A new roof?

Written by Barry Warsaw in house on Tue 10 February 2009.

The builder is recommending that we rip off the old roof entirely and rebuild it from scratch. The cost came in at $4700 but that does not include insulation (or the 20% change order markup), so we'll need a complete price in order to decide if we should do it. This is a big hit to the budget, but it seems like it's really going to be the best option. We'll need architectural and structural plans for the new roof, which basically must look like the original roof in front (hip with dormer) and like the plans in the back (hip joint to match the front).

We looked at the shingle colors - I think Jane would love to go dark dark, but that's not nearly as energy efficient as a lighter color. I think we'll end up compromising on something like Forest Gray which is just a shade or two lighter. Wouldn't it be great if we could just layer solar panels over the entire roof? Maybe in Max's first house.

We met the stucco contractor today, who dropped off some samples and a color palette. Seemed like a nice guy and he offered to take us around to some of his jobs to see his work. I'm sure Jane will take him up on that. Sounds like he can basically match any paint color in the stucco; we also need to pick a finish. Jane's leaning toward the coarse grain for the majority of the house, with a fine finish for the trim. The really coarse finish just didn't do it for us.

The cabinets are killing us! We did a plan at HD for some fairly standard KM cabinets. I'm not very psyched about them, and it's really difficult to get cabinets that don't look like they belong in an apartment. The thing that sucks the most about the KMs is that they really don't give you the options you want. For example, we'd like to get the Shaker Rail doors in a dark color, but you can't do that. Not to mention that we're still at about $9000 for the quote, and even with the HD discount, we're still going to be a thousand or so over our allowance. We'll see about ditching the glass fronts, but that brings the discount down along with the price.

Really, we want to do something different but that seems impossible on our budget. Still looking.


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