Not a day goes by that we are not grateful for this house.

That said, homeownership already feels like either a tragic or comic (depending on the day) series of ripping away band-aids to reveal ugly scabs underneath.

Like our roof. As previously mentioned, we need to have a new roof put on before winter (i.e. within the next month). Yesterday, the roofers came to set up, so our house now looks like this:

And the yard now looks like this:

This morning, they started ripping off the old shingles. Within minutes, there was a knock on the door, and our first bit of bad news. Turns out when the previous owners built this house, they went the cheap route and decided against anchoring the shingles in plywood. Instead, they laid boards across the insulation and nailed the shingles to those boards. The good news is that this explains the evidence of past leaks. The bad news: this means that we have to go through the more time-intensive and expensive process of first covering the roof in new plywood before the new shingles can be put on.

It’s naptime now, and I just went outside to look at the product of 2-days’ work: a very tiny area of bare roof, covered by a protective material because it’s probably going to rain tomorrow (thus delaying the process even further). And what you don’t see is that plywood is being ordered right now, which will almost double our expected expenses. Heavy heart…..

Until I noticed what was written on the underlayment.

See that? It says “Grace.” Turns out that’s a brand of roofing underlayment, and I don’t know how they arrived at calling it “Grace,” but how perfect. Because that’s what we’re going to need to get through these next weeks of pounding and mess and probably more tough decisions. In fact, that’s what I’m going to need to get through life, right? So maybe I’ll skip the shingles all together and just go out every day and look up at the roof for my reminder: Grace.