We met with "first choice roofing guy" -- I have an urge to call him "Bachelor #1" -- a week or so ago. Results of meeting: not good! He presented us with some options regarding the roof, the beams, and the stucco. To make a long story short, he thinks we need to take down all the old wood, take down all the original stucco, replace stucco with Hardie Board (apparently, the latest in stucco replacement), replace wood beams with MiraTec (some sort of composite material), paint both of the aforementioned items, then proceed with the roofing project. Oh, and did I mention that we also have to add in the cost for re-stuccoing (is that a word?) and re-beaming (yeah, I'm pretty sure that isn't a word) the garage.
The Estimated Cost: ~$30,000
I don't know what you're thinking right now, but my first thought involved chest pains and an overwhelming desire to move. We needed to do some hefty thinking on that one. After a half a week of thinking heftily (man, I'm just making up all sorts of words tonight), I shared the latest on the situation with my friend Kelly who had some not-so-great news to report about that particular company. Turns out, they did some work in her town after a bad storm and the majority of the people in town were not pleased with the quality and they said it was completely overpriced! It was so bad that some of them put signs in their yard telling others NOT to ever use this company. Time to rethink Bachelor #1.
I decided to call in "second choice roofing guy" -- aka Bachelor #2 -- to come back and ask us for his opinion about what the other guy said. Bachelor #2 was the first one to notice the rotten wood when he gave us our initial roofing estimate, so I knew he was detailed enough to see what was actually happening up there in roof land. His initial estimate was very reasonable and he sounded extremely knowledgeable about his craft. After a week of exchanging emails about the situation, we arranged for him to come over today to reinspect.
Important Side Note: Fast and reliable communication is extremely important to me when in the process of choosing a construction company. Bachelor #1 was good for a while, but I think he tired of my questions as he has not responded to my last query in a week. Bachelor #2 is doing great so far -- a response within 24 hours of each email sent. He's definitely pulling ahead in this aspect of the competition.
Bachelor # 2 came out this morning and seemed to think that our stucco looked pretty good for being 70 years old. There are areas that obviously could use some paint and places where the stucco and beams meet that could definitely stand to be recaulked (I do know that is a word because he said it about 20 times this morning.) Long story short: he thinks we can take the beams down and replace with the MiraTec and reseal, but he doesn't think the stucco is in that bad of shape to need to be replaced completely. Sigh-of-relief! He'll return on Monday with some dudes to take measurements and get up on the roof for a better look. Then he'll give us estimates for the cost of redoing the whole thing: one doing all the things #1 wanted us to do -- and with his suggested alternative.
As of now, I'm feeling a lot better about this. As an added bonus, he told us about different houses in Cedar Falls that he worked on where he installed Hardie Board so that we could see samples of his work. We drove by them tonight and found them highly satisfactory.
And so, we commence with more waiting. Hopefully, this time we will get better news when it comes to estimates. We've come to accept the need for more work than just the roof, but now the question becomes just how much coin will we have to fork out.
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