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Thoughts about roofing
Jan. 13th, 2010 07:51 amOkay - what's scared the heck out of me with this house-buying project has been that I work on the phone queue four hours a day, and I can't count on having any phone time to make calls during that time. And, I can end up on the phone for several hours solid outside of those hours. So, how the heck can I arrange to get any work done on a house when I don't have the time it takes to pester people?
We finally got a good estimate on the roof, but it doesn't include any structural issues. They can say "we'll tear down to the rafters, and lay new roof on the rafters, for $X." But they can't say "we'll repair rotted rafters for an additional $Y"... because until they're actually looking at bare rafters, how do they know?
And, they can't address structural/spanning issues - how they heck can they, without a structural engineer? So, yesterday, in a panic, I had to search for one. And found one.
He works out of downtown Renton; he doesn't know that house - but he knows the neighborhood. We had a good chat yesterday, and I think we can work on this, if we need to. (And I almost-kinda-sorta hope we need to now... it's fun to talk to someone who is clearly competent.)
So, one concern down - we have an engineer on tap, at a semi-known price. (Obviously, you can' never be sure how many hours, but you can get a good guess. And it's not like travel time is going to be an issue, even with Seattle traffic :-). )
We finally got a good estimate on the roof, but it doesn't include any structural issues. They can say "we'll tear down to the rafters, and lay new roof on the rafters, for $X." But they can't say "we'll repair rotted rafters for an additional $Y"... because until they're actually looking at bare rafters, how do they know?
And, they can't address structural/spanning issues - how they heck can they, without a structural engineer? So, yesterday, in a panic, I had to search for one. And found one.
He works out of downtown Renton; he doesn't know that house - but he knows the neighborhood. We had a good chat yesterday, and I think we can work on this, if we need to. (And I almost-kinda-sorta hope we need to now... it's fun to talk to someone who is clearly competent.)
So, one concern down - we have an engineer on tap, at a semi-known price. (Obviously, you can' never be sure how many hours, but you can get a good guess. And it's not like travel time is going to be an issue, even with Seattle traffic :-). )
