(no subject)

Cordelia has been pleasantly surprised by her art class this year. Normally, she hates art, and that was a sticking point in getting her to go to the STEAM school, but this art class is, as she says, art and design. The design part, she really likes. She's enthusiastic about their initial project to design a lending library and is looking forward to the next class.

Cordelia argued really hard to be allowed to drop soccer. Scott thought that maybe getting her on a different team would help, but Rec & Ed doesn't allow team switching. We could have gotten our money back if we'd asked for it by yesterday morning (at least three days in advance of the first game), but we didn't know that until around midnight. We're hoping that Saturday's game will help the situation, but I don't think either of us are particularly optimistic.

I need to collect the money Cordelia and her friends have raised for Oxfam and make a donation for them. The kids have been using Rainbow Looms to make bracelets and rings, and they've been trying (without much success) to sell them. I think they've made about $25 in the course of four or five months. We've been talking to Cordelia about her prices-- She's not asking much for anything she makes. That's not awful when she's primarily selling to other kids, but some of the things she makes take a lot of rubber bands and/or a lot of time. Selling them for seventy five cents probably isn't sensible. She can make, for example, a little figure that looks like a Minion from Despicable Me. We think, based on the time and materials, that she should ask about three dollars for it. She thinks anything over a dollar is too much.

We've had two guys come to give estimates on the roof. Both agree that we need more venting, but they disagree on how to do it. Both also think we're going to have to replace a lot of the underlying wood, but one guy didn't include any costs for that in his estimate. The guy who is including the wood replacement in his estimate told me that they do financing for the cost of the roof which may make us more inclined to look at his proposal as it would be an alternative to taking more money from Cordelia. There's one more outfit coming this afternoon to do an estimate, and there are four more I could call if we think we need more estimates. I've liked both of the guys doing the estimates (which doesn't mean much). The guy yesterday gave me a fancy booklet with our estimate sandwiched in the middle, between the company's credentials and the catalogs of roofing products. The guy this morning is going to e-mail me his estimate later today.

I think part of my trouble with readjusting to the school schedule (apart from being in the habit of sleeping until between nine and ten) is that I switched instant coffees. When I went grocery shopping with Scott, I picked up another flavor, still Kroger brand, but this one has chocolate in it, and I suspect it has a good bit less actual coffee. The texture of the powder is quite a bit different, and I've been feeling kind of draggy since I started using it. I've got a couple of tins of my usual; I just thought I'd try something different. Maybe I can use up the chocolate stuff by mixing it with my usual stuff.

(no subject)

The third company we asked for an estimate on the roof just came by. This guy concurs with this morning's guy that much of the underlying wood of the roof will have to be replaced. That'll add a chunk to whatever we have to pay, beyond the basic estimate. He gave me just a single sheet of paper with an itemized list of things that would have to be done, no advertising, no copy of his license, or proof of insurance. He did tell me about all the houses in the vicinity that his company has done roofs for but offered no list of references.

Unlike the first two guys, he isn't suggesting adding more venting to the roof, just changing what's currently there a little bit. The first guy said he wanted to add about ten vents along the underside of the house's overhang. The second guy said that doing that wouldn't work because of how the aluminum siding is on the house. He wants to put in long vents along the bottom edge of the roof.

The guy this afternoon told me that in terms of shingles, we have a choice between a thirty year version and a lifetime version. The difference in cost is $600. The other two guys left me brochures talking about different types of shingles but didn't say much about what sort of guarantees were involved. Thirty years sounds pretty good to me, actually.

I'm still waiting for the estimate from the guy who came this morning. He's supposed to e-mail it to me some time today. My guess is that it's going to be close. Both of the other guys came in around $5000 but didn't include the cost of new wood in their estimates. This guy said he'd include the cost of the wood so we wouldn't have that sort of surprise. He also said that, as part of the roof work, his company would replace the pipe that vents the bathroom to the outside. He said that the current pipe isn't up to code. He's also the only one who asked to come inside and take a look at the attic so he could see what sort of insulation we have (which matters for venting) and see how the roof looked from below (from what he said, pretty bad in terms of mold and rot).

I liked the guy this morning best out of the three we had in, but we still need to see his estimate. As I said earlier today, the fact that his firm can arrange financing may well be a factor. We'll see.

(no subject)

I got the estimate from the guy who came this morning. It's higher than the other two by about $1000, but it includes the cost of wood to replace a fair bit of what's rotten (he said he might well need more, depending on what he finds when he strips off the current shingles) and the cost of the attic venting he recommends. He has two kinds of shingles-- one with a thirty year warranty/guarantee and one with a fifty year.

As I said in my earlier post, this company offers financing. That may well be the deciding factor. This whole thing is more expensive than Scott was hoping it would be. I think the bad wood in the roof came as a surprise to him (I know it did to me). I hate to add another debt to our pile, but this work has to be done, and doing it soon is necessary. I don't know if the current roof will last another winter.