Cleaning up at the house in Mobile after Katrina is now about 95 percent finished. One major job was completed right after the Thanksgiving holiday – the repair of our roof.

During the first several hours after Katrina made landfall, the prevailing wind direction was from the east. We were on the eastern side of Katrina’s wide swath. So it was only the eastern side of the roof that lost roofing shingles. Yours truly got up on the roof in the days right after the hurricane to patch the missing shingles as a temporary solution until our insurance claim was settled. I was pleased to see that our insurance company included a small amount of compensation for my labor on a hot roof! After the claim was taken care of, we decided to have a metal roof put on the house instead of redoing it with shingles. The materials were delivered right before Thanksgiving and were "stored" for a week in our yard until the work could start. We choose a light blue to match the paneling on the house. It wasn’t a difficult choice – there weren’t that many colors to choose from!

Monica’s cousin Sam, who lives two houses down from us, installs metal roofs. He helped us procure the roofing material. By the time we were able to purchase it, the price had gone up about 15 percent, a result of high demand for roof repairs following Katrina. He and another of Monica’s cousins along with 2 helpers installed everything in less than 3 days, so we now have a bright blue metal roof. We wondered whether it would be loud in a heavy rain, but it passed its first test with flying colors. No louder than the previous roof. The only thing we still have to do is patch a hole on the inside left when we removed a stovepipe that was damaged in hurricane Ivan.

Comment from Reggie and Sandy Warren:

"Congratulations on your beautiful new metal blue roof. We also have a metal blue roof on our house, which is about 1 1/2 hours east of the Home Office."