a new roof

There was a really bad storm in Columbus on May 25th (here's the post from that day as we were headed to Georgia for Memorial Day).  Many of the houses in Columbus had hail damage (although most of that damage was in East Columbus, and we live West of town).  After chatting with one of our neighbors who mentioned that they were getting a new roof because of the hail, we decided to look into it.  After a few contractors and insurance assessors came to the house, we got ourselves a new roof! 

We went crazy with the new roof - and tried to match the exact same color as the old roof (if it's not broken - don't fix it ... or if you are from southern Indiana, if it ain't broke - don't fix it).  I never knew how much work could go into choosing a roof (some of my lunch hours were spent driving around to see roof colors).  And, it's a funny thing, I have looked at the roof once since it was put on - it's just something that not many people notice!

Here are the befores:

Some durings (the roofers rang the doorbell before 7AM and started right over Ethan's room.  Wonderful.  He was fine, he just woke up and kept saying "uh-oh".  It was pretty funny.

And the afters:

Big difference, huh ;)

We aren't overwhelmed with the roofers.  They broke the tree to the left of the door (when looking at the house), killed a hosta in the back, some of the grass in the front was killed because of the shingles, there are some nails left in the grass as well as some pieces of the roof, and they parked a huge oil leaking truck in front of our house from Friday - Wednesday (the job took less than 9 hours and was done on Monday).  Let's hope the roof quality is better than their cleanliness quality!  Live and learn.  We have a great list of who not to call for home repairs, and only 1 group that we still come back to (our painters)
Now that the roof project is over, time to move onto the new front door/porch project and the basement refinishing.  The order of those improvements is as follows:

1. New door (ours is rotting as I showed in previous posts).  The door we want from Pelle is part of their new series and we can't get a quote on it until September 15th.  I really like the door so we are waiting.  In fact, here is a very similar model to what we are wanting (we will get a double door with a top window - called a transom - and no side lights - our door will have grids in the window):

2. Basement - the start of this post started with mentioning the bad storms.  The worst of it (from my perspective) was a few days before the mentioned storm.  Things got really bad and we all (Ethan, Louie, me and Corey) headed to the basement.  I had a baby in my lap, holding on to the collar of the dog.  Corey went upstairs to chase the tornado (his dream job is to be a real tornado chaser - chemistry was a back up plan) and then the power went out.  Ethan was squirming so much I had to use both hands on him so that he wouldn't touch the dirty nasty concrete floor of the unfinished basement.  Louie then got loose.  I tried coercing both dog and baby with treats, it wasn't working.  Louie, a bit skittish from the storm, knocked over a paint can that didn't have a tightly secured lid (Corey had done some touch up painting a few days before).  At this time, I politely asked that Corey come back downstairs and stop looking for the tornado (that's how I recall it - Corey might say that I flew off the handle and screamed.  Potato, Puhtato - what's the difference?).  Imagine that exact same scenario ... plus another baby ... hence the reason for the finished basement before the next spring storms roll in.  Also, I just went down with a contractor to get a quote - and there was a dead mouse.  It's time to finish the basement.
3. Porch area - the real reason for the porch is that the door we currently have is rotting.  We are going to take care of that with a new door.  Said door has at least a 10 year warranty on it.  So, I think we may just start with the door and see how things go.  The porch is really nice and adds some great visual appeal to our flat front house, so we still like the idea.  From a return on investment standpoint, though, it will be less than the first 2 projects we are tackling.  Another reason for the delay, our builder quoted us about 30% over what we budgeted for.  No thanks!  We are getting other quotes.  The hesitation for us, if we do the door and the basement, and the actual frame around the door (not the door itself) leaks, now we are leaking into a finished basement which is no fun.  Hmmmm lets just hope that doesn't happen!