Ever here the one about the doctor, lawyer, and engineer who decide to roof a house together?

You haven't heard that joke? Well that's because its a stupid fucking idea and a doctor, lawyer and engineer should know enough to know that they can't do the job and should shell out the cash to get someone who knows what they're doing to do it.

We learnt this the hard and stupid way....by trying to do it on our own. Two Friday's ago John Evans (a guy in heather's class who wants to be a cardiac surgeon) had me (the engineer), and George Wray (Heather's friend Becky's husband), who's a lawyer, over to roof his small, 1 and a half story bungalow. It's a small enough place, with four sides to the roof. We thought, "hell yeah! bring it on! and let's get drunk while we do it! If roofers can do it, surely we'll easily do it."

So George and John ripped the shingles off the back of the roof while i was at work in the a.m. and i showed up just after noon to start shingling. The first couple rows seemed to go fine with the tarring and nailing in because we were doing them from the ladders and was quite easy. But then came time to get up on the roof. THat's where the problems started. 1. the roof is pretty steep 2. we don't really know what we're doing 3. we don't have harnasses (just 2x4's for foot support while reaching down to shingle 4. we don't really know what we're doing 5. i found out that i don't like being on a roof that's steep, with no harnass 6. it took a lot longer than we thought it would and it was starting to get dark, cold, windy and rain was on its way 7. we didn't really know what we're doing.

You get the idea.

So i spent most of the time carting shingles up to the boys on the roof (small roof and only room for 2 people at hte most at a time). At first i thought it was a better job then actually being on the roof the whole time, till i realized that it involved me going up the ladder with a bundle of shingles on my shoulder, walking up the 2x4 ladder on the top of the roof, dropping the shingles off, then making my way back down to the ladder (the trickiest part for sure), and getting down. I did this quite a few times, and every time i got back down to terra ferma, i breathed a big sigh of relief and make my legs eventually stop shaking.

We finally finished up and the girls came over and we bbq'd and we collectively decided to have a roofer finish the job off cause there's no way i want to do anymore! It took us a whole day to do 1/4 of the roof, and after its all said and done, it looks like shit.

So moral of the story...don't be a cocky asshole. Pay someone else to do it for you!