If you were ever sitting there, wondering to yourself, "Is it a huge pain to get a roof redone?" the answer is yes.
We sort of recently noticed some water damage in our garage. As far as I know, that's probably the best place in a house to notice water damage. It wasn't anything really bad, just a spot on the ceiling where the sheet rock is getting a bit discolored and the tape is coming off. I suppose it's more than a spot... a medium sized spot? Anyway, the old roof was about 21 years old. Seeing the leaking in the garage, where I don't think we really care too much about the ceiling, is much better than anywhere else in the house, where we very much care about the ceiling.
We got a few quotes, some from companies that were pretty thorough with checking out the roof and some that only did some quick measurements. We got an almost quote from one particularly shifty company. They promised us a quote within 24 hours of coming out to check out our roof, which they were quite thorough with. They kind of specialize in finding enough damage/missing shingles to get your home insurance to pay for a new roof, but didn't actually end up finding enough damage to do anything with our insurance. The quote didn't come until over a week later, when we were in the middle of having our roof re-done by a different company. The shifty company guy came to our house just as Sarah was getting home for the day, and asked her if we went with another company because we didn't get their quote in time, to which she replied that we had never received a quote from their company (Jasper, like the evil henchman in 101 Dalmatians). A few minutes later, he called me to say he came to give us our quote and was surprised to see the dumpster and in-progress roof replacement. Then he told me the quote, I'm not really sure why, since it should have been obvious we were done shopping for roofers, and I told him we picked the other company because of a far superior warranty. Then, when I got home about 10 minutes later, he was still across the street in his truck and got out to talk to me about how he was just in the neighborhood knocking on doors and saw that our roof was already being replaced.
For those of you counting, that's 3 different stories told to 2 different people. All of this was over about 20 minutes.
That's the company we did not go with. The company we did choose has been pretty good, other than seriously lacking in communication about what problems they found and fixed, but at least they fixed them, right? I'm sure that the whole re-roofing thing isn't really as bad as it seems right now, but something about it being the most expensive thing I've ever purchased, excluding the house itself, magnifies any and all problems that come up.
If everything goes well, by the time most people read this, the roof will be done.
Oh, even though getting the roof re-done hasn't been the walk in the park I thought/hoped it would be, I am still assuming that it is easier than re-doing the roof myself.
24.4.12
Hawaii? how long ago was that?
Yeah, very late Hawaii post, but it was already started, so I'm finishing it.
Sarah and I went to Hawaii. We went to Kauai, and it was awesome. Lots of hiking and snorkeling and eating good food. The best was either the Korean food we had when we got there, or the sushi we had a few days into the trip. The luau food was pretty good too, but poi is really gross. I wish there was something good to say about poi, but there just isn't. It's a very light purple color, which I don't think was particularly appetizing or beautiful. It is pretty bland, and what flavor is there isn't particularly good. The texture almost like a pudding texture that went extremely wrong and ended up kind of sticky. If you ever have a chance to taste poi, do so at your own risk.
There are pictures I meant to post to go along with this, but they're at home and I am not. They were mostly like the pictures Sarah posted, but all of them included a plastic squirrel named Marty that was snuck into our luggage by some crafty friends. Marty had an excellent vacation.
Did I mention snorkeling is awesome? At least, after our first try it was awesome. We tried to snorkel on some beach that was pretty shallow a long way out, and in the shade, and it was cloudy, might have been raining a bit, and was a bit chilly. Once it warmed up a bit, it was a lot more fun, and a couple of other beaches had better areas for snorkeling, where there were a ton more fish, and one had an eel. Eels are pretty creepy little things, especially since it reminded me about a guy I saw on some discovery channel show who's thumb was eaten by an eel. That was totally his own fault, since he had been feeding the eel sausages that seemed to be rather thumb shaped. Bad idea.
The hikes were all awesome too. Tropical areas are really beautiful, and very, very different from the desert I live in. It doesn't hurt to have amazing views of the ocean popping up through the trees, or really big waterfalls (if you're hiking in the canyon). And if we had gone further on one of the hikes we went on, apparently there is some sort of weird bunch of hippies living off the land and evading the rangers. We didn't see them, so I'm sure it's pretty safe to assume if you go, you won't have to see them either.
Anyway, that's pretty much all of the Hawaii trip. Oh, except for getting horribly sick at the end. That sucked. Good thing that's way in the past now :) Oh, and I hate Hawaii customs. They made us eat our giant asian pear because we weren't allowed to bring it back to the mainland. If you've seen asian pears in the grocery store, they're usually about the size of a large apple. That's a tiny asian pear. They're supposed to be closer to the size of a large grapefruit. It totally wasn't cool to have to eat that when we weren't really hungry, and when I was starting to feel like crap.
So there's my Hawaii post, inspired to be completed by some show about Kauai that we caught a little of while we were setting up the computer to watch Grimm. Grimm's a pretty cool show. And now I'm all caught up on my blog, except for going to China, having a baby, and basically anything else that has happened in my life.
Sarah and I went to Hawaii. We went to Kauai, and it was awesome. Lots of hiking and snorkeling and eating good food. The best was either the Korean food we had when we got there, or the sushi we had a few days into the trip. The luau food was pretty good too, but poi is really gross. I wish there was something good to say about poi, but there just isn't. It's a very light purple color, which I don't think was particularly appetizing or beautiful. It is pretty bland, and what flavor is there isn't particularly good. The texture almost like a pudding texture that went extremely wrong and ended up kind of sticky. If you ever have a chance to taste poi, do so at your own risk.
There are pictures I meant to post to go along with this, but they're at home and I am not. They were mostly like the pictures Sarah posted, but all of them included a plastic squirrel named Marty that was snuck into our luggage by some crafty friends. Marty had an excellent vacation.
Did I mention snorkeling is awesome? At least, after our first try it was awesome. We tried to snorkel on some beach that was pretty shallow a long way out, and in the shade, and it was cloudy, might have been raining a bit, and was a bit chilly. Once it warmed up a bit, it was a lot more fun, and a couple of other beaches had better areas for snorkeling, where there were a ton more fish, and one had an eel. Eels are pretty creepy little things, especially since it reminded me about a guy I saw on some discovery channel show who's thumb was eaten by an eel. That was totally his own fault, since he had been feeding the eel sausages that seemed to be rather thumb shaped. Bad idea.
The hikes were all awesome too. Tropical areas are really beautiful, and very, very different from the desert I live in. It doesn't hurt to have amazing views of the ocean popping up through the trees, or really big waterfalls (if you're hiking in the canyon). And if we had gone further on one of the hikes we went on, apparently there is some sort of weird bunch of hippies living off the land and evading the rangers. We didn't see them, so I'm sure it's pretty safe to assume if you go, you won't have to see them either.
Anyway, that's pretty much all of the Hawaii trip. Oh, except for getting horribly sick at the end. That sucked. Good thing that's way in the past now :) Oh, and I hate Hawaii customs. They made us eat our giant asian pear because we weren't allowed to bring it back to the mainland. If you've seen asian pears in the grocery store, they're usually about the size of a large apple. That's a tiny asian pear. They're supposed to be closer to the size of a large grapefruit. It totally wasn't cool to have to eat that when we weren't really hungry, and when I was starting to feel like crap.
So there's my Hawaii post, inspired to be completed by some show about Kauai that we caught a little of while we were setting up the computer to watch Grimm. Grimm's a pretty cool show. And now I'm all caught up on my blog, except for going to China, having a baby, and basically anything else that has happened in my life.
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