When my husband and I first bought our house, the home inspector pointed out several little things that we were able to ignore but there was a damaged valley on the roof that would need to be repaired. We asked them to fix it but the countered with an offer to give us back some cash instead so we could get it fixed after the sale. We agreed…but I wish we hadn’t, we’ve been in the house for 5 years and are just now getting around to fixing it.
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The roof damage was not nearly this bad when we bought the house. Each year it progressively got a little worse. But this year the damage seemed to accelerate for some reason. I don’t think we had any big storms or anything but the roof was really deteriorating in that area. So earlier this summer (maybe around June) I started looking for roofers to come out and repair this damage as well as look at replacing another section of our roof that just isn’t in the greatest shape. I don’t know if they just didn’t want to do the repair, or if it wasn’t a big enough job or what…but no one would get back to me! I called and emailed about 15 different roofing contractors. So finally Ryan decided to just fix it himself. Fortunately for me he is extremely handy and does a great job with wood work and construction. He always spends a lot of time up front researching how to do things properly and make sure they’re up to code. He spent a TON of time on it this summer…
I think my favorite part was him cutting and replacing the scalloped trim board. It used to be wood but now we used the pvc board. In the wood trim boards we get really bad carpenter bees which dig holes in our trim (and also spit out all the chewed up wood all over our windows, ew). Ryan found some neat little router jig that allowed him to use one board as a template and quickly cut new boards. We could have replaced it with straight boards but the scalloped trim is part of what ads to the quirky charm of our house so we kept it.
There wasn’t a lot I could do to help Ryan with this roofing project but sometimes I would go outside just to keep him company (and hand him things so he didn’t have to go up and down the ladder quite so many times). After he cut the trim boards there were all these leftover curved pvc pieces. I started playing with them and then really liked the way they looked so I decided to keep them. I think I’ll either glue them onto a mirror to make an indoor/outdoor decoration or I was even thinking about gluing them to the wall in the half bath. We have this small/narrow wall above the toilet and it might be neat to paint it an accent color and then glue these on the wall. I think it would look really neat and it’s a small enough area that it wouldn’t be overwhelming.
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That kept Ryan pretty busy all summer but I’m so glad the roof is now fixed. We also had our front oak tree trimmed back so hopefully it won’t drop as many leaves and debris in that valley. All that’s left for him to do is fix some drywall damage in the kitchen and replace the gutters he had to take down. This year he’s really doing a lot more home projects than me – I better get started on something useful for our house too! Maybe finally a quilt for us? LOL don’t hold your breath…
