Monday, January 07, 2008

The Roof Over My Head

I am sitting here at what is normally a very quiet time of day in the house. Any other Monday, you'd probably hear nothing but the washing machine and dryer running, and maybe the vacuum cleaner or some water running as I clean up the mess leftover from the weekend.

But today, they are removing the roof. The sound of thumps and scrapes and bumps and heavy boots walking overhead drowns out the buzz of the dryer's "I'm done" signal. I can hear a radio but I can't make out what's playing on it.

Having a roof done in January is iffy business, but when we started to see water damage on Middle Sister's ceiling, we knew we couldn't put it off any longer. Fortunately the weather today is gorgeous with temps climbing through the 50s, and tomorrow will be even better.

It was a shame that Little Brother had already headed off to school when the big truck with the built-in "claw lift thingamajig" pulled up and started offloading pallets of shingles right onto the roof. The rest of the kids in the neighborhood, who take a later bus, had some entertainment while they stood on the corner waiting for their ride.

It's noisy now, but it will be leakproof later. And then they'll replace my ugly front door, and the back door with the cracked windowpane, with pretty new doors and frosted-glass sidelights in the front. And I'll get to go to the Big Box Home Improvement Store and choose a paint color for the front door (and the shutters, which someone in the house who shall remain nameless did not even realize we have).

TheDad asked me this morning if I was excited about getting the new roof. Not really. It's the doors that I'm waiting for. That's something I look at and use every day. It'll be nice to look at something pretty for a change.


1 comment:

Rolf said...

I understand. Roof repair isn't a thing to be overly excited about because we don't see it as often as we do. But maybe that's the reason why we overlook the damages.

Rolf Matchen