A Shortage of Shingles

It will soon be ‘that’ time. The time in building the log home that requires roofing work.

If you don’t already know, I am not looking forward to this part of the build. Since Day 1, when people have asked when and if we’ll need help building this home, my first question has always been, “How are you with heights?”

The slope of our roof is 12/12 which I find reminiscent of an old, rural church. It must have been God-fearing men that shingled a roof back then – and lived to tell the tale!

I’m certainly not great with heights, having been incredibly proud of myself the first time I made it to ladder rung 3, but a girl’s gotta do what she’s gotta do – and we need this roof on before the snow starts flying!

Today I want to talk about the shingle shortage however…

The roofing decision began as “steel or shingle?”

We had steel on the old house (before the fire) and I loved listening to the rain pitter-pat over my head when I slept at night. The roofing conversation ended however, as a matter of finances, not romantic notions.

$6,700 to roof our home in steel. $3,000 for shingles.

Now here’s the interesting thing about shingles – apparently they are in short supply! The reason for this is due to all the hurricanes and wind storms down south – in the USA. We are in Canada, no tornados or hurricanes here – so why are we short on shingles and why are we paying higher premiums as a result?

Because we are. Here’s more news about roof shingles – the price just jumped this week an $8-$10 increase per roll! Anyone want to add $700-1200 to your roofing budget just because you had the bad luck of ordering two days after the unjustified, inflated, price hike?

Not to mention the price increase includes all in-stock product at the Rona store in Bancroft. This I do not understand. I mean, they didn’t pay any extra for it when they ordered it, and any returns on unused product from previous buyers wouldn’t net them a larger return. So what’s the deal?

Store ethics aside, I was told that I would likely need to order my shingles and they would take at least 3 weeks to arrive. This wasn’t going to work for us, so we went to task and our Rona Sales Rep went over and above the call to help us out. (I’ll boast about Paul McCluskey of Bancroft’s Rona later – definitely a ‘customer comes first’ kinda guy!)

The shingles we eventually chose and the reasons why we chose them will be written about in a future post. I know you’ll love the color, style and look of these for a log home!