Vintage Life: Raise the Roof!

In the continuing story of As the Bungalow Renovation Turns – a.k.a. the renovation of our 1920s vintage bungalow – now that we had the walls up and painted and had laid most of the ceramic tile floors, unfortunately we found that the roof had started to leak in the sun room.

When we purchased the house, we thought we had about 5 years left in the existing roof, but it turns out it was only about 3 years.  And so we needed to replace the roof.

Although Greg is extremely handy, and I am a delightful assistant, we decided not to attempt a roofing job ourselves as Greg does not like heights. We hired a crew and they set to work removing all of the old roofing shingles. as you can see in the photo above.
There were quite a few areas where the wood underneath the shingles needed to be replaced too.
Since we had a crew up on the roof, we decided to go ahead and punch three large skylights in the roof for more light in the upstairs converted attic space. We’re glad we did – it turned out great! Here you can see the skylights being opened up...
Here are the finished skylights. They are perfect to bring in the light and give us a glimpse of sky.

After just two days, the new roof was completed and looked good.This is the view from the back of the house:

We choose a reddish-colored roof shingle that matched the reddish-paint on the brick foundation around the bottom of the house. It's a very patriotic combination with the blue paint and white trim! We are delighted that it looks so great. We could have done without an extra roofing job but it all turned out for the best! We were so lucky that our little vintage bungalow stayed nice and dry when Hurricane Joachim blew through.