On April 19, a freak hail storm pounded our property. We were not home at the time, but according to news broadcasts from that evening, the hail ranged from golf ball-sized to baseball-sized. We have been dealing with insurance claims and repairs ever since.
The damage to our cars was obvious. The windshield on my car and Morgan’s old car, the one we’re trying to sell, were broken. Morgan’s old car, Morgan’s new car, and my car also received extensive hail damage to their bodies. Morgan’s new car and my car have full coverage, and the combined estimate to repair them is $9,500, which doesn’t include the windshields. Morgan’s car has been sitting at Dent Masters for a month now and there are a hundred cars needing hail repairs in line before they get to hers.
After some prodding from our neighbor who pointed out a few dents on our gutters and air conditioner, we decided to call our home insurance and have them send out an inspector to check for any damage to our home or roof. I didn’t see any major damage that needed our attention, but the inspector disagreed to the tune of $50,000, which included replacing the entire roof on our home (which is four years old) and my workshop (which is two years old) — not to mention gutters, patio screen doors, a window pane, and a few other odds and ends.
We contacted a well-established local roofing company who came out last Monday to inspect the damage and run the numbers. They told us they were backed up for a couple of weeks, but would fit us in as soon as they could. To prepare for their visit, they said we should remove any items on shelves that could fall over or potentially break. Apparently, the roofing process shakes the entire house down to its foundation. They said some other things, but this is all I could see in my mind’s eye as the conversation continued:
This is one of three walls that look identical in my home office. Fortunately I had a couple of weeks to formulate a plan to figure out how to secure all this crap from falling or breaking.
Friday morning, the company called at 7:45am to inform us they had an opening and would be there at 8am. And arrive they did, a dozen roofers piling out of sputtering vans that made mine look like a showroom model. Within just a few minutes, gutters were being removed and shingles were flying.
Because we received literally no notice I was working from home that day, and boy did I put multiple sets of noise-cancelling headphones to the test. The inside of our home sounded like a drum solo that started a few minutes past eight and lasted for more than twelve hours. Until the volume was cranked all the way up, I found that my ear buds did almost nothing to drown out the relentless hammering. My Jabra headphones, which cover the entire ear and have a noise cancelling feature, did a better job of drowning out the monotonous beats but did nothing to stop the wall-shaking booms that came from dropping entire bags of shingles onto the roof. I had the best success with a pair of 3M WorkTunes, which are noise-cancelling earmuffs designed for reducing construction noise, but also have Bluetooth connectivity.
Other than a 30 minute lunch break around 2pm, the roofers worked non-stop from 8am-9pm. By Friday night, 90% of our home’s roof had been replaced and nothing had been done on the workshop. Saturday morning, the crew was back at 8am again to continue work. Susan and I went to grab some breakfast Saturday morning, and by the time we returned our house’s roof was complete and everyone had moved to the workshop.
By noon on Saturday, the roof was complete — that being said, the roof is just a part (albeit the largest part) of needed repairs. We still have to replace the gutters, a window, a window pane, a screen door, and recomb the workshop’s air conditioners.
On Memorial Day, Susan was floating in the pool and discovered a long strip of air compressor nails floating in the bottom of the pool. I have a fishing magnet which we’ve been using to fish out all the metallic “crumblies” from the shingles that ended up in the pool, which also easily picked up the nails. After a not-very-happy call from Susan to the roofers, they had three people back at the house to check the pool and crawl around on their hands and knees picking up any debris left behind by the original crew. For the record, my porches, patios and driveway are cleaner now than when the crew arrived. The nails were a fluke and fortunately they didn’t do any damage, so no harm, no foul.
Along with the remaining house repairs, we’re still waiting for them to start work on Morgan’s new car, and then they’ll start on mine after that. The big takeaway from all of this is, if you can avoid baseball-sized hail, I’d recommend it. Fortunately I’ve lived in Oklahoma for nearly 50 years and never dealt with hail damage before, so hopefully this ends up being a once in a lifetime nuisance.
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