A Roofing Lesson

I'll caveat this post by concluding that I am an idiot. In fairness, sometimes you don't know what you don't know. Except for picking up those ripped from the roof in 2006 (the roof our current one replaced), I'd had relatively little experience with rooftops. Until Friday.

Thursday evening, I spent 30 minutes at Lowe's trying to see what, if anything, might match the roof since I couldn't get what we have on the house to put atop the patio. Or so I thought.

I made up my mind that Friday morning the very FIRST thing that Lawrence and I would do would be to ascend the roof with samples.  So up we climbed with two sample booklets, an actual sample AND one of the roofing shingles from the 8 packs of Sierra Gray laying on my patio. Lawrence flipped that shingle onto the roof of the house. And my heart stopped for a second.

Not only it was a match, it was an EXACT match. And so, shingling began in earnest. Turns out that the part of the shingle that freaked me out, that off color ... you don't see that. That's where the next layer covers over. Stimpy, YOU IDIOT! Well, what did I know? Even Lawrence didn't immediately get that because he hadn't put architectural shingles up before. Of course, he has now.

The foreground shingles are the house. That upper portion is the new roof for the patio. If you don't see a difference, that's OK. There isn't one!

I shot this picture because you can't really appreciate the match as much from far away nor can you really see the detail of the architectural shingles from the yard. The slope of the roof isn't substantial enough that it shows like it does on the house or the carport.

See for yourself. I had to go halfway down the alley just to get a full view!

 You'll notice that there is actually some furniture on the patio, in addition to the plywood and soffit and fascia waiting to go up. We moved stuff out of the carport, now that the patio is at least covered, so that Pearl could have at least some of her space back.

It's the first time that Pearl has been in her own space in about 10 weeks. It took me more than one try to get her where I could reasonably open the door because is there is so much still under there!

To say I was relieved by the match and overjoyed to get this finished is a gross understatement. I was obsessing to the point that it was making me sick.

So now I'm siting here hoping they STAY UP THERE. Severe storms and wind here today. What should be a peaceful day of rest for me is just a little intense as we keep checking on everything. So far, so good.

Cross your fingers our luck holds out!