Just Call Me Ray, Jr.

 
I debated long and hard about the title for this blog post. "A Bad Beginning Made Better." "Getting It Right." "Doing It the Hard Way." maybe just "The Roof." But, in the end, it had to be what it is. If you are a regular reader, you might remember that my father's name was Ray.

Dad had one way of doing things. His way. The right way. Oh, you thought those are two things. Think again. And don't argue about it. So when it became imperative that we replace at least one face of our roof this year, I figured out a way to do it piecemeal, as my budget would allow. My way. For my needs, the right way.

First of all, the roof has weathered oddly, not to mention way too fast. This is a 30-year roof after 19 years. But the general contractor is dead and we can't find any paperwork as to who the subcontractor for the roof was. So... we are stuck. There are four faces to this roof, two sides and two levels. The deck roof went bad first and was replaced last year by a friend. So that is about 2/3 of one face. The upper part of that is now bad, but not as bad as this face! Yes, that mountainous gray terrain is the old roof.



My original plan was to work my way up it, a few bundles of shingles at a time, as I could afford them. It would have worked, except for one problem. The old shingles are SO bad they just kept raining crumbles down faster than I could sweep them off, and the broken bits kept getting behind the flap on the new shingle. That won't work! The new ones would quickly get damaged and begin to buckle.

You can see the small bit I did earlier this summer, down at the edge of the roof. The piece of tarp was to keep rain from getting under the top row. I knew that was a temporary fix, but it wasn't supposed to be there very long, because...

I thought the shingles would go on sale again at the end of the summer. They were on sale in the spring, but I had no money then. Finally, they went on sale! I called. They were only on sale if you bought more than 48 bundles. Really? What kind of sale is that? I don't need 48 bundles to finish the entire roof!

So... just before the Alabama trip I bought the 12 bundles to do this one face. And it has to be done all at once to be able to clear all those crumbling bits of shingle.

This week is supposed to be dry. That's a good start. This afternoon, I cleared all the old shingles from about a third of the space. Lookin' good!

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