Braddock Journey

Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Jeb has been calling our roof the Miracle Roof. That’s the optimistic way of looking at shingles attached to rafters without a subroof in between. The miraculous part is that the house survived the many years between its last occupant and us. The roof part is what was missing ...

When we first started looking for roofers I used an online service that was recommended in a Pittsburgh forum. They sent out three companies to give us estimates. One did not show up at all. One called from just outside of Braddock to say he was almost here, then didn’t show and stopped answering or returning my calls. The third, Northstar, gave us a quote that made us want to run away from our house as fast as we could. Luckily we held out.

After this horrifying experience we called any and every roofer we could find. Our plumber recommended a couple roofers, but “oddly” they always came in just a couple hundred dollars lower than the most recent estimate we had received that the plumber knew about. After our experience with him there was no chance we would hire someone he sent to us. I must have spoken to more than 10 roofing companies before Mayor John sent over Brian Whitney. Brian met with Kevin and talked about the roof, and it was weeks before we heard his price. We had just about given up on the roof ... we can funnel all of the rain with tarps into buckets forever right? And then Mayor John called with the price ... and it was reasonable! And it was a reliable contractor who had worked on the convent! And they could start this week!

It turned out that we were not ready for them to start immediately because we had masons scheduled to work on the chimneys that week, and the chimneys needed to be complete before the roof. Whitney Construction was flexible and started the following week. The mason was agreeable and hurried. There were people all over our roof, the mason and the enthusiastic roofers overlapped. Our flapping shingles and bulging chimneys were being replaced by solid materials that would keep the rain out.

Simply getting the roof on was an amazing transformation. It brightened up the exterior and made the interior feel more solid. But looking at this photo makes me realize we really need to get the exterior bricks pressure washed. This house needs a bath!