New Roof

We put a new roof on our house this past week. The job has been in the cards since we moved in, but we decided we'd just get it done this year. The roof was pretty worn in many places, and we had a problem with a leak around one of the bedroom windows upstairs, which caused a little damage to the plaster on our living room ceiling. Hopefully that's been sorted out now.

The new roof doesn't really look very different to me, but I know next to nothing about these things. A. seems pleased with the job the roofers did, though. We wanted to keep the same colour of shingles - red - but the replacements are a little browner than what we had originally. Still looks OK, though.

The roofers we employed are an interesting bunch. They are actually Mennonites, and live in a religious community just north of the city. They do all kinds of work - roofs, siding, windows, as well as furniture-making and cabinetry - but only take on work that's been referred to them by a previous client (we had to be 'introduced' to them by A.'s friend C., who's employed them to do a lot of work on his own house). And once the job is complete, you don't actually pay them directly for their work - you make a donation to the community. It's an unusual business model, to say the least.