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.

Week 11, Thurs, Nov 11 - more porch roof

Week 12 - Sat, November 20

Oops - found this old post un-posted.  So here you go:

So we woke up and looked outside to see if anyone was there.  Not yet.  The trailer was still in the middle of the driveway and Casey G had come and left.  Bummer.  Then a couple of guys came!  Laaaa!  And they finished the framing of the front gable and moved the trailer.  Mike spent a couple of hours helping them out and cleaning up the area (including picking up any nails - if you can imagine!) for putting down the rest of the road base up to the garage.  It was raining lightly and blowing pretty hard all morning.  Around 4 o'clock the roofing crew came - and they started pounding away as fast as they could putting down rain and ice shield on the porch roof.  And then it started to snow.  I marked 5 places for Casey to dig holes for the 5 apple trees I bought this week, then ran for shelter.  Casey quickly finished, and we were relieved to see that the roofers gave up and left, as we were not looking forward to seeing anyone slide to their death.

Week 11, Tues, Nov. 9

I guess nothing happened on Monday.  Today, I drove around looking at shingles.  It's funny what you never notice one day and then obsess over the next.

 Today, they put the big beam in to raise up the middle section to where it should be.

Before and After

 This is the framing for the windows looking South in the little room over the mudroom.

Week 10 - Fri, Nov 5 - shingle shopping, bonus room!

I (Victoria) drove around all day looking at shingles on different houses. I'm getting close to making a decision . . . I do so love to draw out decisions, you know. I just want all the facts and want to give each candidate a fair shake. or shingle.

Back at the house, they got a lot done today. Before I left to drive around, I noticed the trusses that were to go on the front of the garage were way too steep. When we got back, they said, yeah, they were too steep, so they'll stick frame that, too. So Mike says he'll use those for a shed, someday. Later that night, I was measuring stuff, and staring at the front of the house, and figured out that the front 4 windows (the main "spotlight" four) were mis-measured, so we'll have to adjust those, but that won't be a hard adjustment at all.

Some other adjustments are going to be a much bigger pain for them, which kinda makes me feel like a jerk - but this is our final, final home, and we don't want to wish later that we'd just asked them to fix this or that, while they could. Chad is super nice about it, too, and assures us not to worry about asking for things.

I love love love the bonus room over the garage.  It has the only west-facing windows in the house (Snow Basin view.)  And it has windows facing north and south.  And it has great little cubbies where the shed dormers are - I love it!

Here is Mike walking ahead of me on our nightly walk with the foom-foom flashlight.

These are the windows facing north, inside the bonus room.