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.
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4 comments:
The only consolation is that at least if we have to do this again at least we won't be paying for it. And thanks again for calling everytime I'm. Worried about something with the roof/roofers!
That does sound like a pain... we're going to have to do that one of these days, though.
And I'm sure that it's much easier than doing it yourself, but I'm also staying open to that option.
Overall, I'm pleased with the roof, not that it's rained or anything yet to test it at all. I'll be more pleased when the roof inspector says he's pleased with the roof.
Mostly, I'm looking forward to not dealing with any of these people again for a very long time.
I've been on roofing projects where we were doing the work for some widow or other, and having done that, there are roofs that I won't even consider touching (like mine). Jason's roof is close enough to the ground that I'd consider that a reasonable DIY project; Michael's likewise; not so with your's. Glad you were smart enough to farm it out.
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