New roof (not without drama)

After 5 days of labor (ha!), we have a new roof with all the fixin's! We're really happy about the way it looks (and keeps us dry).

Before:
(you won't be able to see much difference unless you double click to enlarge the pics. also, notice the foliage from last June vs. April! I can't wait for all that shade!)



During:
(those guys are standing in the attic - from the outside - crazy!)

After: Ta-daa!

One of the side effects of having large openings in your roof for periods of time is that animals make themselves comfortable in your attic. So while the workers were removing the old roof, they came across a birds' nest and a squirrels' nest. Brian came in from being outside during the process of removing the nests, and he advised me not to go out there. He said it was making him upset, and even a heavily tattooed worker was having some trouble.

By the end of the week, the large part of the roof was finished and sealed off. But Friday night and Saturday, as we tried to enjoy being home in a quiet house with the windows open, Momma Squirrel was not going to let us rest. She screeched and hollered and hung on our window screens begging for access to her nest, where we assumed there must still have been a living baby, because this animal was losing her mind.

Much to my surprise, my husband spent 3 hours of his Saturday attempting various solutions to reunite the Momma and Baby Squirrel. Part of his motivation, for sure, was the assurance from a wildlife professional that the squirrel would and could do damage to the new roof in an attempt to rescue her young. So just like an episode of Go, Brian, Go!, he climbed a ladder, unscrewed a piece of the new awning, used a shoebox to rescue the baby squirrel and left it for the Momma to come and retrieve. And we never heard another screech from that Momma. She probably ran as far away as she could from this awful place where we keep kicking the animals out.