We needed the roof of our home re-shingled and also the roof of our detached garage. The garage had an awful green shingle on it that obviously did not match our house roof.

The roofing guys showed up early yesterday morning as they had promised. At 7:20am, a total of 5 trucks parked in front of our house and men started pouring out of them like the clowns do in the circus.

These guys wasted NO time in getting to work. It was fiercely bitter cold outside; In the teens with the wind chill. I honestly don't know how or why these guys were working in these conditions.

But soon, the pitter patter... more like STOMP STOMP was disrupting my concentration above my office ceiling.

Shingles were literally flying off our roof in every conceivable direction. There was a dump truck parked in my driveway and another parked in my neighbor's driveway. It wasn't long before Mark told me that the new, but still annoying sound that I was now hearing, was the tar paper going down. He said, "that's a good sign." It meant the roof needed no repairs and was ready to shingle.

But then... I went into the back sunroom to get a better look at the de-shingled garage roof.

Uh Oh... not so good.

Frightening, in fact. I could see holes and damaged wood on the two side angles that were visible from where I stood.

And then, I started to sweat...

And pace...

Oh God! How much is this going to cost to repair? Anyone who has had their roof done knows there is a additional "repair" clause in their contract that can and will increase the estimate of the job cost.

Mark went outside for the umpteenth time to take his "supervisory" walk around the property.

I was wishfully hoping that for some unexplainable reason, just the two sides I could see were damaged, and that the other two sides needed no repairs.


WRONG! (I mean... why would that be anyway? Still I had hoped)

Mark said the other two sides were WORSE!

WHAT??

I had to sit down.

And so...

with each new board the guys would hoist up to the garage roof, I tried to calculate the additional loss of "friends" from my savings account.

There were about 8 or 9 guys on the roof each repairing one of the 4 angles of our garage. This went on for over an hour.

But then...

Finally, the repairs were complete.

I had come to grips with what I was sure would be AT LEAST another thousand dollars worth of work and materials.

Fine. What can you do? It had to be done.

So the guys finished up their job. They cleaned up our property remarkably well. They were in both my neighbors yards, cleaning up whatever fell there too.

Then came the dreaded knock on the door for us to inspect the job and for the roofers to collect the payment.

I got flush. I stayed inside. Mark went outside.

I held my breath.

Mark came back in with THE BIGGEST smile on his face. (I'm thinking, "Jesus, it's that bad that all you can do now is laugh?")

He is waving the bill above his head...

And then he says it...

Screams it...


"They didn't charge us any more than the original estimate!"

YOU ARE KIDDING! YOU'RE LYING! STOP IT!

He shows me the original estimate marked "PAID IN FULL"

I just stood there with my mouth hanging open.

"But why?"

Mark said the guy explained that we had definitely gone over our repair allowance built into the contract, but that "they" were just going to call it even and honor the original estimate.

We have since come to the conclusion that these guys were just freezing to the bone and no one felt like writing up a new bill. They just wanted to get out of the cold and go home at the end of a long day.

I am not exaggerating when I say that my husband was almost moved to tears because #1, the job was now done and #2, the cost didn't escalate as we were sure it would.

The roof looks great. The garage matches the house.

Mark and I have decided to take a couple dozen doughnuts and a $50.00 tip over to the roofing company next week.

"What goes around, comes around."