Catching Up and Roof Shingles

Hi! We're back. Sorry for the blogging break. We'll try to catch you up. Mostly they've been working on the inside stuff such as plumbing and electrical wiring. Other than that there are a few things we'll try to blaze through very quickly:

ROOF SHINGLES: I should have listened to my contractor!! He suggested "weathered wood" as a good color for the asphalt shingles. I went to the roofing place, picked out a few I liked, including "weathered wood" and I drove around looking at examples. Sure enough, the one that looked the best was weathered wood. Then, because we weren't sure what color we were going to do on the siding, and because I seemed to remember that I liked black/grey shingles, I went with a neutral black/grey shingle. That also determined the color of the metal roofing that was going over the porch: grey, instead of the weathered copper that I preferred of the metal colors. So, they put the shingles on and the black/grey turned out very BLACK. It's so dark, people didn't know whether the shingles were on yet, or if it was the tar paper. Waaaaah. Oh, well. Can't change it now.

Here's a pic of the house with the shingles.

Here's an up close of the shingles. You can see the variation up close, but since you approach the house from so far back, it just looks black.

So here are some things I learned about making decisions: 1) Trust the people who really know.  It's hard to judge what the shingles on a roof are going to look like from looking at a 1x3 foot sample - unless you build houses for a living.  2) You're more likely to make a decision you like sooner rather than later.  Give it some thought, but give your gut some credit.  3) Taste is personal.  Polling others on matters of taste will just confuse you. 4) Follow good examples.  Unless you're a professional designer, if you see a picture of what you like - just copy it.

I'm sure they'll look just fine.  And after all, since we live in Huntsville, they'll be white for five months out of the year.