Roofgate 2011

Remember when we got a new roof?  Those were good times weren’t they?  We’d drive down the hill and cheer at the beautiful new professionally installed roof.  I remember those times.

Sunday afternoon we were driving down the hill and Derek looks at me and says, “wow, that’s a big branch.”  As in, that is a big branch on our roof.  If you notice the trees in the background of the aforementioned post they are quite large.  They are Douglas-fir trees.  None of the trees are on our lot.  Dane the dumbass previous homeowner had all of the Doug-fir removed from our lot.  However, all of our neighbors have them.  They are about 250′ tall.  We cringe every time the wind blows.

Rewind to Saturday.  The forecast was for “breezy and rainy” conditions.  Around 3:00 in the afternoon the rain started and prior to that we thought the wind was going to blow a few trees into the nursery.  Derek picked me up from work and from there we went straight to Seattle for dinner and the CAKE concert.  We got home around 11:30 that night and of course it was dark.  The child had stayed with his grandparents so on Sunday we went out to do child-free stuff.  We went back home to pick up some dog food since we were going to get the dog and then go get the child.  This is where we were met with the giant branch on the roof.

Derek pulled out the ladder and a moment later peered over the ridge and said, “um babe, it went through the roof.”

This is what he saw

From the ground you could only see from about the middle of the shot to the right side.  I climbed up on the roof to have a look.

Yep, went through the roof.  It should again be noted at this point that there are not Doug-fir trees on our lot.  It also should be noted that the branch inserted the roof perpendicular to the street/front of the house.  It should also also be noted that there are no Doug-fir trees in that direct line.  The branch was either whipped off of the side neighbor’s tree and swirled in a lone gunman fashion across our lot and into our roof or it came from the home kitty-corner across the street.  In any cast that bad boy was like a spear into our roof.  The only thing that stopped it from going into our family room ceiling was a roof joist.

If you’ll notice in the photo the branch is resting up against a joist in the lower left corner of the picture.

We took the time photograph the damage for my blog facebook the insurance company and then Derek went about removing the branch from the tree.  It took three pulls to get the thing out.  Here is the gaping aftermath.

I’m thinking that would qualify as a hole.  Even better… the weather forecast for the week is windy and rainy.

Here is the branch on the ground after it was pulled out.

The lower wet part is what was protruding into our roof.  That is about 3′ my friends.  I’m not sure how long the whole branch is.

We called the insurance company this morning to discover that our deductible is $1000.  We thought it was $500.  We’ve also had friends ask if it was something that we could fix.  I would like to say that it is, but with this kind of damage on the inside I don’t want to take any chances.

The best part of the whole story is that the insurance company is going to have a contractor call us in the next 24-48 hours… for an estimate.  It pissed down rain all. day. long today.