The Old Grey Roof Just Ain’t What It Used To Be

By admin on May 20th, 2008 |

One of the great pleasures of remodeling is the opportunity to upgrade your lifestyle. Think of all the great things you can get with a remodel - more space, more luxury, more storage, better efficiency, better flow for entertaining, cooking etc. Maybe even a super cool bathtub big enough for a grownup. Unfortunately, some remodels just can’t deliver the goods. Every once in a while you just need to take the money that should have delivered a super custom grill center, new deck and great seating area and instead sink it into something PRACTICAL. Like a roof.

Now you might figure that living in beautiful coastal Los Angeles that I don’t really need a roof, and for 10 months of the year you would be right. But unfortunately, in a wet year we can get a foot or two of rain. So my wife says we need a roof over our heads.

Until recently, that hasn’t been much of a problem. You see, we were very astute shoppers when we bought our home a few years ago. We picked one that ALREADY HAD A ROOF. Feeling smart and smug, we’ve been getting along just fine with our old grey roof.

It’s so high up off the ground, you have to kind of squint to see it, and it’s always looked smooth and dry. Until the winds came. This April Los Angeles had several weeks of strong, hard winds. (not Florida winds, or Kansas tornado watch winds, but good solid 45-50 mph winds roaring through like a freight train.) Since my house sits on a ridgeline, Easterly winds have a clear shot at my house. Nothing to slow them down as far as the eye can see. When the wind blows at my house you can feel it in your bones. And this year, it managed to get under our skin. Or at least under the roof tiles.

The next morning we started finding old grey roof tiles out on the sidewalk, in the street and down in the backyard. For a day or two we pretended that it was somebody elses roof blowing away. But soon enough we walked down the block, looked back up our hill and could see the gaping hole on the north slope of our roof. No deck for me. I was getting a roof.

(Okay, I confess, we did put it off for a month or two to match better with my work schedule.)

Step one on any significant remodeling job is to pick the right contractor. The first step is to make a list of who you know, and who you trust who can give you the best referrals. Who’s done a similar project recently? Who’s in the business? I’m lucky. One of my friends owns a number of rental properties, and has always been able to recommend high quality contractors who price out well below the “retail” price.

After a bit of looking around, some preliminary estimates from other contractors we chose his guy. Easy to talk to, the great eference and 50% of his normal retail price. Now lets hope that what they say about low bidders isn’t true.

So here we are on a bright, sunny May morning, with 4 men on my roof, (well on what’s left of my roof). There’s a truck in the driveway, and loads of old roof flying through the air going thunk.