Home "Improvements": Water Tight (Updated Pictures)

Our house has been water tight since Monday night thanks to some wonderful friends from our ward. They both came over to have a Family Home Evening of service. It was pretty nice visiting with them and getting the roof at least secure for the night, even if it wasn't completely finished.

Aaron brought a coworker home with him, {D}, so that he could help out a little. He couldn't get on the roof but he wanted to do something and so he helped get our front yard into a more... aesthetically pleasing arrangement.

Our front yard looked about the same as this Friday night before we cleaned.

It looked like this when {D} came to the house.

As you can see, there was still work to be done.

Our friends, {M} and {J} came over to help us later that night after {D} left. {M} and I mostly talked about different things...like her crazy relatives and her husband's crazy relatives. But I was hammering down shingles and she was supplying people with shingles as we talked. Don't worry, we aren't lazy!

The roof was completely tar papered by the end of Monday. What a HUGE relief!! Even though it didn't rain that night, it was amazing to know that our house was water tight for the night! At long last!

We still needed to finish working on finishing the shingles and stabilizing the swamp cooler but at least we could go to bed knowing that we were safe and sound for the night.

Tuesday, Aaron and I were back up on the roof together. It was pretty slow goings since most of the shingles needed to be cut to go around pipes on the back half. It was not going nearly as quickly as I had hoped that it would. We had quite a few of these to go around all over the back.

(Do you like how if looks like we put a plunger on the roof?)

On of our neighbors saw us up on the roof and brought us some cucumber from her garden (some of which we ate that very night). We chatted for awhile since Aaron could do what little we could do, on his own.

We ended Tuesday with things still water tight but not finished.

Wednesday we had scouts! That was a good break for us. We didn't have to start working on the roof till 5:30pm.

It was time to stabilize the swamp cooler. That took the longest time and I wasn't much help to Aaron at all. I couldn't hold the swamp cooler level long enough for him to screw it in and I wasn't able to screw it in place fast enough for Aaron. So I told Aaron to call someone, so {J} came back over.

They got the swamp cooler done in a ridiculously fast manner. It was awesome. Meanwhile, I was working on the ridge shingles! AT LONG LAST!! THE RIDGE SHINGLES!! For those of you not in the know, ridge shingles are the last things to go on the roof. They are the sign and declaration that you have nothing left on the roof to do!

Since it was Wednesday and we started later, the sun seemed to disappear rather quickly but it didn't really matter to us because WE ARE WATER TIGHT!

Seriously people, say it with me! WATER TIGHT! When you go to sleep at night, I want you to think about how awesome it is that your roof isn't leaking, because it is awesome.

Thursday night, guess what we did?

NOTHING! We didn't do a single thing on the roof or roof related that whole day and it was wonderful. I went to a friend's house to thank them with some food and they asked us to stay for dinner.

Oddly enough, the clutter from outside seems to be effecting the inside of my house. I don't have tar paper and ripped up shingles in the house but I haven't been working on dishes and the couch covers are clean...but not on the couch. Everything has kind of been left for dead in the house. I haven't been the best at making my husband dinners this week either so it was a welcomed invitation.

We got to stay up and talk with our friends about a ton of different things and to laugh a whole lot. And I love that. It was great therapy from a week of really intense hard work. It had been a week since we found out that this project was going to be bigger than we could have imagined. We deserved a break.

Friday night we were back on the roof. Working and trying to get this finished. Has it become tedious to anyone else? It has to me. We probably only worked for about 2 hours that night. I got another side of the ridges completed and that made the first side we started ripping up, 100% DONE!

The other sides are about 98% done. We are so close to victory!!!

Today was spent on the ground. Cleaning. So very very much cleaning. I wanted to get the back door cleared away so that we could get in and out of that door since our dogs like to use the bathroom out there.

Aaron got that part all taken care of and so life is good. We still have a mess and we are probably getting a dumpster to load it all up into and be done with it. This is our pile that has been moved out of the front of the yard and the side and is going into the dumpster.

And look! We can get out the back door!


I wish that the ending of this story was better and more interesting. It seriously started to drag on and on.

Just so everyone knows, we are leak proof and tired. We probably won't be doing any more big home improvements for a little while.

On Wednesday, some of the Elder's Quorum are coming over to help us get these shingles in the dumpster! Should be tons of fun!

Thanks for following along!

Who is still reading this? Arggggg....I'm so tired of this story.

STOP READING!

Okay, if you kept reading, you get a bonus picture.