…for this year is the Tiki Bar roof. We bought the Tiki Bar nearly ten years ago and it has done its thing. But last year I noticed the roof was starting to look a little ratty and saggy as a result of the relentless Arizona heat and sun, so it was decided 2015 was going to be the year to replace it. The roof is made of what they call Tahitian thatch, and the final material is manufactured down in Mexico. It’s not cheap – the replacement material cost around $500, but the alternative is to have a monsoon storm blow in here with hail and I’ll have thatch strewn all over the place and a window to the skies.

The material came a couple of weeks ago but the pressure-cooker around here and a trip back to Massachusetts prevented me from getting started earlier. I was fortunate – any other year the temps would already be over 100 but the El Nino has made this a cooler and wetter spring for the Valley of the Sun.

You can see the material laying on the ground and how fresh it looks compared to the existing roof. In reality, the Tiki bar roof was nothing more than a bunch of thatch sections stapled into the wood, and once you started prying the staples out of the wood the old material either disintegrated or could be easily pealed off. Before I did so, however, I made very careful drawings and measurements of the size and placement of all the sections. After all, you only really know how to put something together after taking it off.

It was a messy job with all the old thatch literally falling apart in my hands. The wood underneath is not in the best of shape, so before I go replacing the thatch roof I’m going to paint it with preservative and remove all the old staples, which are not insignificant in size. I think I’m going to need to rent a compressed-air staple gun from The Home Depot.

Now that’s what I call staples! At the end of the day, after all the mess was swept up and tossed into large plastic bags I’ve got a roof shell and a plan to layer the thatch a whole lot better than the way it was done at the factory. With all the other stuff going on around me it was nice to simply have an afternoon by myself to do physical work and put in place a solution that will be better, and I hope last longer, than what was originally bought.

It’s like every other project I’ve undertaken over the past few years – you think you can get it done over a weekend but you get started and then find out there’s a whole lot more work involved than originally thought. I’m sure if I wanted to I could get back up on the ladder with my reliable right-hand man / sister-in-law Tammy and put the roof back on, but I want to take care of my investment as much a possible, so you either do it right or don’t do it at all.