Thursday, May 24, 2012

Broken Barn Blues--Part One "Before"

This is the barn where Deb lives:
No, I don't live IN the barn. The house is off to the right, where you can't see it. That box is a strawberry bed, in case you were wondering. And my permanent ritual circle is up behind the barn. The downstairs of the barn is a garage, where I park my car and store all my gardening stuff.

This is the roof of the barn where Deb lives:
No, it's not supposed to look like that. In case you don't know much about barns, or roofs, what you are looking at is rolled roofing (as opposed to shingles) which was put on right after I moved in, ten and a half years ago. Rolled roofing can last anywhere from five to fifteen years. In upstate NY...well, let's just say that I was lucky to get ten. You can see that it is starting to buckle and pull up. This is, in professional roofing terms, Not Good.

I got a couple of estimates from professional roofers to replace it. You might have heard the screaming and sobbing from where you are. Luckily, my friend George (the husband of my friend Robin, who I often "rent" to do jobs that are too big for me to handle or require skills sets I lack...like the ability to use power tools without slicing off an important body part) was willing to tackle the project, which included some fairly substantial structural repairs inside the barn roof as well. It is still going to cost a Crapload of Money (multiple thousands) to put a new metal roof up there, but once I do, it won't have to be redone again.

And the metal for the roof comes in different colors :-) Anyone have a guess which color I picked?

In the meanwhile, the amount of money I'm having to spend (after having to put a new roof on the HOUSE last year!) is making me twitch a little. So if the gods could see their way clear to sending me a nice multiple-book publishing contract for my new novel, which is about to go out on submission, I would really appreciate it.

So--what color do you think I am putting on the barn roof? And if you had one, what color would you use?

8 comments:

  1. I think you are going to put a BLACK roof on. :)

    If it were me, I'd probably go with forest green or a dark gray.

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  2. I'm with Skye - forest green (which would compliment the red) or dark gray, which would pick up the color down by the foundation. Black would just get hot.

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  3. Nope, not black. As Lisa said, just too hot (although I did think about it-lol).

    Forest green is pretty, but with the 2 colors already on the barn, I think it would look like a Christmas tree. Also, I'm just not a green person. Except in growing things...

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    1. I would have said black, but you said no, I guess gray. I can't imagine anything else.

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  4. I feel funny even telling successful you this but just in case -

    try Sourcebooks. They seem to be big on the 3 book deals.
    Also - don't you do some classes on Savvy Authors? Liz Pelletier of Entangled Publishing is involved with them, right?

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    Replies
    1. Judy--bless your heart for thinking I'm successful. Most publishers do multi-books deals.

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  5. Judy in San DiegoMay 25, 2012 at 2:32 PM

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