The Sky is Falling (Day 2)

 

How about that? I managed to get roofing AND a Doge image all at once!!! Inordinately proud of myself!

So where was I? Ah yes! More to the story... an entire day-full of thrills and spills!

So Day 2 dawned equally hot and sunny and sure enough, the crew was back and whaling away up yonder, applying the now correct Shasta White rolled roofing and redoing the flashing and edging.  I neglected to mention several pertinent fun-facts from our first day. Like the company estimated out all  the materials based on some satellite image from a company A1 contracts with. I had noticed on our contract that the figure of our house's square footage seemed high, but I (incorrectly) assumed that when they got here, they'd measure the correct square footage: pretty simple in our case as our  house is a large rectangle (21' x 48") with a smaller square attached (my studio at another 20" x 20"). They had used the latest fly-over drone technology (or something) to get 1800 square feet. It's actually closer to 1400. That is a 400 square foot difference, right? So I pointed out to A1 that they were wrong, prompting Bob and the supervisor (*1) on duty to measure our house and guess what? I'm now arguing that they're charging us for way more material than we needed. This caused Corrine back at the office to re-revise the figure down, all the while arguing with me about waste from cutting, how I didn't know how these things were measured etc etc. I explained how I work with materials and if you'd asked me to measure, I'd have a whole lot less waste than that!!!  Anyway, the work proceded.

That's us "raising the roof". But we looked way less chipper. There were a few "light-hearted" moments. On Day 2, as it was not as noisy and still hot, I repaired to the bedroom with Robin the Good (who thought hanging out at Bob's studio was just weird) where we have air conditioning. I was laying on the bed, playing a game on my phone when suddenly, the sky light gets lifted up and there's all these young guys and I eye to eye. We all laughed and I shut off the air conditioning and exited the room. (*2)

Did you think that was the end of this tale? Hahahhahaha! I then realized that if there was all this scrap left over, it's our property (as has been argued that the bread and other things on the table at restaurants). So I informed Donny at A1 that I wanted all the scrap as we're handy and could use it for repairs around our property. (*3) Turns out it went into yesterday's dumpster as "most people" (*4) don't want it. So further arguing insued and they actually conceded another mark-down on our bill for unused material. And then the supervisor left us a nice pile of under layment and rollled roofing and some aluminum edging and plywood...

As the crew was finishing up, I put in what I hoped was my last phone call to A1 headquarters. I had a figure (still way higher than I liked but significantly lower than their originally revised materials charge) and asked Donny to confirm how much the check should read. He quoted me a figure a couple hundred dollars higher (oh please god will this never stop!??!!?) and I asked (blood pressure rising yet again) where he got that from. He said, "Oh, we had to charge you for the building permit". I explained that Nick (the salesman) told us it was included in his quote. So they took that off, too. Major weasels!! Trying to add on from ne end of this job to the next!!!

This roofing adventure was a struggle from beginning to end. (* 5) Nothing pleasant about any of it. It always seems to me that if you spend thousands of dollars, there should be some modicum of pleasure involved. Mostly it seems to be the other way around. The roof is done and we have nothing but praise for the roof crew. The roof looks great, they cleaned up admirably, they were pleasant. But the company. Yikes. And now I've received phone calls and emails attempting to solicit "positive feedback" and "great reviews". Hahahahahhaahahahhahhahhhahhaha!!!! We're awaiting today's rain, hoping for no leaks.

(*1) Josh the supervisor corroborated our suspicions that this satellite technology was often incorrect... and very expensive. The supervisor also said that he'd worked on a job where the drone had measured the square footage of the wrong house!! Sometimes, a good old tape measure and a couple of sentient beings is all you need for accuracy.

(*2) Good thing I had clothes on. A bit later, a hammer fell through the skylight. Thankfully I wasn't there for that!

(*3) Like there's a leak in Neko's horse barn that we can fix. Although we all got a good laugh when I suggested maybe A1 would like to estimate that. Probably charge us $10,000!!!

(*4) We are NOT "most people".

(*5) There was a cheerful note on our contract that, "It's going to be noisy and messy so you might consider spending the day elsewhere". Wow. If we hadn't been here, the office people would have forged ahead with up-charging and over selling and we'd be a whole lot more poorer!!!