying if my neighbors could hear it. That one, or maybe another one, rattled really badly when it was windy, too. TBH I would just put in my headphones to sleep sometimes because of roof noise the last year or two during very cold or windy nights.

Well, the roofers got rid of all of those. In place, they put a ridge vent, which basically means a tiny gap along the entire top ridge of the house, covered up by a special shingle. I learned all about it when I watched a Youtube about it the next morning after looking at it and going "WTF is that little bump?" Anyway, no more loud squeaky/rattling vents for me. My house is modern now. :D

So anyway, Monday night they finished getting roofing over the entire house, but the garage still wasn't done.

This was taken early Tuesday morning, there'd been tarps over the garage that night. There was no rain forecast, so everything was cool.

PART SEVEN POINT FIVE: No Internets (Part 1)

This is part 7.5 because I had to come back and add it in later when I forgot to add it until I was almost done writing, and I don't feel like correcting all the section titles, but it is absolutely part of the story.

Monday early evening as they were hurrying to finish getting roofing over at least the house part of the roof they got some of the garage done. Around 7pm there was a blip where my internet went out, but it came back.

And then at like 8:15 as they were finishing, it went out and DIDN'T come back.

I did all the normal troubleshooting things, put in a ticket with my provider, and called tech support.

Eventually I got someone on the line who asked me to make sure everything was plugged in, what, like I'm some kind of idiot? I work in IT! I know what I'm doing! But, I humored her. And she reminded me that there's not only the box on the outside of my house, but also the one in the garage, could I please check to make sure that was plugged in?

OK Sure. Constructions been going on, I'll humor her.

So anyway, I had forgotten the the box in the garage was plugged into an outlet in the ceiling that had been put there for my garage door. It had come completely out in all the banging from the roofers.

OK no problem, right? I'll just plug it back in, and voila! Internet!

Um except the plug is right above my car, like dead center.

OK sure, just gotta move my car!!!

...except there was a dumpster in my driveway, riiiight behind my car. I couldn't move my car more than a foot if I tried.

I spent like 10 minutes trying to reach it with my stepladder (nope not even close) or maneuver it back in with a broom handle (lol noooo chance) and gave up.

I took this pic just now for illustrative purposes. The plug is now plugged back in. But yeah, I had to cancel my Monday night PF2e game from last of Internets.

In the morning, I overslept, and they rang the doorbell to let me know they were there. I saw Joel and waved to him, and one minute later I went back outside to tell him about the internet problem. He was gone. I texted him, didn't hear back. It was getting close to work time, so I called him and he'd left as soon as he saw I was home and ready for the workers to work. I didn't realize he was so far away already, but he still turned around, came back in, and figured out a way to plug the plug back in without standing on my car. I was a half hour or so late to logging into work but it all worked out. Just a little bump in the road. I felt bad that he had come come back from wherever he went, too. I swear I looked for him a MINUTE after I saw him that morning!

Part EIGHT: Fencing!

While the roofers roofed, Jose and Maria were busy with the fence. And by the end of the day Monday, they had most of the neighboring fence with the dog put up.

In the picture in part 7 above, on the left is the fence that's been there 20 years. You can see that those neighbors put the "ugly" part of the fence with the poles and boards on my side.

Honestly I've been mad about it for the 20 or so years it's been up. Not like super mad, I never talked to them about it, but I just thought it was really shitty of them to do that. I've always tried hard to be as kind and thoughtful to my neighbors as I could be and wouldn't have dreamed of doing that if I had put the fence up first.

In the alley and the other side of their house, the pretty side is the outside and the ugly side is inside. But on THAT ONE SIDE, they gave me the ugly side. Never talked to me about it, never consulted me about the fence, it just went up one day and I was left to deal with it.

I've always even since been kind about granting them access to fix their fence and am on good terms with the wife of the couple of who lives there. And when my house was broken into in 2011 the husband heard it happen and called the police and gave a statement, which I thought was very good of them, the police were able to get my house sealed back up somewhat so when I came home a few hours later the damage as minimized.

So yeah, I'm not sure why I got the ugly side of the fence from them. Also like, it seems way easier to climb that side of the fence so all they did was make their own yard less secure? I didn't want that! A big part of wanting an 8' fence was more security!

Anyway, it was important to me to not make my other neighbors look at the ugly side of the fence. Also, I just figured why not have it look the same all the way around? And again, the security issue.

But also... like two or three years ago the neighbors on that side put up sheds on their property... and backed them right up to the property line. Again, no discussion with me, they just did it, and by the time I saw it, happened it was too late to change anything.

I wasn't super happy with it because of this scenario right here.

Sunday Joel and I had a long conversation about what to do about it, and I was still committed to wanting the ugly side on the inside. But they literally couldn't hammer back there to get the fence up behind the sheds.

In the end, we went with an, admittedly weird, compromise.

Note that that side of the fence goes that far back so that both of the windows on that side of the house are inside the fence. Again, security.

So yeah, the fence swaps facing mid-way for just the part where their sheds are. I still have mixed feelings about it but honestly, it's fine. I wish it could look completely the same all the way around, but, it works OK this way. Maybe I should have made the neighbors look at the ugly side the entire way, but the security issue was important in my mind... even though tbh anyone who really wanted to could just climb up on my neighbors sheds and hop over. It's a little weird and I guess technically I gave up a few inches of unusable property there, but it's a compromise I can live with any whoever buys the house after me can live with it, too.

Honestly at this point, can't wait for them to finish the fence all-around because I feel like I can barely sleep knowing all this expensive STUFF is just laying around my wide-open yard.

It's also real dumb because my 4' chain link fence kept no one past five years old out of my yard, it wasn't even padlocked, and yet I feel less secure with no fence.

This is what the back of the fence looks like right now (Thursday morning) and has since... I think Monday or maybe Tuesday. Joel's had problems sourcing more of the right boards. The gap on the left is, of course, where the back gate will be. I do feel better having it like, two-thirds done at least. there's also no gate on the front yard yet, either, which will just be flush with the end of the fence there.

PART NINE: The Patio Begins!

The roofers were done with their parts Wednesday afternoon. And I love the roof so much, but I'm going to hold off on posting pictures of that quite yet!

The patio roof before, if I had to guess, was built in the 1980s. The roof itself was just a big piece of corrugated metal, held up by some OK-built wood beams and ironwork pillars in the front. It was fine, it was functional. You can see in this pic from last month pretty well the construction and also how it was getting holes in it.

The wood was also really starting to rot. There were a couple of places where it barely still connected because of wood rot. I'd guess within 5 years it would have been falling down. It was definitely time for a new one, and the price Joel gave me I thought was really fair for a patio roof of the same quality.

Well, I was wrong about the quality.

When Jose ran out of wood for the fence, he and Maria got started on the patio. First, they demo'd it.

Oh hey, also first look at the new roof color.

That's how my patio looked all Tuesday night to Wednesday morning. You can clearly see in that second picture some of the wood rot. Here's some more of it.

That piece on the upper left I'm pretty sure was the part right over my patio door that I had to look at basically like, all the time. It was disintegrating.

So yeah, I was so glad to see that go.

A couple of years ago, when the big tree near my house was still there, it hadn't gotten trimmed recently and there was an ice storm. The tree branches swung low and the icy branch ends were smacking against that metal roof in the wind. It was loud and spooky. I had to go sleep in the living room that night from the sound. I really didn't like that metal roof.

I'm never going to have that problem again, since no tree there (for now...) but also the construction of the new patio roof is very different.

We'll get back to that.

PART TEN: Crazy Wednesday

Wednesday morning began with me realizing that all the banging and knocked one of the lights off of my bathroom ceiling. No problem, Let Joel know, it'll get fixed.

Jose and Maria finished up the demo of the patio roof (chunks of it are still in my yard).

I honestly had no idea what they were planning to do to replace it. Joel just told me to trust him, it's going to be great. OK!

The next thing I knew they're cutting into my house. WTF? Trust me, Joel said, it's gonna be great. OK!

Tuesday the sewer had started backing up again. God damnit, it JUST HAD backed up and I had it cleaned a month and a half ago when I got power back. So I called the plumbers, they were scheduled to come out that afternoon.

Just another thing I didn't need, but whatevs. I had a very productive morning for once this week while working, at least.

In the early afternoon, they had started to demolish more of the patio than I expected. They cut through some of the eaves, and took some of the facing off of the house where I wasn't expecting.

The plumber also arrived and was doing his thing. He then told me that my entire sewer was fine, I didn't have a stoppage. He took me out in the alley, though, and showed me that there WAS a stoppage outside the property line in the alley, and told me to put in a ticket with the city.

Kinda hate that it cost me $350 to find that out, but mostly it was a bit of a relief that it wasn't actually my problem.

I went back inside, put in a ticket with the water department, and got back to work.

Then, weirdly, my internet went down again a half hour or so later.

I checked all of the connections, then got a sinking feeling. I went outside and saw more stuff cut down and in that stuff was... a wire. I looked inside that wire and yeah... that's an internet cable.

That's a terrible picture but you can see some of the facing it came out of, lol.

Literally as I was taking that picture, a guy from the water department walked up to me and told me that there was indeed a stoppage in the alley. Because some kid had unplugged the cleanout line behind my house and dropped a baseball down there. The baseball was probably stopping up the entire block.

They couldn't get it out, so they were putting in an emergency ticket to dig up the line, and pull it out. I wouldn't have sewer for a day or so.

I think the "How SCREWED AM I with all of this going on!?" look on my face (though I was very polite and not upset with him obviously) paired with the state of my yard and the work being done gave me some sympathy -- he assured me I didn't have to pay for it, and he'd let me know when things would stop.

Ooooohkay.

It also started to drizzle a little at that point, but it never actually rained and work didn't have to stop, thankfully! Instead, Jose and Maria had a lovely overcast day in the 80's to work in. I had been worried about them the last couple of days and had supplied them with a big box of water (From a water delivery service) and big cups of ice to make sure they were well hydrated.

I went back in my house, laid down on the couch, and tried putting in a ticket with my internet company. The chatbot wouldn't let me do it, so I called and sat on hold for 45 minutes just staring at the wall. This was A Lot.

I also let my boss and Eric, my friend/co-worker who lives nearby know. Eric was up at the office today, but told me he was about to come back home and would bring me a hotspot, so I'd have SOME internet.

While I was laying on the couch, the doorbell rang. It was the water guy, and with a big smile on his face he told me that his coworker was able to use some tool to get the baseball out! There'd be no sewer work needed and things were flowing freely.

Fiiiinally, a break.

Eventually got to talk to a real person on the phone with the internet company, and not long after Eric arrived with the hotspot. I showed him around the mess a bit. After over an hour "break", I got back to work.

And as of Thursday morning, I'm still on the hotspot. But this one is pretty fast, and it has a network jack, so I even got to run my Wednesday night D&D game off my PC last night. What a relief.

Internet company should be here this afternoon to fix stuff. I'm probably going to have to pay for that, though.

The other great news is that somehow i didn't even notice that the gutter contractor had been here, done his job and left!! I don't even know when he was there/did his job, and my office is the front of the house! Maybe he did it when I was laying on the couch in the living room!? It was FAST, though. Joel just called to tell me to go outside to look, and WOW. He'd said they might do black gutters. I was unconvinced but trusted him.

He was so very, very right.

Anyway, finally, here's a pic of the front of the house, with the new roof and black gutters.

Holy crap, what a difference. My house almost looks fancy now. Almost. The shingles are so gorgeous.

You can see that ridge vent pretty well there. And that's with the old white gutters obviously. The black gutters give the house a really striking and defining line that really pops.

Here's a quick comparison with the old roof and gutters:

A truly amazing difference. And yeah I need to paint the garage door. Going to actually get to that now.

PART ELEVEN: The Patio Continued.

SO! They got so much done, and although there's a lot to do, I am already so well pleased.

The reason they were cutting into it so much was because they'd determined that the best course of action was to have hte patio become a part of the roof, and it would be built on a similar slant instead of just a flat piece of metal. Instead, it would just be a full roof anyway.

The posts are huge, thick wooden posts, which Joel tells me will be covered when they're done.

The roof is literally... the thermal barrier, decking and will be the same siding as the roof I already have.

This is what it looks like as of last night...

They did accidentally also break the light cover over my porch light so that'll need to be replaced, but it's small potatoes.

I still don't have a full picture of what it's going to look like, and I'm so excited for it. It's going to look so nice. I've loved the work Joel and Jose/Maria have done so far and honestly trust them completely with whatever now. The quality is fantastic and despite the little hiccups, things are actually, honestly going well.

I'm going to post this now and report back in a couple of days when it's done! I'd planned on holding off until it was ALL done, But this is post is already long enough!

This has been one of the biggest money commits I've ever done, after buying my home and buying cars, but honestly, totally worth it.