It's hard to find a good roofer. Last year we got new roofs on several of our buildings, but it took three years to get a roofer to do it. In the meantime, there was leaking going on that we are still repairing the damage from.

For two summers we called around and left messages (nobody answered their phone - too busy roofing), and 4 out of 8 called would agree to stop by to give an estimate but only two would show up, and then they dropped off the map.

Finally one said he could do it, but then he was always too busy to get around to it, and we wasted a whole summer waiting for him.

Third summer, 8 messages, 5 call backs, two actually came to give estimates. One of the two acted very competent in the measurement process, but never got back to us with an estimate even though we tried several times to get in touch with him.

The one we ended up with turned out okay, except he claimed the brand of shingles we wanted was unavailable unless we wanted to wait six more weeks ('the lumber yard sold my shingle order out from under me') and used an inferior product. By that time we were grateful to get it over with. He did do a good job on the flat roofs, which were the source of most of our problems.

Anyhow, we are going to need a metal roof put on our house here in the next year or so, and it's probably not too early to start working on finding someone to do it.