Home "Improvements": Fixing a Leak or Making it Worse?

Aaron and I were told that we just had one layer of shingles on our roof. That was perfect, because it would make putting on a new layer so much easier.
The plan was:
Thursday Night- Prep the roof for laying out shingles. Meaning, we were going to rip off the ridge shingles really fast and lay down tar paper.
Friday- Start putting shingles up
Saturday- Finish the roof, happy day.

This is what happened.
Thursday night we climbed on the roof.

We started ripping off ridge shingles.

This picture makes it look like Aaron tore off all of those, but I want it to be remembered that it was ME! Anyway, Aaron is taking a look at something that makes him sound anger. I don't know what it is that is making him so angry. So he showed me.

I don't know if you are an expert on shingles but Aaron tells me that this is 4 layers of shingles. And for those of you who don't know, the max in Utah is 3.
So....we have to rip it all out.

Friday: Aaron and his crew of Clarise and myself get to work. We were so beyond slow. We did manage to clear an entire side of the house of everything. And we were the cutest crew that Aaron has ever had. Take a look at that hot action!

Our sweet neighbor Lou (If you have stalked me for any length of time, you know our biggest problem with neighbors is that they are too nice...Lou is a constant culprit) felt bad that he couldn't help us out, since he is 88 and we don't want him anywhere near a ladder, so he brought us cold apples to eat. That hit the spot since it was warm and taking so long and it was becoming clear that we wouldn't get this project done in weeks at the rate we were moving. I mean, I was so busy that I couldn't take pictures and not getting a picture of Clarise on the roof is one of my life's greatest regrets. Aaron was taking a break and asked me if he could get us anything and I said, "Go and call people. Call our home teacher. Call our friends. Go call anyone to come up here." He doesn't like asking for help but I thought that it was...very very necessary.

Aaron called three people and the two people who were in our ward were on our roof in a matter of hours...on a Friday night.

{B} wins the award for putting the biggest dent in our work load...and our roof.

He felt so bad. Or...our tiny leak went from being a minor inconvenience in our attic to...this.

While we were on our roof, we ran into our neighbor {N} and he offered to come over the next day to help out. When we went to bed Friday night we were feeling pretty good about where we were at. We had a little more than 2/3 ripped off which was so much further than we could have gotten with just Aaron, Clarise, and I. We spent a little time trying to clean up our yard so that the front door wasn't covered in debris.

Saturday:

Aaron got up at 6:30am so that he could be on the roof working at 7am. He tried to only do quiet jobs while Clarise and I slept. {N} showed up as promised at 8am and they set to work right away. Aaron came into our bedroom and said, "We are going to be working above this room...so...it might be noisy." Okay...yeah...I guess I can deal with that. At 9am I got up because I couldn't really sleep. And I was up on the roof with Clarise following close behind.

I worked on ripping out nails or pounding them in. That sounds like a stupid job but I have to make the wood go from looking like the side on the right to the side on the left. When we lay down tar paper, we don't want any random nails ripping through the paper.
{N} was working on taking out the remaining 1/3 of the old shingles and Clarise followed behind him with a broom to clear the path for him to keep stabbing with the pitch fork. Aaron ran around doing any task that was extra like, cutting wood to patch up the hole or taking the metal off the edges or putting it back on when an area was clean.

When the back of the house was too hot to stay there any longer, we moved to the front to all work on the nails. That was fun just sitting and talking while we worked.

Aaron let me hammer a piece of wood into place. The worst boards got replaced and I was so happy when Aaron let me put it up. That is how good I was getting with the hammer.

At 11:30 we all climbed off of the roof for lunch. Aaron and I took Clarise to lunch and dessert at David's and it was great to shove food into our faces and eat custard and Italian ice.

We got back at 2 and {N} was back on the roof...that guy can not stop being nice. We've caught him mowing our lawn and shoving snow out of our driveway on many occasions. The boys worked at clearing off the nails and getting ready to finally lay down some tar paper. When I left to go to work at 4, they were already laying down a layer of shingles on the driveway side of the house.

While I was away, {B} came back over to help out. This time he didn't go through our crappy roof, thank goodness. It was so nice of him to share his two weekend nights stuck on our roof helping us out.

By the time I got home at 8, {N} was finally in his own home and Aaron was trying to fix up the debris that was covering everything on the ground. They got the garage side looking like this

and they got a row of starter shingles down

and they rolled out a good amount of tar paper on the front.

The weather report said that there was a slight chance of rain and all of our tarps were on the ground catching debris. We prayed and I told Heavenly Father that if it didn't rain tonight that we wouldn't work on the Sabbath but if it did, we would have to break the Sabbath and we didn't want to.

And sometimes the answer to your prayer is to break the Sabbath.