Just Push Pause

So our shingle choice is not good enough for Maryland.  Or rather, it's too good; it "promotes a false sense of history" by making it seem that there had been slate on the roof before, when it had just been wood shingles.  I completely understand that.  (Really, I do!)  But the problem is they want us to replace the current shingles "in kind," which means exactly.  The current shingles are pretty much Army surplus shingles from 1989, and look like the cheapest thing on the market.  The ones we bought, slate-color notwithstanding, are really nice, quality shingles.  (Who'd have thought this would be an issue?  Gregory actually wants to spend money on this, and the State wants him to tone it down!) 

Unfortunately, I have a big mouth, and when I got the news about the shingles I was also dealing with the fact that our renters' rent check bounced, and therefore our mortgage was (I thought, incorrectly) not paid.  And the kids were at the dinner table and the microwave was beeping and Abby was out for the night.  So I may have left an annoying voicemail message at poor Amy with MHT's office.  Later on, I emailed her apologetically, asking what we could do to get the shingles replaced without doing it in kind.  Haven't heard anything back from her in three days, which is unlike her.  Hopefully I haven't pissed her off...



A shot of the Bungalow from way back when, complete with
what we believe to be the original cedar-shake roofing.

 So today, what we are going to do is email her all the different shingle types we like, and ask her to tell us which would be acceptable.  Cedar shakes, fancy-pants shingles like the ones we picked out, and one other kind (I forget the third, a la Rick Perry), and none of them will resemble slate.  In fact, all of them will resemble what we believe were the original shingles on the house, dark brown cedar shakes, as seen in the attached photo.  We'll be in South Carolina for the next week, but hopefully during that time we'll get the approval and can start working, because the only things standing in our way now are the approval, actually buying the shingles (which we can do from SC), and getting the building permit from Montgomery County.  That last part is something Rory was going to do on Wednesday.  No word from him on how that went yet, or on how long it might take for them to respond, but hopefully we're very close.  So for now, it's not a "stop" or a "play" for progress-- it's a "pause."  And I just hope it won't be on pause long enough for the video to stop altogether and revert to whatever's on channel 3.