Saturday, September 20, 2008

Tonight's Post Went Away

Tonight's post is in the ether somewhere. Over an hour of work and gone away. It was done, it was pretty good, though there was some spit and foam going on and now it's become...a blank screen. I'm too tired and too pissed off to try to recapture that composition. So you get this.

Goddam. The site hung up, it wouldn't auto save and it wouldn't post so I tried to copy to clipboard so I could save in Word - gone in a single click and I have no idea why. I've had several really tough days at work, the kind of days that point out to me that I'm not in my 30s any more - by a very long shot.

I just got done tearing off and roofing a house that had virtually every mistake possible made on it and nearly the worst combination of factors for that kind of job. Somebodies shouldn't have been allowed to own hammers and nails. It was a 1x ship lap plank roof deck with inadequate venting, it wasn't papered in before shingling and those shingles were left too long, the second roof was put over the first with 1 7/8" nails, a weird pattern with metric shingles over the original standards and no starter course. Both 3 tabs. The lack of starter let the original roof burn out on the bottom course causing an eve leak and damage, the long ass nails were over kill and monsters to get loose from the cooked wood deck and the mixed shingle dimensions meant nailing crept all over the roof so nearly every couple square inches had nails and the original roof was cooked onto the wood deck. The original was asphalt felt composition and crumbly, the second was fiberglass composition so the top roof was a tangled mess and the bottom one was little bits everywhere - including the ground. The wood deck was so messed up from cooking and condensation from no paper that the entire thing needed re-nailing and then the existing nails driven back down and quit a bit of wood replaced. Knocked the snot out of me and almost ruined a tear off shovel that should have had a dozen roofs in it. It looks real nice now (not counting the mess on the ground I've yet to clean up) and it should last a good long while but I earned every cent I made - and then some.

Look here, people, comp roofing isn't rocket science and there are directions on the bundles but there are reasons to hire people like me - like getting it done in a reasonable amount of time and done right. If you manage to do it right, no matter what you get paid per hour you cannot save money doing it versus having me do it. Plus you get a guarantee and the materials warranty is valid and you're covered by a really big insurance policy. Really.

A good friend who is healthy and a capable sort rented tools and put a roof on by himself and did a good job of it. I knew the roof so I asked him how long it took him, eight times as long as me and wore him out badly - on his vacation. I was polite and didn't tell him so. He told me there was no way in hell he'd ever do it again.

Instead of a good post you get this.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Instead of a good post you get this.

Hm. I liked this post more than the froth and spit that you were about to publish.

;^)

One need only to look at your hands to see the hard work that you do.

Chuck Butcher said...

yeah, some pretty hands; manicurists don't get much of my money.