Step one: a new roof

As I recently mentioned, a hailstorm last spring did considerable damage to our house. By the time I wrote that post, I had signed paperwork with [company name removed] to handle the work and provided them with a chunk of insurance money. (The insurance process involves providing part of the money in advance, and some only when they receive receipts proving that you actually did the repairs and spent the money you’re asking for above the initial payment.) The first step in the work – after the decision-making and signatures, of course – is the roof replacement.

Then it snowed, a fairly significant amount over the course of a week – we reached the 9-inch mark on the snow gauge in the front lawn. And then the temperature dropped, including a couple days where the wind chill was around negative thirty. Needless to say, those weather conditions are not conducive to working on a roof.

This week, after most of the snow had melted, the construction company reached out to schedule our installation day. Since our neighbor just had their roof replaced last month – by the same company, for the same hailstorm reason – I had a fairly good idea what the process would be like. The day before installation, they dropped off supplies onto our driveway in two waves: the first delivery was the shingles, and the second an assortment of other large items in their packaging. Early on the morning of, a trailer was backed into the driveway to serve as a dumpster, and around 7am, the team arrived to begin work.

Except for a brief lunch break, they worked all day, moving any obstacles (like the composter and solar path lights), laying tarp around the edges of the house to catch refuse flung from the roof, then tearing off the old roof before taking new roofing supplies up. (The entire process was loud, Zuko hid most of the day.) They had a fancy ladder with a lift attached to raise the heavy supplies to the roof. They finished as it was getting dark, so the photo of the finished roof is from the next (quite sunny) day.

Step two, I believe, will be the siding.