It’s official…we can stick a fork it in. Our roofing project is done-zo!
Instead of “Roofing With The Campbells”, I should have named the series of this post “Roofing With Mr. Campbell, Angie’s Brother, And His Friend Adam While Angie Snapped Pics From The Driveway.” But that was just too long of a title. I’m not gonna lie. I helped for about two hours on this project and by helped I mean I ripped open a few shingle bundles, cleaned up the yard mess, and launched a few bundles of shingles up the ladder lift (that was FUN!). But then there was alot of sitting around on my part, since I’m petrified of ladders past the fourth rung. So I got bored and chugged along on my Pinterest Challenge project instead. Oh, and before I forget, here’s a shot of the ladder lift for those who don’t know what I’m talking about:
It was a savior. The guys kept talking about how it’s a pain to lug shingles up and down ladders all day. And it makes sense. Each of those bundles weighs 80 lbs and there were 33 of them. The ladder lift is a motorized lift attached to a ladder that lifts the shingles up to the roof. Total back saver! But back to the shingling. I owe my brother Anthony a huge thank you for coming down and helping us! HUGE!
He’s a pro, literally a pro. He shingles roofs for a living, along with other general contractor type work. I was so amazed at how fast he worked. No offense Colby, I love ya and all, but Anthony out shingled you.
Anthony and his buddy Adam (you can kind of see him peaking out over the dormer in the above pic) came down Friday night after they finished up at their jobs, crashed at our house, and were up bright and early shingling away. And by bright and early I really mean about 9 am or so after breakfast was served and what not. But it didn’t take them long to setup and get cracking. They had all the tools including multiple pneumatic nail guns, a compressor, hundreds of feet of air hose, the shingle lift, roofing brackets, and even back up nails. They were like Boy Scouts they were so prepared! They even had backup caulking guns for when ours bit the dust.
We were lucky that we could hammer out the roof (pun totally intended) in one weekend thanks to being able to shingle right over our old shingles. Generally speaking, you can shingle over old shingles but it voids the warranty on them. Most people shingle over if there’s only one layer but strip the roof if there are two layers. To do it “right” you have to strip the old shingles, dispose of them, add underlayment and re-shingle. With hurricane Sandy beating down on us and frankly not wanting to strip a roof, we chose to shingle over. But we still should get at least 10-15 years out of our current shingling job.
In total we got the roof done in a day and a half instead of what probably would have been over a week if we had stripped it. We could have gotten the roof done in a day but there was a period of roof lounging with adult beverages going on. But it was well deserved.
The most difficult and time consuming part of the shingling process was tackling the dormers. They involved lots of strange cuts and finagling, or should I say shinagling, going on. Once the crew got past the dormers it was smooth sailing.
Since it gets dark super early here these days (seriously…the sun sets around 5:30 now), the crew quit just shy of finishing the job. Anthony and Adam staid another night so they could help us finish in the morning, despite Colby and I declaring we could finish it ourselves. Seriously…they rock. The next morning Colby, Anthony and Adam quickly finished up and I was there to photo document that last climb down that dang ladder!
I’m pretty sure Colby’s legs fell off from leg exhaustion just after I snapped that pic. My hubby is tired! So thank you, thank you, THANK YOU Anthony, Adam and of course Colby for helping us with our roof. It wouldn’t have gone so well without you. You were quite the crew (Goose included).
By the way, Goose is so sad his house guests have left. He’s been sulking in the corner since Anthony and Adam left. They were BFFs all weekend. I’m pretty sure Anthony and Goose were spooning on the couch last night. So now we have a freshly shingled roof and couldn’t be happier. And it’s only a day away from severe rain, flooding and winds coming our way courtesy of hurricane Sandy. Here’s to no interior floods when the hurricane beats down on us! I know you can’t tell the roof is new in this pic, but trust me, it’s new.
Technically, we’re not done yet. Colby and I still have the porch roof to shingle. And yes, I really do mean “I”. I’m helping Colby shingle the porch since it’s much lower to the ground and way less steep and the odds of me falling off of it and to my imminent death is less likely. I’m quite excited to wield a roofing nailer! So I’ll be back with some serious how-to’s for any of you crazies who are looking for some info about shingling your own home.
Pssst…So I made a few changes to the sidebar of the bliggity-bloggity. I finally got the tabber widget to work and pseudo stylized. I’m still trying to figure out how to get rid of that drop shadow in the text so if anyone has an idea of how to do that, I welcome help! There’s about four hours of my life spent Googling “text drop shadow” that I can never get back. AND there’s a new little tab on the sidebar for the “$#*! My Husband Says” series. It links to a page full of Colby quotes. If you need a good laugh…click away!
