Refresh the beginning

It has been a while (months even) since I have entered anything onto the blog, and it is time again to get started.

I have moved into the house, and it's kind of like camping. I have made some progress in several areas, and need to make more progress in other areas. I have no kitchen. The dining room furniture is temporarily housed in the guest room, which is also a semi-functioning guest room, so amusing without a doubt. The turtles have been moved out into their pond, the living room is coming along, currently the slate tiles are spread out all over the floor to create the pattern for their installation. The bathroom is functional, although the more I inhabit the house, the more I see changes I want to make in even the one room which was somewhat thrown together prior to my moving in, and the problems which are glaringly apparent from even the bit of work completed prior to the move in now make me laugh.

I am going it somewhat on my own, although I do need assistance for things like hanging the ceiling fans (they are too heavy to hold up and attach at the same time). I love my house, and the more time I spend here, the more I see in the potential here.

I had a funny incident when I attempted to buy the roofing supplies to replace the existing roof. There is a logic here, I promise. My intention with the house is to make it a renovation using high efficiency pieces parts, and recycling as much as possible in the process, as well as using some recycled parts. So I did a bunch of reading on different types of roofing materials for the replacement of the roof. I am somewhat lucky in that the roof has a very low pitch (3-12) and there are several options from which to choose. I finally decided on solar reflective shingles, located a local distributor, and moved on from there. I consulted with the contractor who will be doing the actual labor (sorry, there are some pictures I do not need to have in my head, and the 'oh shit' of me falling off of the roof in some fractured accidental grace is not one of them). I called the distributor, got some pricing comparisons, and found that the initial outlay seems to be overwhelming, however the end result when comparing to traditional shingle is under 300 dollars after the tax refund, and then the electric bill compensation makes it gravy.

So I go into the distributor to order the shingles, and it doesn't go well from the start. The guys behind the counter tell me that none of them remember talking to me, and they are the ones who would have talked to me. They look through their printed pile of quotes, lo and behold, there I am. Next? Why do I want to use these shingles? Who said that I have to do it? Who advised me on this? Then the run around for a bit - the ones I had actually picked out are on back order until after the new year, and there is another company who has some that they are coming out with, but the old colours are on back order, and the new colours are available immediately, but they don't have samples of the new ones.

Big deep breath.

OK, I tell the guy that I don't really care about the colour, the pitch of the roof makes it negligible as the only place you would see it is from an airplane (although my mother did point out that hot pink would make an interesting choice at that point). Then the guy starts to tell me that he has been in the roofing business for over 26 years, (have you noticed that NO conversation which is going to go to anyplace good starts in this way?) and no matter what claims they make about protective coatings or reflective anything in these shingles, the roof is still going to get hot, and I need to make sure that the insulation in the attic is sufficient, and...and...and...

I interrupted him at this point and told him to ask me what kind of roof I have now.

When I told him that I currently have hot mop and gravel, he laughed. My job was done, the goal was to get him to see things from my perspective a bit, and I did. I even made him laugh to boot.

Downside, the sales guy from the manufacturer never came in with the shingles, they never called me back, I can not seem to get the roofing materials. I will have to employ my other lessons that I am learning with this renovation, and be flexible enough to move on to other areas.

More later with pictures. And in a more timely manner this time.