Stop gap

When I got home yesterday, after a frustrating day of dead ends when it came to trying secure someone to look at our pool cage and roof damage I decided I needed to get on the roof to do a few stop gap repairs.  When I did my roof survey after the hurricane I took note of a couple spots where the shingles were ripped off all the way down to bare felt/tar paper.  I read online that the underlayment will only hold up a short period of time when exposed to the elements.

We had made a nice pile of shingles that had ripped off the house.  I had Cindy toss a few of them up to me which I used to tuck under the intact shelters and then nail into place so water can run off instead of possibly under the shingles.  There were only three spots I found with bare paper so it didn’t take very long.

So as I survey what the hurricane remediation landscape, it is looking like a long and expensive path.  In anticipation of this I started the process of reopening my home equity line of credit for withdrawals.  It closed three years ago after 10 years.  At the time I didn’t feel like going through the hassle of the reapplication process however with a potential slew of home improvement expenses coming up it made sense to do so at this time.  If I am going to spend the money, I may as well do it in a manner that allows me to write off the interest on my taxes.

Like I said I have run into a lot of dead ends when it comes to getting estimates on the work I need.  I had one pool cage contractor said they are only doing full cage rebuilds, not repairs.  Another said they weren’t willing to drive so far because they have enough work by them. Others either don’t answer the phone or just never respond back to you.  I did however have the luck to find a co-worker whose husband works for a roofing company that has an interesting way to handle the estimate problem.

The company will present you an estimate without even coming out to your property.  How in the world can they do that accurately you may ask?  They use GIS imaging and Google Maps to gather the measurements they need.  They then feed these numbers into some program and generate estimates remotely, pretty cool.  I have not seen the estimates yet, I requested one for doing shingles again and a metal roof.  I have a feeling I will be in for some sticker shock.