We Finally Had a New Roof Put on the House

Money has been really flowing out the door lately at our house. While there have been lots of little expenditures like new cel phones (yes, I bought the Iphone 3 GS), we also had the expense of putting a new roof on the house.

A few of our neighbors have already had new roofs put on their houses and have been paying anywhere from $15,000 to $22,000. Yes, it is ridiculously expensive. Here’s why: The old roofs are “shake”. In order to put the new HOA approved Presidential shingles on the house, the old shakes have to be removed and then the entire top of the house has to be “sheeted” with plywood. The reason for this is because when a house has cedar shake roofing, they don’t install plywood underneath. Instead there is what they call, “skip sheeting”. This means that there are roughly 3” gaps between 1X3 wood boards. (That’s probably more than you ever wanted to know about roofing.) So, we had to pay for the removal of all the old shakes, installation of all new plywood, and then we had to install some of the most expensive roofing that money can buy. Our homeowners association only allows homeowners to install either new shake roofing, or 50 year special Presidential asphalt roofing. We didn’t want to install new shake roofing because it’s more of a fire hazard than asphalt roofing and it is also quite expensive.

I got a couple bids for new roofing and most of them fell within the range that I mentioned above. I did get a cheaper bid but I was worried about the quality of the company. In the end, I hired a friend of mine who has extensive roofing experience (along with his cousin who owned a small roofing company). I was able to get the roof done for less than $14,000. While that isn’t a huge savings, at least I could trust them. And heck, saving a couple thousand dollars on the job didn’t bother me one bit.

So, I’m happy to say the roof is complete and we are ready for a rainy winter. Unfortunately our bank account is feeling a little hollow these days. While we still have a decent savings balance, we’ll be focusing on getting our savings back up to our normal level. That’s even more of a priority for me now as my long term employment seems a bit shaky with all the potential layoffs my company is considering.

Other than that, we’ve been busy trying to enjoy our summer weather here in the Pacific Northwest!