How not to get a new roof

I’m thinking I should start a category here about how not to go about getting stuff. It seems that we are always getting things in the most unorthodox fashion. There was that time that the back of our house fell off. That was fun. Remember the time our oven crapped out on Christmas day? Then the time the child fell down a flight of stairs. At least I got free wine.

Earlier this Spring we received a notice from our home owners insurance company that they were going to schedule a “check-up” to “make sure we were properly insured.” ?This is all code for find something wrong with your house so we can drop you or hike up your rates. ?Lucky for them we were in the former category. ?Or is that luck for us?

When we bought out home, 5 years ago, we noticed a funky patch of wall by the ceiling near the fire place. ?The realtor noted that apparently the roof had recently been fixed. ?It was one of the driest summers on record and since we were looking at the house in September we didn’t think anything of it. ?The roof was ugly blue, but we would replace it soon.

About 3 1/2 years ago I came home for lunch one day and as the trusty husband and I were walking out I notice that the same spot in the wall/ceiling looked rather odd. ?More like there was a giant bulge in the wall. ?A bulge full of water*. ?In a panic I called every male adult I knew asking for advice on what to do. ?None of them were helpful. ?I ran down the street to ask for help from my neighbor, but he was out of the country. ?Needless to say, the trusty husband and I spent the next hour on the roof in the pouring rain putting up the blue tarp of shame. ?A few days later slapped on a fresh new layer of caulk around the chimney and called it good. ?That heavy duty layer of caulk served us well for 3 years.

We had always planned on putting a new roof on our house. ?The intention was to do it that summer after the first leaking episode. ?Then that whole we might have to leave the country for 3 weeks at any moment thing happened. ?It just got put off and put off. ?When the insurance company guy came to our house and asked how old our roof was we both pretty much crapped our pants then and there. ?We had fixed the wall where the previous inside leak was so the insurance dude didn’t notice that, but well… there was the outside evidence. ?The moss. ?We live in Washington what can I say.

A few weeks after insurance guy’s visit we received a notice from the insurance company that we had to put a new roof on our house by September or they would drop us. ?Lovely. ?Let’s see, I’ve just shelled out $800 for the back of the house, $650 for the new stove and who knows for the child’s medical bill for falling down the stairs. ?There is no extra money. ?The furthest we went ?for vacation this year was the mail box. ?Even then it only had more bills. ?Still, we needed homeowners insurance. ?By the grace of God we were able to scrape up the possibility of putting a new roof on our house and with 15 days to spare it got done.

Behold! ?The loveliness of my new roof. ?We clap and cheer every time we pull into the driveway.

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I wrote about that somewhere, but can’t remember where