For nearly ten years, I resisted putting a modern roof on our house.
Because of the age of the beach house and several layers and patches to the roof, we needed to completely tear it off and upgrade.
The house is severely large and the roof steeply pitched, making the project labor-intensive and costly. Every time it rained, our partner and I ran around placing buckets and pots under the drips. Both of us realized that the moisture was steadily causing mangle to the structure of the house. Both of us had stains forming on the ceilings in particular rooms. After every windstorm, I’d found stray shingles in the grass. Both of us finally took out a beach house improvement loan and hired a roofing contractor. They started the task in early July, when the outside temperature was in the upper eighties with high humidity. Since our house was open to the elements, we couldn’t operate the cooling system. Both of us lived with an warm, sticky and dirty house. There was constant dust, bugs and noise. The roofing contractors began genuinely early in the morning and trampled our gardens. I couldn’t wait for them to finish up. I assumed it would take the cooling system a long time to cool down the house and expected to face an severely high energy bill. I was surprised when every room was perfectly cool within an minute. Since replacing the roof, the house is so much more comfortable. There’s less temperature stratification and inconsistency between rooms. Both the furnace and cooling system run less often, and I’m saving a significant amount on lower utility bills. I’ve even noticed an improvement in the cleanliness and air quality of our living environment. I now wish we’d upgraded the roof years earlier.