Nicoya's Never-updated Blog: The Roof, The Roof, The Roof Ain't On Fire

So it's about time I got a new roof. It's been leaking somewhat ever since I moved in, but the water wasn't damaging anything meaningful so I just let it slide until I felt like getting around with it. Given we've got the El Niño of the century aimed directly at us this winter, I figured now was the time.

First things first, it's off with the solar.

I can't very well replace the roof with all those panels in the way, after all. This part of the replacement did, however, turn into a bit of an ordeal because the panels were leased, and thus technically "not mine". The service company blessed by the leasing company wanted something like $12k to do a "remove and reset" to which I said "fuck you and your lease" and bought it out for around $10k. The roofers I hired only wanted $6k for the R&R part and now I no longer have a solar panel lease bill every month, so that turned out pretty sweet.

The panels got stashed in the back patio, along with the racking, though as it turned out they couldn't reuse the racking so it could have just gone straight in the bin, but whatever.

Next up, or down as the case may be, the roof came off.

I had originally thought there was only one layer of roofing, but curiously there was actually two layers, but when they added the second layer they removed the first layer over the eaves, which is why the water leaks never got inside but instead just rotted out the eave boards in the front. Weird.

This is, of course, why I painted a bunch of new v-groove previously. It's way, way easier to paint it when it's down on the ground vs when it's on the underside of an eave.

Anyway, it's time for some roofing materials, delivered to the roof.

The delivery guys got delayed and barely made it into the driveway before dark, and ended up unloading most of the material in pitch black. Thankfully they managed to avoid falling off and dying.

With the new sheathing and underlay up, things are starting to take shape.

And it's time for more materials, this time at a more decent hour.

And then you assemble the rest of the roof.

But the work isn't over yet (well, technically it is, as I took this picture after everything was done but never mind that). The gable boards need a coat of paint, since they've got brand new not-quite-white flashing on them, and brand new definitely-not-white trim boards replacing the old molding that would have looked weird under the new, larger flashing.

So some primer is in order for the flashing, at least the unprimed stuff around the flat roof.

And some trim paint to go on top. I tried the magic super duper life hack of putting painters tape on the rim while pouring.

And it worked!

Once, at least. The second time I tried it, the tape lifted and the whole rim got full of paint. Waste of tape, this is.

Anyway, the vessel I poured this paint into is my new painting bucket, which has a comfortable hand strap and a magnet to hold onto the ferrule of the brush.

So that makes the job a lot easier than hauling a gallon bucket up and down the ladder.

And the best part is that when you're done, you just pour the remaining paint back in the original paint can and then wait for the paint in the bucket to dry and peel it off, which definitely isn't a scam to get you to ruin the bucket by drying a layer of paint onto it that doesn't-

Oh, actually it does work. Ok.

Well, while I'm in a painting mood, one thing that's bothered me about my house is that the wall below the water table trim on the front of the car hole was painted the blue-grey instead of the two-tone red.