Moral-Flexibility.Net

And it ain’t even Christmas.

So, projected capital expense number two reared its ugly head and our roof sprung a leak a few weeks back. It wasn’t a huge shock, our home inspection (again coming in about bang on) had warned us that the roof was good for approximately 1-6 years (1 realistically, 6 optimistically).

It appears that the previous owner drywalled over a known leak in the master bedroom closet, and the water eventually bled through. I opened up that part of the ceiling and discovered the leak, and we decided that rather than patching the problem we’d just move the replacement of the roof up a year (we had tentatively planned on a metal roof next year).

We signed the agreement on Friday, and got a call yesterday that the crew would be available starting today, so we ended up with a four day turnaround on the work (considering three days were a holiday weekend thats not too shabby)

We’ll see how the work progresses, keep yer fingers crossed that the weather is cooperative.

Edit (@1500hrs): Ok, it got worse. Costs almost doubled due to rot and issues related to previous owners cheaping out on leaks. On the plus side we’ll have a solid roof when they’re done, on the down side this expense has cleaned out the contingency fund (at this point we’re financing about 10% of the work).

Pictures as they are available.

Edit: (15Oct10 @1500hrs): More bad news. More rot and bad wood discovered below the dormer on either side, not entirely unexpected, but certainly unwelcomed.

We’ve become wary of the foreman knocking on our door.

Edit: (17Oct10 @1045hrs): Work complete, bin is full of junk, roof is finished and the cleanup has been done by the small crew (two guys) that showed up this morning to finish the detail work.

It’s official, it’s a roof.

When we bought our current home there were a few issues identified by the home inspector. These were not insignificant, but we didn’t consider them deal breakers. Top of the list was the wiring. While Knob and Tube was present, more disturbing for me was the fact that it appeared a previous owner had considered themselves handy and had cobbled together a spiders web of wiring in the basement (I’ve become convinced that he had some sort of religious prohibition against using any length of wire longer than 6ft).

I have been picking away at this regularly since we moved and am pleased to say that the bulk of the questionable wiring has been pulled out, and replaced with current (read as “to code”) stuff.

I’ve kept the pile of wire in the basement as a motivational item, what tells the tale more clearly is the almost clutter free spaces between the joists, but that doesn’t translate to photographs so well.