Xiaoniu 小妞

It took a week to complete, but the company we chose to replace our roof finally finished the job. It was a week of stress and concern, but in the end the results are pretty good looking IMHO.

Some before shots of the roof and house. It’s very difficult to tell from a distance, but the roof is indeed damaged from the hail storm. I’ve seen pictures taken from the roof and you can see the damaged shingles and vent covers.

We lucked out that the hail storm hit when it did as the roof was feeling its old age. We were told by the building inspector when we bought the place that we would end up replacing the roof in about five years.

From a distance it looked okay, but the three-tab style roof is aged and cracked.

Here on the garage you can see the old roof.

On the north side of the house you can see all the lichen and mold growing like crazy.

Note that on the back side of the roof (near the ridge) we have two roof vents.

Monday, they did the garage roof. In the process they scratched up my gutters, even though I explicitly asked him to not scratch them. Go figure. Monday night into Tuesday it is pouring rain. Wednesday they get half of the house roof done. Thursday they finish the house roof and the porch roof. Friday they take their trailer and all the trash, but leave the damn signs. After seeing them in the yard for a week I moved them to the driveway. At least that way they don’t damage my lawn and bushes anymore.

Another problem that we had was that the ridge shingles were the wrong color. They blame the supplier saying that they gave them the wrong ones, but I’m not so sure. Shakewood colors shingles with cedar colored ridge shingles. Not a good combination. On Wednesday they put up the correct color shingles.

Despite the issues we’ve had the end result is very nice. We chose this particular color since it went well with the current color of the house and gives us a little room to change the color of the siding in the future. We are not in love with the cream color and would rather have driftwood, which is less yellow and a little more gray.

You can see their big ass trailer sitting in the driveway here. It was nicer than a dumpster, but I was tired of seeing it after five days. It also sunk a little into the driveway.

If you recall the two vents that we used to have on the roof. Here you can see that they are missing. I realized two days later that they covered the vents. One of the vents was for my bathroom fan so on Friday all my hot, humid shower air went straight into the attic instead of out doors. They’ll have to come back to put the vents in.

Ahhhh, much nicer looking. I’m sure in the near future we’ll again see lichen and mold, but I’ll do what I can to keep it to a minimum. A light bleaching will do the trick as will roof cleaner.

Here you can see the first thing that pissed me off. The company that delivered the shingles churned up some of the driveway trying to make a tight turn into and out of the driveway. I don’t like the damage, but I’m not eager to have it patched either. That will be noticeable and it might invite new problems. We’re going to leave it alone for now.

In the end this did end up costing us some money, but the insurance company did cover the bulk of the replacement since the roof was damaged as part of the storm. We ended up covering the deductible and the difference in cost for replacement. Our 25 year warranty three-tab shingles are worth less than the 30 year warranty architectural shingles that we had installed.