Pay Now, Or Pay Later
So, Oh Best Beloved, how are you spending your summer?
We’re preparing everything we need to put a new roof on our house.
Ourselves.
Oy.
In looking at the rafters, we’ve realized that, while our house meets code, we’d like the option down the road of putting on a heavier style roof, such as one done with tile or slate. So, since we’re already ripping things apart, we’re thinking about retrofitting our current roof with extra trusses that would bear the extra weight.
Trusses are expensive.
But… in case you’re wondering why one bothers with the expense of hiring costly engineers to design roofing trusses, instead of having Joe Handyman slap them together…
Here’s the answer.
(Truss models generated by Michael, my very own beloved engineer!)
23 Jul 2007 JAS
In God we truss
Ohhh - what a job to undertake. I wish you guys all the luck with your roof project. You are braver than I.
Um, are you INSANE?! Doing this yourselves?! I can’t imagine taking this on, on our own. Brave is right!
Yes, we are indeed insane… Unfortunately, we have some special constraints when working on our house (remember that Monster Within?). We have yet to find a contractor who will actually follow the contractual agreed-upon constraints we specify with building materials. When we say, “you may use product X and no substitutions allowed,” we mean it. In our current culture of “everything is substantially equivalent” that makes us pariahs. So… contractors substitute, and we end up with Michael having to rip out everything and do it over anyways, so I can breathe again!