Brooke here. Let’s talk about the roof.

In true Disasterhouse style, it took us close to four years to get a new roof. Why? We needed roof braces and then we needed concrete repair and then the project manager broke both of his legs and then there was a global pandemic and…

Let’s back up.

One of the reasons we bought this house was because we thought it came with a brand-new roof. We had lived here for about five years before we realized that the new roof was neither “new” nor much of a “roof,” as whoever did the work made it look really spiffy but didn’t address many of the underlying issues which might contribute to leaks. This includes, but is not limited to: old sealant, rotted roof decking, a poorly built cricket which directed rain runoff straight down the chimney wall inside the house, gaps in the flashing, and lack of any trace of ice-and-water shielding. It took about five years for the water to carve fresh channels beneath the new shingles, and then it started seeping into three different rooms.

Water feature in the living room. pic.twitter.com/H4qCh0Ris7

— K.B. Spangler (@KBSpangler) August 14, 2020

As soon as this happened, we started pricing out the new roof. We didn’t wait on this at all. We immediately contacted various Hired Dudes, got quotes on metal and shingle roofs, found a very competent company, and said LET’S EFFING GO!!!

However.

The porch was caving in. One of the main beams had been sistered together but didn’t have a support post beneath the joint. The wood itself was sixty years old, and rot was everywhere but had been painted over to conceal it. The roofing company recommended a structural engineer to come out and do a thorough review. His final report was basically, “Welp,” and he said that as the house roof and the porch roof were part of the whole, we needed to bring the porch roof back to level before we could make full repairs. This process is best described as house braces, where three poles were positioned under the drooping parts and were gradually brought back to level by turning them a quarter-inch every month. So we put up the poles and I went up on the roof with a bucket of fresh sealant before the hurricanes.

Three years later, we were good to go. Except our roofing project manager was badly injured in a fall. And then he recovered, but there was a fire. And then they recovered, but there was a global pandemic. It took nearly an additional year for the company to get moving on our project as chaos event followed chaos event, and when things had finally calmed down, there were simply not enough workers or materials available.

We are patient people. We try very hard to not be assholes, especially when circumstances are beyond anyone’s control. But it had been raining inside for almost four years. It got to the point where I started texting videos of the waterfall inside our living room to our roofing guy whenever there was a big storm.

And then, finally, it was time.