The Summer of Soul-Sucking Projects

Sooo... as if our basement remodel wasn't enough of a headache to deal with, we decided it was time to redo our roof as well. It's been time for several years now, but some big windstorms in the Spring made it more necessary. It was supposed to be a project that took a week to ten days, cost a reasonable amount of money (as Teag was prepared to do the work himself), and BAM, new roof!

Instead, it took nearly three weeks, and cost nearly twice as much courtesy of some completely unable-to-foresee circumstances, like cedar shake shingles on the bottom layer, and the need to re-sheath our ENTIRE roof. CHA-Ching.

Needless to say, I don't think we'll be doing much in the way of projects for quite some time. This one may have just done us in for awhile.

Here is a picture of our house, before we started.

Notice how nice and pretty my flower beds are. They're completely destroyed now. At least it's the Fall.

The headache-causing cedar shingles

Teag was ridiculously filthy every time he came in the house

One thing that we were sincerely grateful for was all the help we received from friends and family. We had random people show up on evenings or Saturdays, sometimes planned and sometimes not, just because they saw Teag out there working by himself. Without their help, it would have taken at least another week, so we are immensely thankful for their willingness to spare their time on our behalf. I didn't get pictures of everybody, but here are some.

Yes, we even made our kids help, though don't let their smiles fool you. We thought Maisie was going to enact some kid Geneva Convention for the torture of children the way she carried on. She was also the only one to get injured by a nail (twice), but then proceeded to walk amongst them barefoot. Go figure.

Good thing everyone has current tetanus shots!

We completely filled our dumpster to the max, and we still have a bunch of stuff we'll have to haul to the dump ourselves. Goodbye nasty old roof.

And lastly, here is Teag, praising the heavens that the job is finally done.

The new roof looks fantastic, and we both like the black architectural shingles we chose. Just the beginning of several exterior updates we'd like to pursue. But probably not for awhile. Our sanity and our bank account can't handle anymore.