Home Renovation #2 – The Roof

Get ready for part two of our home renovation – the roof!

If you missed the first update to our home
renovation, you can find that here.

After tearing apart the bathroom and not being able to finish it due to waiting on the town, we decided to go ahead with the roof. Our old roof was shingled and I have no idea how old those shingles were. Over the last few years we had a lot of problems with leaks, and we kept a tarp over the back corner of our roof for a very long time just to keep the back room dry.

We battled back and forth on getting a whole new roof or a metal roof, which would just go right on top of our old roof. Several roofing companies were called for quotes, but only one showed up. He quoted us around $6,500 for a new roof. We didn’t have that kind of money.

Finally after some time we were blessed to have a guy tell us he would put on a new metal roof and we would only need to pay him for his time. We had to buy the materials, but we ended up with a metal roof for $2,387.80. That’s a whole lot better than $6,500!!

While the guy was working another job, we had to replace the rotted boards on the front of our house. After taking off the old board along the front (fascia), we could really see how bad it actually was.

We got all those boards off, plus tore off the old soffit underneath. It already looked a lot better after getting all those gross boards off. As we were pulling the boards off we happened to notice that the gutters on the right side of the house were only there for appearance. There wasn’t even a hole for the rain to go down into the gutter.

The boards along the top also had to be removed so some of those shingles had to come down.

After the boards were removed the house looked naked! It looked so funny with the boards gone!

Finally after a couple of really hot days and some crazy rain storms we were able to replace all the boards, plus the fascia and soffit boards. We did all the cutting and hard work ourselves, except for putting on the roof. I thought we would die out there in that heat, and it wasn’t even summer yet! I was thankful when my husband needed to make a quick trip to Lowe’s so I could hog all the air conditioning.

Not too long after the roof was complete we had our gutters replaced. They look so much better and they actually work this time! The siding on the bottom right side of the house was also a mess, so we replaced that. Just two pieces of siding turned out to be a pain in the butt to replace.

I am so happy that the roof is finally done and we no longer have to worry about leaks. The next main project (most expensive) we have to get done is having the foundation fixed. It’s cracked and the basement leaks. It’s always something with an old house.

Stay tuned next week for another home renovation update!

By the way – the town still has not hooked us up to the sewer system yet. It’s beyond ridiculous at this point.