Raising the roof

As I mentioned last week, I helped Tom fix a hole at the edge of my roof caused by rotting wood (and which a raccoon was taking advantage of). We finished the job the second day, easily beating out the day of gentle rain that was to follow. On that Wednesday, my contribution probably increased from 10% to as much as 25%, but the bottom line is, it's still Tom who did the bulk of the work, with me playing role of the Shake 'N Bake girl ("...and I helped!").

Here you can see most of the rotten wood on the roof, which was much more visible after we'd removed the shingles:

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Here's a full view of the damage (the rectangular section is not natural; Tom had already cut that part away):

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Here's Tom cutting away the rest of the rotten decking:

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On Day 2 of the repairs, here's the new non-rotten decking set in place:

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And finally, after we (yes, we ... even I was competent enough here) finished repapering and reshingling:

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Obviously it's hard to match new shingles (which were leftovers from the lightning strike repairs) with old shingles, especially after 10+ years of weathering. In fact, see the shingles at the edge of the roof, near the bottom of the photo, that are lighter than the old shingles but darker than the new ones? Those are old shingles that had been underneath other shingles, so they didn't get as weathered; that's probably what the original color of my roof was. So even if I'd somehow been able to get the exact same shingles, they wouldn't have matched.

Thanks to the leftover shingles, the total repair probably cost me under $75, so that's not too shabby.

You may have noticed the new sod in my backyard in some of these photos. That thrilling photo essay is coming later this week...