I was so excited to get all that snow off of our roof that I never really thought about the repercussions of removing all that insulation from the ice and puddles of water.   As the water and partially melted ice refroze last night, it expanded creating these heart-stopping, jolt-you-awake sonic booms that shook the house and us to the core.  Needless to say, neither Pongo nor myself got much sleep last night as it wasn’t just once this happened but 5 or 6 times over the course of the night.  Pongo was the lucky one who could get in a catnap before heading to daycare this morning.

We’ve known for a couple of years the roof on our house needs to be replaced.  We kept hoping we could make it one more Winter before having to spend mega bucks on a new roof.  We knew this Fall we were taking a risk not getting it done but before we knew it, Winter was here.  And, oh boy what a Winter we are having!  Anchorage is just 3.3 inches shy of breaking the 60 year old snowfall record of 132.6 inches. Here’s a picture just to give you an idea of how much snow we’ve had (this picture was taken on January 14th and we’ve had a lot more snow since then!).

While breaking a record seems pretty cool, it means massive amounts of problems for Anchorage residents.  We’ve had numerous roofs cave in, ice dams, roofs leaking, and the list goes on.  On Monday, I lined up someone to come out and shovel the roof and hopefully, prevent any problems.  We only had 3 days to keep the status quo.  I really thought we were going to be able to sneak by without any problems this year but low and behold, on Tuesday I came home to a huge puddle of water in the gym.  I don’t know why these things always seem to happen when Steve is out of town?!?  I promised him I wouldn’t get on the roof, so it was a matter of trying to find someone to come out and look at the roof at 7:00 PM.  Thankfully, the contractor who built our fence was able to come out and work on the roof.  We had a huge ice dam and water was seeping in under the flashing of the skylight.  He was able to stop the leaking and created a large trough in the ice dam to allow the melting, puddling water to drain.

Today a girlfriend’s husband, who has a small handyman business came and shoveled thousands of pounds of snow off of our roof.  It took him a back-breaking 7 1/2 hours to shovel our entire roof.  The aftermath of his work is astounding!

View out of the kitchen and front room windows

Poor Pongo can’t even keep watch for “intruder” dogs on the street anymore!

Shortly after Nick got done shoveling, the doorbell rang.  I answered the door to two pre-teen boys begging me to let them build a fort in the “huge snow pile” in front of our house.  I had to be the grouchy neighbor lady and say “no” in fear the fort would collapse on them from the weight of the snow, and we would be held liable.  Sorry boys.

Now, I just hope all this snow melts in a neat and orderly manner…