Mukilteo Musings

Holy Flying Doormats!

The Puget Sound area experienced a major windstorm yesterday. Now that we no longer have the two gigantic trees next to our house in our back yard, I actually find days like yesterday exciting. Unfortunately, we are in the midst of remodeling. Since our master bath addition will require a roof, we found ourselves with the dilema of whether to roof it with cedar shakes to match our existing roof or redo the whole roof with another product. Our house is 18 years old and cedar shake roofs have a life span of 15 to 20 years. On our street, I'd take a few years off of that number due to the proximity to salt water and storms. So yes, the answer was an entire new roof including the new addition.

Cedar shakes come from old growth forests. Canada has a lot of wilderness and very few regulations so they are tearing down gigantic trees to build our decks and roofs. Our homeowner's association likes cedar shakes because they keep our houses in harmony with one another. They have recognized that we need to approve alternatives because cedar shakes are becoming more difficult to obtain and environmentally, they are a disaster. We decided to buy fake shakes made out of recycled rubber tires. The color is a dark reddish brown. Our new roof will have a 50 year life span and we did something positive for our earth.

As of yesterday, our roof was about half done. Large piles of unattached fake shakes were up there. In the afternoon, the wind started to rip things around. I watched as a large uncarved pumpkin bounced from the top of my street, into the bumper of my car, down to the mailboxes, around a corner and into the driveway of a house about two blocks away. I kept watching it and laughing thinking it must be one of those fake lightweight decorative pumpkins but, no, it was the real thing. The wind was strong enough to send it flying.

Poor Apolo was hiding in the laundry room. WOMP! What the....? WOMP! Geez! Yep, our fake shakes are formed into sheets the size of a door mat. Actually, this is exactly what they are---rubber door mats. The door mats started flying off my roof. Two of them landed on my deck, three or four of them flew into the yard, and one went into the neighbor's yard. I was afraid to go outside thinking I'd be nailed. Immediately, I called the roofers. Within minutes a very brave man arrived and climbed on my roof during gusts reaching 40 to 50 mph and tied everything down.

By the time we went to bed, things had calmed down. The evening news was covering all of the damage. Dave and I got a particular laugh out of the story about the gigantic trees which smashed onto a parking lot of an automobile repair business destroying several cars and trucks. "Oops! About your car you brought in two days ago?!" All is still and lovely this morning. Now they say we are going to get some heavy rains. I hope they finish up our rubber roof-----SOON.


A house in Lynnwood yesterday from the King5 website. Hey, I can recommend a good roofing company. Looks like they needed a new roof anyway.

Only one fatality occurred yesterday. Evidently, a 44 year old man decided to take advantage of the windstorm by kite surfing on Lake Washington. He lost his life and that's all I'm going to say about that.

More coverage of the storm with videos and pictures here:
http://www.king5.com/topstories/stories/NW_101907WAB_storm_cleanup_LJ.18645f64d.html