New Roof II - Parts 1-9

8/10, Monday    8:30 a.m.  Roofing supplies on a pallet along with longer trim pieces are dropped off behind the house on the side of the driveway, a bit on the lawn.

8/11, Tuesday    11:30 a.m.  The roofing crew begins working after being delayed by rain.  Roofing and cleanup completed and the last truck leaves at 6:58 p.m.  Some sunflower disrespect pointed out when I got home from work, but mostly I let them work and checked in from my window views.  Also received text from Julia, saying she was the backup project manager and secondary contact to Isaac, the project manager - not on site.

8/13 & 14, Thursday & Friday    Gutter crew arrived late afternoon.  My house gutters are six inch, but they arrived with 5 inch for the porch.  They asked me, and I sighed and figured 5 inch was adequate for the porch and let them proceed.  Not ideal, but whatever.  When the porch gutters and gutter covers were completed they let me know they would be back the next day to put the gutter covers on the house since they only had 5 inch.

8/18, Tuesday    Morning text to Isaac hoping to get a timeline on the work that needed to be addressed yet, more later, and when extra roofing supplies would be removed - 1 week after roof was done.  I waited two days with no response.

8/20, Thursday    I texted Tony the sales guy about the lack of response and he responded right away.  Later that morning Isaac left a phone message.  Tony texted to verify he got a hold of me.  I called Isaac after work, we set up time on Tuesday at 3:30 for final fixes and walk-through.

8/23, Sunday    Trimmed bushes out front.  Collected my third pail of garbage, nails, shingles pieces, and other left by the roofers.

8/25, Tuesday    Expecting to meet Isaac at 3:30, found out he arrived earlier, did some work, talked to Kate and tried to get her to sign off as complete.  I really did not like this.

8/26, Wednesday    2:30 pm I texted backup project manager Julia, asked for Isaac's supervisor's name and number.  4:00 pm that day the leftover supplies got picked up, 15 days after roof completed.

8/27, Thursday    Project manager Julia texted back with names and a number.  When I called that afternoon that number never rang, so I looked up the Madison office number from their website.  Eventually I was put in contact with supervisor Matt.  We spoke that afternoon and I went through my whole complaint list, noting to him that in the grand scheme of things most of it was nothing, but it is the work that lasts.  We have an appointment at my house after work on Monday so he can see my issues in person.

These are pretty much my timeline notes so far, with video to back up almost all of it.  I should have written this in parts as it happened, but I was not expecting this to be so drawn out.  My big issue is with the seam between the porch and the house.  It has looked like shit since we bought the house so I expected it to look much cleaner after this, but it did not.  They did not use a wide enough board to cover the old black caulk, so you could see the old caulk and the new, and it was ugly.  Apparently Tony failed to measure this area too, beside my gutters.

Isaac's proposed fix was some paint.  I was skeptical, but was willing to see what he would do.  Then he was sure to get in and get out before I got home from work.  He knocked on the door and my wife happened to be home, so he told her generally what he did and handed her a paper with some random numbers to pay and asked her to sign it off as complete.  She wouldn't, of course.

He didn't paint, he attached a piece of flashing that creates a channel.  Well, I've never seen anything like it on a house so it's hard to describe, but I don't like it one bit.  Then I saw him on video strategically photograph it for their records, but not the view of the second picture below.

This is a very reputable company with great google reviews, an inspiring backstory, and an A+ Better Business Bureau rating, all reasons I chose this company.  But yet, service has been terrible and this is yet incomplete.  I require a better fix for this and we'll see what Matt says on Monday when he sees this work in person.  I can't imagine anyone thinking this is okay.

Our Pottery Pieces

As I noted before, we tried something small, but we think they turned out well and may try again with something more adventurous.  Fired Up Pottery; their website isn't much, but is here.

August This-And-Thats

I know I've lamented my waning use of the firepit each of the last few years, but it continues as I've only had the two so far this year.  The mosquitoes haven't seemed as bad this year, but that may be because I've spent less time outside with less fire pits.  Allergies have been present, but have been less severe as last year.  Again, less outside time, maybe?  We've had some good stretches of windows-open weather, but more stretches of heat and/or humidity keeping the air conditioning on.

Summer was at its peak when I mentioned it here, and a week after that it showed.  That's not saying there's not some good summer left, just that I recognized the peak.  Atwoodfest has normally been when I've accepted the season is waning.  It certainly doesn't mean that summer is over, but it's time to just appreciate the warmer weather while we still have it.

We attended Eken Park Fest yesterday for an hour or two.  A nice, nearby neighborhood festival, but small, and it actually snuck up on us.  When we realized it was this weekend we chose in the spur of the moment to go there to find lunch.  We chose a local Mexican restauranteur, and it was very good.  That morning we had gone to a pottery place where you can choose from premade pottery to paint/glaze yourself.  You pay, they fire it, then call you in about a week to pick it up.  It can get expensive so we started small to try it out.  Kate wanted to get a bear as a gift for a friend and they only had a small teddy bear one that will have a magnet on the back.  I did a small gnome in some common colors.  I had visited once before with a group of clients for work, and it was interesting enough I told my wife about it, and so we wanted to try it ourselves.  I hope they turn out well and we like it enough to get more adventurous the next time.

Roofing supplies were delivered on Monday, off to the side of the driveway in back.  The roof was done eventually on Tuesday, due to morning rain.  They got started about 11:30 in the morning and wound up leaving at 7:00 that evening with all roofing and cleanup finished.  Gutters were completed two and three days later.  Currently they still need to pick up the pallet with leftover supplies, add a water deflector above the walk-in garage door, and clean up the line of caulk above the porch where it meets the house.  More later as there is more to come.

The sunflowers took some damage from the roof and gutter replacement, but came out of it pretty good overall.  Some leaves snapped at most, from what I've seen.  The tall sunflower on the left has about 10 flowers currently, though tough to see in this picture, and more buds coming.  These multiple flowers generally get smaller and smaller as they bloom.  And the one in the corner has several blooms as well, but also has reached 10 feet and 2 inches as of today.

I like the idea of pure mammoth seeds that grow tall and have a large flower, but only the one.  But the unknown cross-pollination with the multiple flowers is more enjoyable, and for a longer time.  I must get the seeds of the first flower of at least one of the two I mentioned last paragraph, preferably the taller one but I'll try for both.

I've been making a different recipe of baguette recently, and I'm really liking the crumb.  I think I left this last batch in the oven a bit long, but the quest for the perfect baguette is a never-ending process, after all.  I made pizza dough this morning.  I'd been wanting larger portions so today I made the same amount of dough that I used to make for four crusts into just three.  Thicker than thin crust with 50/50 00/AP flour should be a good combination, I think.  Anyway this baguette made as crostini was absolutely fabulous.

I had some vague ideas when I started to write this, but it was mostly stream of consciousness.  Basically one of my this-and-thats posts, unformatted as such.  Oh well, good enough for me.  Go Brewers!

Rain 1, Sunflower 0

My heart skipped a beat this morning as I checked if anything happened overnight on the security camera.

The large sunflower (pictured last post) had fallen during the night, a little after 1 a.m.  It rained more often than not for the last day, and we needed it terribly, but the conditions just put it down.  It was only about seven in the morning but I immediately went out and wound up putting in three stakes to stabilize it.  The little one next to it came up with it but the cage that is still around it was enough support for that.

And after raining all day we just got a bit of sun so here it is now.  I think it's going to make it.  

That flower I was planning on bagging so I can collect the seeds, and it has at least 10 more buds on it to come yet.  The one on the right also has multiple buds coming.  I'm thankful for the sunflowers I have, but it has been a brutal year for them, overall.