Dear Roofer:
Sometimes I feel like my boyfriend and I are drifting apart. Like the other night, when I asked if he wanted to watch a rerun of Dawson’s Creek, which is something we used to love to do together, he said he had “other stuff to do.” He never used to have other stuff to do. Should I be worried? Help!
Concerned in Cordoba, IL
Dear Concerned:
You know, a lot of people ask me whether to completely reshingle or just patch. They think it’s going to be cheaper to just fix the places that are starting to show wear. In the short-term, they’re completely correct. And hey, it sounds a little disingenuous for a man who makes his living reroofing houses to say “yep, you should definitely just take it down to the tar paper and start fresh.” But you know what? Whether you’re planning on selling the house once the market begins to uptick (here’s to hoping, right?) or living there through the life of your mortgage (does anyone, anymore?), it pays to do the thing right the first time. To do otherwise, as my dad used to say, is to “shit in a sack and figure out where to put it later.” Man. I miss that guy.
Dear Roofer:
My son is a first grader, very loving and bright in many ways. But his verbal skills (he was a late and remains a reluctant talker) are at a level where the counselors want to put him in the classes with the retarded kids (I know I shouldn’t say retarded, but I can’t help it). I don’t want him to get tracked with the kids that are going to end up mopping floors for a living. Should I consider private school? Maybe I should hire a tutor? Take a stronger stance with the counselors? Ack!
Frazzled Mom in Frisco TX
Dear Frazzled:
It isn’t for everyone, roofing. I mean, sure, there’s a kind of freedom in being out there under the wide sky, the raw scrape of shovels on roof, the resounding chock-chock of the nail guns, the knowledge that you’re making someone’s home impervious to the elements (except for tornadoes, and those aren’t my fault) for the next thirty years. And sure, sometimes the lady of the house makes lemonade for the crew or sunbathes in the backyard while you work (you pray for those days, honestly), but there’s also the heat (brutal), and the cold (worse), and guys you hire on Monday–somebody’s cousin, usually–who disappear on Friday with their paycheck and don’t show back up Monday, and when they do, say Wednesday or Thursday, they’re obviously on the back end of a meth run (whether it’s trucker speed or biker speed, once the bag runs out, they’re darn-near useless for the next two or three days, except of course they need the work then, and you have to maintain a crew, especially these days when the INS sweeps sites and takes whole crews out, and then where are you?), or say a shovel-load of shingles lands on somebody’s barrel cactus and they want to hit you for three hundred bucks in replacement costs–it ain’t a picnic, is what I’m saying. Roofing sure as heck is not for everybody. Mostly, it’s for Guatemalans or Salvadorans. They’re short, and they don’t speak a lick of English, but once you see them work, you understand how those pyramids and roads got built in the Aztec and Incan Empires. And I don’t mean that in a racist way.
Dear Roofer:
My mom recently came to live with us, and she’s really messing with my family’s quality of life. When she lived in Florida, we had a few states to buffer us from her constant nagging, but now she’s right here and has an opinion about everything–whether my son should do concert band or choir, which bow-tie my husband should wear, which girls my daughter should and shouldn’t date–and it’s starting to cause a rift between me and my family. They say I should “kick her to the curb,” or at the very least put her in assisted living. I don’t like my mom anymore than they do, but I don’t feel right not letting her stay in our garage. I mean, she gave me life, however unwillingly, and that has to count for something, right?
Troubled in Terre Haute, IN
Dear Troubled:
I’ll tell you like I tell everyone else: you’re not a licensed contractor. Sure, you’ll save some money doing the job yourself, but whether you do it or I do it, whoever does it is liable for fixing it if it leaks. If you’re considering doing the job yourself, do this first. Go to your local building supply store, set up a ladder and grab a bundle of shingles. Lug it up that ladder five times. If that seems like fun, then imagine doing it thirty or forty more times and see if it still seems like fun. Also, don’t let the folks at the building supply store see you doing this. They won’t be pleased. On second thought, maybe you should buy and then return the shingles and ladder for this experiment.
