The roof is installed!
I'm really picky about things being done "right" so when dealing with others work I constantly remind myself "If you don't expect too much you won't be disappointed." However I was still disappointed.
As I mentioned previously I don't understand how they can run companies so poorly here. This company has been around for decades and has a very good reputation yet they didn't seem to do anything well, except work fast. If I hadn't been constantly monitoring their activities, fixing their mistakes and poor quality work, and actually stopping them during work (while shingling) to tell them they weren't doing certain things the way they were supposed to, I wouldn't have gotten nearly as good of a job overall as it eventually turned out. Yes there would have been pretty new drip edge and shingles, it probably wouldn't leak right away, and the average person wouldn't be able to see the difference from the street or a walk around but the first hurricane would have shredded the roof right off the house.
On three different occasions workers showed up to work on the roof...... without a ladder! Imagine a roofer ringing the doorbell of the homeowner to ask if they could borrow a ladder. Oh ya, and the request was in some kind of muted hand gesture sign language because they don't speak english. Roofing company trucks without ladders? ummmmmmm
I specified to include 15 sheets of plywood in the original contract based on what I'd found working on the house and told the salesman it might actually need more and if so that was fine with me. Discussed it with the supervisor the day before the tear off and made sure he knew I expected at least 15 sheets would need replacing. The day they were to do that work they showed up with 5 sheets of plywood. Not having materials show up before needed was a recurring thing I kept up with, inventory control is apparently almost non existant.
There was a change from 3" drip edge (in contract) to 2" drip edge made upon recommendation of the supervisor which I agreed upon. This caused a cascade of problems when workers were being told different things by the foreman, supervisor, and me while installing the new decking and some of the workers didn't speak any english so there were translation issues also. The result was that they didn't trim any of the new wood correctly (or the existing decking to the new length) on the edges and didn't nail any of the entire perimeter which is supposed to be nailed every 4" with 2 1/2" ring shank nails for hurricane building code compliance. I ended up having to use a cats paw and remove all the nails hoilding the tar paper down to the overhangs so I could trim the decking on the entire perimeter of the roof with a jigsaw. Once that was done I then had to renail/seal the paper back in place. Took me an extra 2 weeks working every day on top of the trim work I needed to do before they could install the shingles. It was only when I peeled up the paper that I realized they hadn't nailed any of the decking to the framework of the overhangs. So literally none of the decking was actually nailed to the frame of the house for 2' all the way around the perimeter the house! The only thing nailing the plywood to the frame would have been the randon roof nail holding the tar paper or shingles that just happened to hit a 2 X 4.
I had multiple discussions with the salesman, supervisor, and job foreman prior to any work starting to inform them that none of the decking on the overhangs anywhere on the house were nailed down because all of the old nails were cut below the plywood so I could replace all the bad 2 X 4's in the soffits. Yet none of the new or old decking was nailed before the tar paper was installed and then I had to remind them again that they needed to go around the whole house and nail every 4" before drip edge was installed because they started installing the drip edge without nailing the decking first.
Seems like they try so hard to be fast that doing a good job is secondary. I actually had to stop the roofers and make them take shingles off and reinstall them correctly even though I'd witnessed the supervisor explain to them twice how the valleys were to be cut. The only thing I couldn't fix before it was too late (or after they were done) was the courses of shingles not being straight or even. I didn't see that till they were already packed up and gone. If I didn't have so much other work to finish myself I'd probably go tear off the shingles and fix it.
Here's a few of the types of things I wasn't happy with, there were more.
Luckily because of the low pitch of the roof and designer shingles you can't really see the crooked courses of shingles from the ground/street. If it was really visible I'd take it up with the company. I may fix it myself, but it would be time consuming because of the valleys, venting, and ridge cap involved.
So on another subject, my planned work has been moving along although I did lose a couple weeks because of the roofing perimeter debacle. All of the trim work on the soffits is complete. Ceiling on the porch is installed and I'm painting. Once the paint work on everything I'm finished working on is done I'll trim in the header box and posts on the porch. Still trying to decide on a "look" for the columns.