We Hit the Roof!

Ever since we bought this house, the roof has been terrible. Unfortunately, because the house is so tall (no surprises there since we raised it... twice!) I don't seem to have managed to capture the extent of the rusty horribleness that is the roof very well. You can just get a glimpse of it in this old (and dim) shot in the section of roof that's visible above the front door. Those little tiny darker patches that you can see are rust. And the entire roof looks like that.

Well... used to!

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

The problem wasn't just that the roof didn't look very nice. There was also this.

That picture was taken during a patch of heavy rain when the ceiling above our bedroom doorway was dripping. Never a good thing.

 So, it's been inevitable for some time that we would replace the roof. And we've finally done it!

I got much too excited when the scaffolding truck arrived.

And Allie very quickly learned to share her front steps with the support poles.

And soon... the house looked like this!

 

But, as always, things weren't as simple as hiring someone to put on a new roof and leaving it at that. Of course not! That would be ridiculously easy!

My main problem was this. This is the outside result of our attempt to create symmetrical kitchen windows on either side of our oven. Not particularly attractive. But that in itself wasn't the problem (at least not immediately). The problem was that because replacing the roof also involved replacing the little roofs on the awnings above our windows, we had to deal with the awning situation here first. The old awning above the left window needed to be shortened, and the new little window on the right needed its own little awning.

We briefly considered just extending the length of the existing awning so it runs across both windows, but since I figured that would look pretty strange, we decided to bite the bullet and bring in a carpenter to solve the problem for us (since our local timber supply place didn't sell pre-made awnings with the right bracket style to match ours). So while the gutters were installed, the carpenter worked.

And soon we had this! Hooray! Looks like a real house again!

But that was just the beginning. Then the real fun started, because the roofers arrived and started ripping off the old roof sheets with great gusto. As my front yard can testify.

And I got to enjoy the sun peeking through the giant crack in my dining room ceiling for a while.

I even managed to convince the roofers to help me run an electrical wire (which wasn't connected to anything else, so perfectly safe) into the ceiling above my kitchen sink while the roof sheets were off, so that I can have a light there in the future. How clever am I?

And within a day, they had the new roof on!

 

Because the 'edge protection' roof scaffolding had to be removed before they could replace the roof sheets on the awnings it took a bit longer to get them done, but aren't they pretty now they are done?!

I particularly enjoy looking at the spot where all the new gutters meet just near the front door. Although I can't say I'm much of a fan of the little right angle turn that the new downpipe now does under the window sill there, since I have grand plans to one day have a window box in that spot with flowers in it. Hmm. Must get that changed.

But in the meantime, we have a brand new, clean and neat and tidy and non-leaking roof! Oh the luxury! Here it is from up the street a bit.

And here it is if I climb a bit higher up the street, which is essentially the only way we can actually get a look at the new roof. I realise that the grey/black/yellow colour combination that the house is now sporting is a little bit strange. But believe me, I'll be getting rid of that yellow once and for all at my first opportunity! Not that there is anything wrong with yellow of course! We've just had enough!

And just now, in a moment of genius, I realised that I can look up our house on Nearmap.com, which shows what the house looked like from satellite photos at various intervals over the last couple of years.

Here it is about a year ago, in all its rusty glory (although believe me, this photo doesn't even come close to showing the sorry state it was in).

And here it is just last month! Brand spanking new! Love it.

It never ceases to amaze me just how fast things happen when you pay people to do the work! What do you think of my new roof?