More Adventures in HD, Roofing Times

Sometime we installed shingles. I can't remember when. I started blogging this morning (Sunday, November 22nd) under the impression we shingled before installing the chimney, but my images don't agree with my memory. This has been an ongoing problem (problem? Not the right word), but it is good I lead a life in which no one suffers any terrible consequences due to absent-mindedness. It is cause for concern though. My body is getting achy and not young, my brain is getting achy and not young. Time to exercise these things by getting very high and doing calisthenics. Eating good food is a likely cure as well.

Moving on- I don't remember which night, Patrick helped with most of the shingles. Home Depot was a serious shit-show that day. Miraculously, it was busy, yet there was NO LINE for the registers. We had three bundles of shingles and various other building goos and goods. Of course, the check-out girl could not figure out how to scan the shingles. She called for help, asked us to wait, and helped the people behind us.

The People Behind Us:

The guy in charge of the deep-as-hell posse behind us on line pondered out loud "who he was gonna piss off today" as he gave the check-out girl a head-toe-head-toe. This did not bear good tidings. He then theatrically pulled out a very thick wad of bills, singles, licked his thumb like a music video pimp, and started counting them one at time. They paid for their order completely with one dollar bills and a gift card for about $27. The bill was in the $400 range. All the cash needed to be counted three times by two HD employees. It felt like like a long time passed before we were helped, and even then I had to go get the sku number myself. If only we had a camera.

HD lesson #18 - Buying something weird? Don't see a barcode? Write down the sku and production description yourself and save hours on line. Better yet, take a digital photo of the price labels for everything you buy.

Whoa-o, we're half-way there. The man at HD with the gold teeth told me each package covered 100 square feet of roof. He was really wrong. We got about 45-50 square feet from each pack. It was better that we didn't buy them all at once because they would have been far too heavy to get home without injuring ourselves.

The shingles were so damn heavy I nearly plotzed. The handcart from the backyard couldn't take the weight, and one wheel started to come off the rim on the way home. It will need repair. Later, we ran out of shingles and had to get more. This time, our HD representative scanned those things without any trouble at all, but Patrick had noticed a sign- "15% off all roofing in stock". I asked her if that sign meant prices were marked down 15% or if we should get an additional 15% off.

Ug.

That question cost us another 30 minutes sitting in line. It's like HD is a series of precarious and delicate scientific experiments done in a clean room by tall, skinny men who live on coffee and any small contaminant can send the whole operation flying into a mish-mash of atomic particles and wasted time.

Signs should convey information quickly and efficiently. In HD, signs confuse and send rigid consumer systems hurdling out of control.

Anyway, we got the rest of the roofing materials home and ate dinner at a cafe around the corner. Dinner was good. The bathroom had a giant wood door that inspired me to build one for the house. We went home. We were tired and done working. After Patrick left, I started roofing again.

Minor-major set-back #1: we had been putting the nails in the wrong place.

Minor-major set-back #2: there was a thin plastic film covering the mastic on the underside of the shingles that we neglected to peel.

Mastic is a tar-like sealant that heats up in the sun, gluing each row of shingles to those underneath it. Since we didn't remove this film, the shingles were not going to adhere to one another and would not weather/wind-proof themselves. Mastic.com is a funny site. I don't know why I find it funny. Maybe because the homes pictured are the complete antithesis of my life right now. Hmm, maybe not- sprawling, excessive, self-important, un-focused, do these words describe me? those giant homes? At least one of us is on the right track. Hopefully me.

"I'm a homeowner. I'm a Contractor/Building. I'm an Architect."
- mastic.com

Another aside- there has been an emergence (re-emergence?) of small home building all over the country. The New York Times Home section has been featuring an awful lot of small remodeled country cottages and I've been passed info on small pre-fab trailer homes.
Roald Gundersen is building homes with entire trees in Stoddard, WI.
This guy is building around boulders.
There is quite a community in favor of simple living and small homes.
Check out Tiny House Blog (this one is really worth your time)!

Back to shinglin': It took an hour or two to go back and peel the plastic from each piece we nailed down. Since we didn't nail them in the correct place, this was possible without removing anything, but it was a supreme pain in the ass. I just about finished the shingling that night, working past midnight maybe.

end scene.