Monday Morning Wake Up Call!

It was one of those nights you know? The kind where you fall asleep by 1am, but are wide awake at 3:30am…stay up til close to 5:30am before falling asleep again, and at 8am? Roofers start pounding! >_<

Now, the pounding is not anything I am upset about, it’s something I’m grateful for, because it means this roof is just about on. And getting this far has been a bit of a fiasco! And it’s been in such flux that I haven’t even attempted to post about it, afraid that the situation would be completely different the next day!

Contractor #1 – Nice guy…gave him 1/2 the money up front to buy supplies…they did all the pre-roofing work of removing the old shingles, removing the skylights, replacing the damaged plywood, did a TERRIBLE job of reframing the inside where the skylights were…like…this area of 2X4’s hangs 1/2” below where all the other studs and supports are…how are we supposed to sheetrock over THIS?! ((As Quilters, we worry about things being 1/4” off? Boards that hang 1/2” farther down than the rest of the room is a PROBLEM, Y’all!))

And ---- we sit! For a MONTH ---- with NO ROOF, no phone call, no nothing. And it’s the rainy season, and things are leaking in that sun-room when it rains.

Finally, a call to Contractor #1 gets through ((after many attempts)) and we find he hasn’t even ORDERED the roofing supplies yet that we paid for! So let’s just say that DH blows a gasket and we part ways with Contractor #1, and he charges us only for the work he has completed, albeit not that great, and we are on to Contractor #2.

After much searching around and looking for reputable contractors, DH decides that we are NOT going to get a metal roof after all --- they are booked too far out, we need a roof NOW, and so we are going back to shingle. Okay fine. By this time I don’t care, just get a roof on.

Contractor #2 ---Asks us to purchase the supplies, and they will pick them up. Shingles are purchased at Lowes, and the next day when contractor goes to pick them up…..half of them are missing. Lowes sold them out from under us after we had already paid for them. This delayed the job ---DH had to go get a refund for the missing shingles from Lowes, and then go to another Lowes to purchase them…..and now we are at the END of this contractor's list since we missed our window of opportunity or some such thing. Plus they don't have any trucks available to get the shingles, we have to pay to have them delivered….whatever it is…DH already has a short fuse, and he fires contractor #2. *SIGH*

In the mean time we have a boat load of shingles being delivered by Lowes…but no contractor! And come to find out from the delivery driver that THAT Lowes was also short on the shingles we had ordered and paid for and he had to go to a third Lowes to fill in the order!

Thanks to a referral from a work buddy, Contractor #3 stepped on the job right away and the whole crew has been super. They show up on time, they work hard, they get the job done….Only…..

We ran short on shingles! So the job stopped early on Saturday --- yesterday was Sunday ---and here they are this morning at 8am on the dot to finish up.

You probably can’t tell, but this is what I saw Saturday evening after returning home…the whole left side is done….and on the right side, in the trees, you’ll see a step-board they were standing on. It’s quite a steep roof! Above the step board is where we were short on shingles.

They are getting that job done, and I must say these shingles REALLY look nice. They’ve got a 30 year warranty…..and I’m happy to have the job done, no matter how badly I wanted a red metal roof on my cottage in the woods!

It’s pretty steep up there! And he is balancing on just the peak of the roof! Yes, it’s a blurry pic, but the sun was shining pretty brightly as well and I think the cam focused on the gutter, not the guy! Next up? New Gutters. Our house was built in the 70s and I think everything ON this house is VINTAGE! When you have lots of trees, as we do, there is always debris and stuff that gets in the gutters unless you have the kind that have guards on them…..

As for me? Guess what I spent part of last evening doing? Of course I should have been busy with other things, but OH! I have an idea I want to try! so out came the string basket, and I started pulling out all the brown/rust ones!

What a fun mess to play with! Does it look like it could actually turn INTO anything? We shall see! And the other question is....what to make with the rest of the crumbs/strings that are around here? I think I could sew with them for the rest of my life and never deplete them! But I love the challenge, and I have no intention of ditching them.....I'll just keep working on sewing them up into something.

Oh, and please send some good thoughts this way. DS Jeff left yesterday to go to Columbia SC --- He has a friend who may have an “in” on a job for him. He wants to move out, get a job, get on with his life. ((!!!)) I am fully aware this is only the first step and that revolving door may revolve around a few more times, but at least he is showing some motivation on getting his life in GEAR!!!