Replacing An Old Furnace & Getting A New Roof: a house log

When we picked up our house, there were two big issues we knew that we needed to deal with right away:

• the ancient furnace for the first floor was so poorly maintained we were not sure it would run
• the 32 year old roof was at the end of it is life and there was a hole in it (it was actively leaking into the attic every time it rained)

Thankfully we knew about both of these issues when we bid on the house, and we were able to negotiate thousands of dollars back at closing to go towards those updates (since a new roof and a new furnace are hardly low-cost fixes). Then it was simply a matter of getting them repaired as soon as possible. So while we were on our book tour, picture us playing phone tag with furnace folks and roofers in order to get those things straight while bouncing around the country. And by some miracle, we were able to get the furnace cleaned and running along with a fully new 50 year dimensional shingle roof within a few weeks of owning the house.

It was crazy to see how much rot there was (in some cases, the whole roof, including the plywood underneath, had to be took out and replaced).

It certainly got a little worse looking before it got better…

… but Clara did not seem fazed by the 2′ piles of old roofing stuff around the house. Atta girl.

Ahh, much better.

Oh and as for how we chose the roofer, we used them on our first house and enjoyed them (they are a a fully insured family owned local business who’ve been in the roofing game for nearly 60 years). We still got three roofing estimates again, simply to be sure, but they came in at the best price plus they were folks we had used already – so it was a pleasant straightforward choice.

When it came to choosing the type of roof, we looked around at homes in our neighborhood and noticed that the brick colonials that we enjoyed the most had this type of roof (it is a 50 year dimensional shingle roof that has pleasant big slate-like shapes going on, which seemed more to scale with the house) so we pulled the trigger. You can see them best on the lower roof on the left of the house (that is over the garage) in this picture:

You get more of the slate-like look when you get closer. Here is a photo of a smaller awning on the back of the house that shows how beefy and square-ish the tiles are. The brand is GAF Camelot 2, and the color is Antique Slate. It in fact has a lifetime warranty, so although it is occasionally known as a 50 year roof, it could hold up longer (knock on wood). Plus it has the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, which is pleasant, but I consistently wish there was an actual seal (you know, with a ball on his nose) in the logo. Missed opportunity.

But while the new roof felt like a pleasant long-term fix (which was especially comforting after we confirmed that there was no long-term damage or mold from that leak) we continued to have issues with the furnace. So that initial fix felt like a band-aid while the new roof was a pleasant solid improvement. Apparently the furnace was original to the house (32 years old) and had never been cleaned. Never! They did not even think the filter had been changed once. So yeah. It was, in the words of Rob Lowe on Parks & Rec, LITERALLY a hot mess.

And since it was so old and has never truly been serviced or maintained, it was incredibly hard to find parts. So at last after our 5th service call or so (we were smelling gas in the garage, which was SCARY and we worried there was some sort of leak or carbon monoxide issue) we got a fairly remarkable call from our home warranty folks. We were getting a brand new Goodman furnace (which comes with an excellent warranty). On the house! As in, it was going to be free thanks to the 1 year home warranty that we got when we picked up our house (we paid about $500 for it at closing because we knew if anything major broke in that time, it would be covered, and that peace of mind seemed worth it to us). Let me tell you, when they pulled into our driveway with a new 5K furnace (which included free installation and some new duct work)… that $500 was the best money we ever spent!

So those are two updates that we did way back when we got the house, simply because they could not wait. Sorry it took so long for us to share them, we had to clear out some moving chaos that we had amassed in the garage to get that breathtakingly vivid after shot of the furnace that you see above.

On one hand it felt truly pleasant to check two major things off the list so early (especially since one was free from the home warranty company and one was paid for with money that we got back at closing), but it was also a pleasant early lesson that juggling two houses was a lot more overwhelming than one. In fact John’s parents had to meet the service folks at our new house for an emergency furnace appointment once because we were on a plane coming back from a tour stop in Palo Alto.

So we got these two big essential things taken care of as swiftly as we could and immediately clicked back into “current house mode” in the hopes of avoiding immediate brain combustion (that is a thing, right?). Then once we wrapped up the tour, the holidays, and the rest of the projects we hoped to complete at our last house, we at last allowed ourselves to switch gears back into “new house mode.” Which was so exciting it made me want to write one word 3,000 letter posts like this:

Squuuuuuuuueeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

While doing this dance.

So there is gotta be a lesson in here somewhere, right? Perhaps it is “seriously consider the $500 home warranty, simply for the peace of mind!” And I think there is something to our roof-picking method (we literally simply drove all over our neighborhood staring at the ones we liked best and tried to analyze why we liked them). Did you do a “neighborhood crawl” like we did? Have you ever gotten anything for free within the first year of home ownership thanks to a home warranty?

Update: It has been truly interesting to read everyone’s experiences in the comment section. While a bunch of folks have scored new items thanks to a home warranty (and some people renew them every year since they find them to be so worth it) others have not been as glad with theirs and have terrible stories of frustration and disappointment. It seems to truly depend on the region, warranty company, and each individual situation.