The Sunroom Roof

I guess I never told you guys about our roof.


Two weekends ago we redid our sunroom roof.
Blake’s parents, my parents, and a friend came over to help.

I don’t have a ton of details for you, I wasn’t in on really any of this work.
But I’ll show you some pics and say what I sort of know.

Blake’s dad tore off the whole roof himself on Friday while Blake was at work!

And then early Saturday Blake and his dad took the shingles to a Garbage place.

Then they could get back at the roof again!

Now to remove the sky lights.

I know, I know…
the sky lights were lovely.

But they leaked. And to fix them wouldn’t be worth it.
They are HUGE.
They are the same size as our biggest window in our first house. We replaced the windows there, so we know just how much one normal, non-skylight window of that size costs. Two skylights this size would be crazy. I don’t think they even actually come in this size -- our contractor brother in law thought they were handmade. (None of the contractors who looked at them thought they’d be able to find ones in this size.)
And these sky lights had lots of issues themselves, so they weren’t salvageable.
I guess we could have installed smaller ones, but sky lights just are prone to leaks in general. Especially when you go to re-roof later on. It can be hard to flash around them correctly.

It was funny because we had three (non-relative) contractors come and give us bids on re-doing the roof. Essentially each one of them conceded that the skylights were a big part of the leak issues (but truth be told the whole roof was a mess of totally crazy wrong stuff) but despite them admitting the skylights would always be problematic, these three guys fell in love with the room on instant and each (separately) tried to talk me into leaving the skylight because of their aesthetic appeal.

You know me, I’m all about aesthetics. But clearly, having a room that doesn’t leak and rot off the house, is a higher priority over looks. I’d be crazy to leave them in, pay a ton of money to fix the issue, knowing full-well I wasn’t really fixing it -- and therefore would be paying a ton again in the near future.

So out they went.

The guys didn’t love this part --- Handing them down!!
Duhn duhn duhn!

Everyone lived!

The wood around the skylights was all rotted out. So that had to be replaced. And some of the joists bolstered up.

Then on went the roofing stuff.

I say roofing stuff because we didn’t do shingles.

The pitch of the roof is not very steep. If a roof is a certain angle or lower you can’t use standard shingles because the water (snow especially) will back up underneath them and cause problems.

So our choices were rolled roof, metal roof, or I guess you can find specially made shingles (but you really can’t use standard ones you’d normally grab at a big box store.)
We went with rolled roof for now because it’s faster and cheaper.
But we think in the long run we will put a metal roof on.

Initially I couldn’t handle how this roof looks. Blake and his dad came home with white roofing stuff. After I asked for black, since all the rest of the house has that black/grey standard shingle look. But they went for white since it’s reflective and will make the room less hot in the summer. (This room is essentially a three season room, it’s not in on the house's heating and cooling network.)

I didn’t fight it.

I was telling a friend about how the roof turned out, and in the middle of our conversation I just broke out into laughing hysterics because the white roof is just so unexpected I don’t even know how to describe it. The material isn’t explainable either. I’ve never seen it before.

But what I can tell you is….when it rains now,

 I don’t have to go out there with buckets and towels every few hours. So the white stuff works for me!

The roof is not really visible. It’s on the back of the house, so you can’t see it at all from the front, and you really can’t see it at all in the back yard since it’s up higher than your eyes.
The one place I can see it from is our bedroom window if I look (the window is behind our bed.)


So from outside the only place you can it from is one sidewalk around the corner from us. I took the girls on a walk and the first time I saw it, I was surprised by the fact that it wasn’t that crazy looking. I was expecting it to be painfully odd looking. But the house is white, so it kind of just blends right in. So I don’t hate it.

So we are just super happy to have it done and ready for winter.

Having our awesome family and friend come and help us saved us thousands of dollars! That is amazing! We are so grateful to them.


Now we'll need to fix up the inside of the room. With the skylights gone it is gonna change it up a lot. 

There is no way to make the wood work on the ceiling. No way to patch those blank spaces without it looking super obvious. So we plan to dry wall the ceiling. And time will tell how the walls fare. This room may not get to stay super woodsy.

Initially I didn’t like the wood walls. So you’d think I’d be glad to see it go. But I’ve actually grown fond of it. So it is a bummer. But like I said, I’d rather prefer to keep the room from rotting off the house. So aesthetics will be done in regards to what works structurally.

But don’t expect an up date on this room for a while. We think we will put the breaks on for now, to save some cash up and figure out what we are doing with the space. Blake and I are talking about waiting till spring or so before we really do much in there.

We want to take out the two old electric heaters 

and replace it with one more efficient heater/AC unit in the middle. It will still be electric, so we don’t plan to use it a ton. But it will be a better overall to have that there.
The fact we are removing the old heaters may prove to show tons of staining on the wood behind it. You can see lots of stain water drip lines above and below them from rain running down the walls. So that will effect if we can leave the wood there or not.

We also want to take out the one ceiling fan in the middle. And instead wire in two lighted-ceiling-fans to each side of the room (basically right where the sky lights were.) Which will be better for lighting and air circulation.

And other than that, we are at a stand still on how to make the room look as a whole. How to find it’s vibe. How to make it a room we each can love.

So we’ll take our time.

And that’s the story of the roof.