I had a friend who recently suffered hail damage to his roof. True story. He is a very handy guy who doesn’t really like paying to have things done that he could probably figure out himself. He also was in a little bit of a cash crunch, so he wanted to do this on the cheap, and pocket a little bit of the insurance check. I don’t know the rules about insurance checks; thus that’s not the point of the story. Re-roofing a damaged roof is a pretty basic process that happens to take some very specialized skills.

The real questions here are: Is it worth risking your homes’ contents? Is it worth risking your safety? Is it worth the problems with resale? When a real bad storm comes, will your amateur job do the trick?

Basically what I am saying is that doing it yourself is easy when things are good. Doing it yourself when times get tough is really really tough.

Anyway, my buddy fell off his roof. Hurt his back, and ended up spending more on rehab than he would have if he would have paid to have his roof replaced. Do it yourselfers often end up in a worse position once the bad begins. The bad always begins, you just need to know how to deal with it. Get help if you need it. Don’t go cheap.

The market is going to get stroked today.

The good news: the first season of Dharma and Greg was just released on DVD. Who cares, you say? No one does, but I didn’t want to leave you with the news that the market is going to get killed today.