A Whole New Look

The last couple weeks at our house have been spent working tirelessly on finishing up a new roof for our house. I have a new appreciation for any roof that I see (and I wasn't even the one doing the dirty work). However I do know what goes into it now, and it was a lot of work. We had to start by tearing off the old shingles because of the multiple layers that was already on it, and start fresh. We definitely couldn't have done it without our wonderful neighbors and Mike's family. Just when Mike was feeling he couldn't do anymore, someone would show up to help and he'd get a new burst of energy to keep going. Here's a picture overload for you! I tried to keep them in order of: before, during, and after sequence. 

To give you an idea of what we were dealing with....

Mike's cousin fell through the roof here while working..

You can see in this picture (if you look closely) there was mold growing on the edges...

Side story... We almost got away with no major catastrophes, except for one minor incident. We had to borrow a ladder from our wonderful neighbor Tara, (yes, because we're too lazy to just buy one, after 2 years of home ownership you'd think we would just do it) so Mike was using that to get up and down the roof. Well, somehow the ladder became unlocked during its use on day 2, and unknown to Mike, he went to step down to get off the roof, and as soon as he stepped on the first rail the ladder buckled and Mike went falling to the ground (about 10 ft). I was in the house and heard a ladder fall, so I rushed outside to see Mike laying on the grass. He said he was fine, but that his leg hurt. The ladder was basically folded in half. He got up and decided to go back to work. Well, as the evening progressed, his leg got progressively worse to the point of limping, swollen, and major pain. I suggested he go to the doctor to make sure it wasn't broken. So at 9:30pm that night he agreed, and we went to the ER. 

Here's a picture of the ladder and the location it was in, when it fell.

And here's a picture of Mike's ankle, taken from my phone at the ER. You can't hardly tell, but it was huge. Bigger than a baseball.

Luckily the X-rays showed no broken bones, just a sprain. So thankfully the next day Mike was able to work on the roof again with a 'boot' on and did just fine. It could've been a lot worse, since at this point in the project we weren't even half way done, and if he had broken it our friends and neighbors would've had to put the rest of the roof on FOR us. Lesson learned: buy yourself your own ladder. Now we have to get a ladder for us, and our neighbor!

All in all, we hope to never have to do this again in any house we live in. But as Mike and I look at our house, which we love, we never realized how beautiful shingles really are!