Raising The Roof

The title of this post is apropos as it was rather noisy around here for the duration of the project.  Our shack here at The Platz now sports a brand-spanking-new, tin roof - green to be exact.  Constructed twenty years ago the original roof has been on our minds for a spell especially since the installed roof was a forty year roof that became sketchy before the twenty year mark.  Chalk this up to peninsula weather.  We also had a discussion with our insurance guy who shared that roof claims are the number one driver of the rise in homeowner policy premiums and they no longer underwrite asphalt-shingle roofs more than a decade old.  We were grandfathered.  Anyway, we figured a steel roof is a major plus for a future buyer and if we fancied installing a solar array on our perfectly oriented southern exposure we could confidently do so on this roof.  But I digress.

This job was scheduled more than a year ago as the contractor was booked that far out; and fortuitously allowed us to lock-down the pricing and front-run the more recent Liberation Day reciprocal tariffs imposed on construction materials by the current occupant of the White House. 

ABC Construction, LLC of Bonduel, Wisconsin is an Amish family business who came highly recommended by a neighbor who had both a house roof and barn siding completed by Eli and his crew.  

Last week, Oconto County Lumber showed-up unexpectedly and dropped a pile of building materials on the driveway.  Around lunchtime the following day Eli showed-up with his trailer after completing a roofing and siding job for a neighbor one road over from us.  My neighbor's old house now looks like a newly-constructed house.  And after one full day and two additional half-days on the job, our house is looking like a sharp, newly-constructed one too.

Wisconsin has the fourth largest Amish population in the country, behind Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana; nevertheless, I've never worked with an Amish contractor before.  Like most Wisconsin Amish, Eli does not operate a motor vehicle.  He hires other guys to haul him around.  Nevertheless, he does use every imaginable manner of power tool and a cell phone.  He and his boys speak perfect English in general communications; but between one-another they use English and some sorta German-influenced patois that sounds like the Pennsylvania Dutch you might hear in a Mennonite community. 

Solid work Eli delivered.  He and his boys were polite, affable, efficient and I would be surprised if we find a nail or screw in the turf around the house.  I'd recommend them in a heartbeat.  The job wrapped-up before lunchtime Saturday and he was off to drop the trailer at the next job in New Franken just south of here.