The New Roof Revealed....Expensive but Worth It

If you've been reading my blog for any time you may remember THIS POST from September when the Roofers were here putting the new roof on our house.
The roof was original to the 1980's era house and was sorely in need of replacing.  Here is an older photo I dug up on our house from March of '07 I think it was.

The roof doesn't look too bad from this distant in this photo.  I don't have a photo of the roof on the backside of the house however.  That side would show where most of the white material had come off and the roof was mostly blackish grey.  We really didn't want to cross our fingers that it would make it through another winter and guess wrong. 

So, since we had money saved for it and there is a tax break on 30% of the cost of energy saving improvements up to a limit of $1500 this year(which includes new roofs)we went ahead and pulled the trigger.
Also please notice how the old white roof color does nothing for the pale yellow siding and dusty blue shutters.  The white trim paint also just blurs into the pale yellow color....the white snow just makes it a total washed out drab sight, doesn't it?

We had a nasty surprise when the old roof had been torn off, discovering that the builder had cut corners(from my experience it seems they ALL do that!)and the rafters weren't spaced properly, thus there were sags in the plywood from the weight of the roofing materials, leading to having to pay for additional/better plywood being replaced in some areas.  Basically this almost doubled the cost of the roof job.  Our moderate roof expense turned out costing MORE than what it cost to send #1 son to college for a semester.
Ugh.
Murphy showing up yet again on the doorstep.
Good thing we had "Murphy-Proofing", aka CA$H!lol

Between that added expense and the "drama" that played out between the guys in the roofing crew over the next 2 days(Who needs tv?  I had live reality tv in my yard & on my roof!lol) and  the psycho Chihuahua who would NOT shut-up for 2 days because strange people where in her yard(the nerve of them!!), it was a trying experience.
But they didn't drop anything on my head as I left or entered the house(oh, did they TRY!) and I lived through the experience with minimal damage to my emotional state and a handful of painkillers....joking.....
And I am loving this new roof!
Here are some photos I snapped in-progress and of the finished product.
New plywood in place and tar paper laid on main roof area....

The main roof area complete, taking up old roof on garage gable and porch overhang....

 

All done....it's hard to tell from this distance but we had architectural shingles put on. We are going to replace the faded dusty blue shutters with hunter green, as well as repaint the garage trim hunter green.  It's not the best photo(you all know my skills are not the best in this area)but the warm brown/green tones will help the house not look so washed out.  In person you can see that the siding looks more yellow now instead of the not-really-white/not-really-yellow color it appeared to be.

 

Sluggy