Winter Project

If you read back in October, we had the first heavy rain of the season and we had it raining in our formerly cozy, dry house.
We had protected the roof for the previous 3 or 4 years with sealer, cleaning up debris, etc. But the 48 year old shake roof was just getting to the point of replacement that we couldn't avoid any longer.
We embarked on a search for a good looking, yet easily maintained topper for our home, and ultimately settled on a composition shingle. I wouldn't have ever imagined me being excited about composition, but the other options were not feasible. Tile roofs are heavy and we would have to actually reinforce the foundation to the home, making it too cost prohibitive. They look nice, but we decided they are more fitting for new construction and a steeper pitch than we have. The shingles that were originally there looked real nice, but the ones they use now aren't from old growth wood any more, so they last about half as long as the old ones. Well I don't want to replace this roof when I'm 70 and spend the money again, so we opted not to do that.
The Hubby has wanted to get solar power installed for the past few years, and so we decided the composition would allow for repair and replacement of the panels as well, being that it is sturdy to walk on and doesn't have any problems with wear and tear.
So here we go.
Ordered it in November so we'd have the new roof by December.

First order of business was to take down the existing solar water panels. We heat our pool with these babies and it helps cut the costs of heating the pool by about 2/3. We are going to put these back up on the new roof, but in a different location. Hopefully they will still be somewhat efficient.

You can see where the pool solar was taken down from the lines on the old roof.
You can also see 2 of the 3 Honda Accord's that were in our driveway throughout this entire process.

Okay so now we are ready, but the weather ..... it ..... is ..... not.  It rained at least every third day from November 15 through December 28th.  Finally when we had a clear 5 day forecast, there was a New Years Holiday staring straight into our beady little eyes. So it was on January 4 that we finally got started.
I could go into the fact that my garage was in SHAMBLES this entire time. We had to clean out the attic completely so that the roof parts wouldn't fall down onto any of the boxes of Christmas, Easter, Halloween, childhood memories, old toy's, and old stereo equipment that we had stashed up above the garage in the attic. We placed these boxes right into one bay of the garage and then when we needed to decorate for Christmas or use anything from these boxes, we had to go into the second bay of the garage.  The cars that normally occupy these spaces had to be moved into the driveway.
We also had 2 EXTRA cars in the driveway during 3 weeks of the Christmas holiday season, because daughter Katz and her Hubby left their cars at our house while they travelled. Yes, we had 6 cars in the driveway and one in the garage almost this entire time. Kinda nuts.

Time to FINALLY get started. On the first day there were about 10 guys running around on the roof and on the ground. They were taking off the shingles and putting on plywood boards, throwing the old wood/debris into a big heavy dump truck that was precariously going on and off pre-placed boards on the driveway, and climbing on ladders and inspecting rotted wood (in 2 spots). They worked so fast, and quite loudly I might add, that they had the roof all ready to reroof in 2 days.

Plywood and rolls of tar paper. Messy garage on bottom of this shot so you know I'm not lying about the clutter in my life.

We had 2 sun tunnels put into our long narrow hallway while we were at it. The mirrored material in the center reflects all the sun and it really makes our hallway much lighter even on a cloudy day. Actually, even on a moonlit night too.

This truck was my big worry. That it would crack my relatively new driveway and stone, so they protected it well with double plywood.

Here is the gutter making truck pooping out yards and yards of gutter for my house. Have you ever seen these things work?  All in one piece it comes out in the right color and with no seams to mend together. Very cool.
The finished roof coming up. Now it's time for "Brothers and Sisters."