Shingling with dad

When your dad calls, you should answer. When he needs help on his roof, take it from me, you should let it go to voicemail.

That, in a nutshell, is where I've been for a week.

My parents decided that they needed to put a new roof on their house, and they knew just who to call. A professional. So they did. Then they called me.

I have a lot of experience with roofs. I sleep under one almost every night, and I helped to roof a giant barn only twenty years ago, so you can see that I've got the skillz to pay the billz.

The first step was to rip the old shingles off of the house. This was surprisingly difficult, because they had been nailed down. It would have been MUCH EASIER if they hadn't been. Remember this if you have to do any roofing.

Here's another bit of information about shingles- They're HEAVY. Sure, they're not bad if you only lift up one of them, but if you put them in a bundle and wrap plastic around them, like the idiots who manufacture them do, that bundle will weigh 75 pounds. That weighs exactly the same as 75 one pound Manly Man Candles! Strange but true. Oh, and you're going to need a LOT of these 75 pound bundles. Almost 100. These will NOT fit in the back of your pickup. If you try, it will explode.

So, anyway, my dad and I, with DAMN LITTLE HELP FROM MY BROTHERS (I say that to get the comments on the blog going), finished the entire roof in about a week. I learned a lot, I loved, I laughed, I cried, and I heard my dad say "Betty goot!" (that's "very good", in English) many, many times. I highly recommend doing your own roofing work.

I will, however, hold my breath the first time it rains. This new roof looks holier than the pope to me.