{"id":105712,"date":"2011-10-10T04:00:47","date_gmt":"2011-10-10T11:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/?p=105712"},"modified":"2019-09-02T02:36:44","modified_gmt":"2019-09-02T09:36:44","slug":"our-roof-repair-a-typical-tale-of-working-with-contractors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/our-roof-repair-a-typical-tale-of-working-with-contractors\/","title":{"rendered":"Our roof repair: A typical tale of working with contractors"},"content":{"rendered":"

My wife and I have been homeowners for nearly twenty years. In that time, we’ve done a lot of home improvement ourselves<\/a>. But we’ve also learned when it’s best to hand projects to the pros. (To be honest, this is most of the time.) It’s great to be able to do small jobs yourself, but it’s also important to recognize when something’s beyond your ability.<\/p>\n

During the past 18+ years, we’ve learned that working with contractors always seems to follow a similar pattern. I’m not sure it has<\/em> to be like this, but it generally seems to be so. To illustrate our typical experience, I took notes on our most recent repair job. Today I’ll share our tale.<\/p>\n

Note:<\/strong><\/em> At the recent Financial Blogger Conference, a lot of folks expressed fondness for the Personal Finance Hour, the podcast that I used to do with Jim from Bargaineering. I’ll admit I’d forgotten about it. That was a fun gig. Here’s an episode we did about home improvement.<\/div>\n

<\/span>A Leak in the Roof<\/span><\/h2>\n

\"OurIn 2004, we bought a hundred-year-old farmhouse on more than half an acre. It’s a lovely place in a park-like setting, but it’s also a bit of a money pit. There’s often something going wrong.<\/p>\n

We’ve had trouble with the roof, for instance, since the first summer we moved in. Initially, we blamed the insulation contractors, who had cut holes in the roof for added ventilation but then failed to adequately seal around their work. As a result, the vents eventually developed large leaks.<\/p>\n

It turns out, however, that the shoddy vents were only part of the problem. One section of the roof is essentially flat, which means it needs a different kind of roofing material than most of us are used to. When the previous owner last installed a new roof, he cut corners. (He was always<\/em> cutting corners. Many of our woes are because the previous owner did his own work and cut corners.)<\/p>\n

As a result, the flat section of the roof developed a leak. Or several. While I was traveling in July, Kris called me in a panic to tell me that Portland was having a severe rainstorm and that water was pouring into an upstairs bedroom \u2014 right next to my precious comic books. My comics were safe, thank goodness, but this certainly spurred me to action.<\/p>\n

The roofing problem was one reason I canceled my planned trip to England. I stayed home, called contractors, and shepherded the project toward its slow<\/em> completion.<\/p>\n

<\/span>Choosing a Contractor<\/span><\/h2>\n

Whenever we’re faced with hiring a contractor, we get multiple bids for the job. This time was no different. We like to take recommendations from friends, though this doesn’t work in every instance. This time, for instance, nobody we knew had worked with a roofer recently. Instead, I contacted five or six local roofers via the web. On August 2nd, three of them came out to look at the roof.<\/p>\n