Home Improvement

We bought our house almost 2 years ago, knowing that it desperately needed a roof. We moved in 2 1/2 years ago naively thinking that a. buying a house could be done in a month if all parties were willing, and b. we would put a new roof on it as soon as we owned it, that very summer.

So we started working on the roof about a month ago.

It is important to note that since it's construction in the early 40s, our house has been owned exclusively by monkeys who insisted on making all repairs and additions themselves. We knew that the most recent monkeys were also hillbillies based on all the skoal cans, light beer cans, and perfectly useful tools we had to pick up just out of site on the other side of the fence. But now we know it's monkeys all the way down.

Chris and his brother and their friend climbed up on the roof about a week ago (after partially fixing our wiring so that the power tools would work, setting up traps for the possum/large rat living in our garage, and installing decent locks on all the garage doors because apparently people drive around looking for houses being worked on and then go in the garage and steal your tools. Classy.). They knew that there were 3 layers of shingles on the roof, which is against all sense and regulation and began doing a complete tear down. Turns out, there are actually 4 layers of shingles on the roof. This means that every roof including the original must be on there, and because every layer is cheap and installed poorly, no single layer "lasted" over 20 years. As a bonus, I found the one white shingle on the whole roof buried in the first layer, so either I get a prize or it's one of the first signs of the apocalypse along with a perfect red cow and the rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem.

Anyway, as I may have mentioned, monkeys. Apparently the charming spot where our kitchen sticks out from our otherwise square cape cod is an addition. To add it meant cutting away a section of the (logically) load bearing outer wall, but apparently adding back in the proper support for the roof was less than obvious. So now the guys have to fix our sagging roof which has been carrying twice the allowable weight of shingles for the past 10-20 years. Which means I came home to this:



The basement has been jacked-up and re-enforced, and then the kitchen, so that the roof can be jacked up and permanently re-enforced. Fun.

As soon as the shingling starts I'll be right up there working with them. Until then, don't think I don't appreciate all the work these guys are doing but I'm really not sure how we're supposed to get any silverware out of that drawer...