No, you shouldn't be thanking him for trashing your house; you would have gotten to the needed repairs anyway, and you wouldn't have been feeling negative about it.
Roofing isn't difficult, it's just a big ass mess. I was glad to not need to worry about any of the trash, or adding additional air flow into the roof (there was none before, and the attic paid the price).
I've got no nut trees; the trees I have in the yard are all either ornamental or dead (seriously, I watched one of them die this year - it'd be sad if I hadn't wanted to not have it anyway). I do have a boatload of roots though! Aboot the entire back yard is one big underground root. I can't dig anywhere.
@wwwiebe
The only repair the truly needed to be done was the roof. He was trying to change the soffits and literally made a mess out of them oh, so I have to have them torn out and done professionally. The house was painted right before he moved in and he didn't power wash it every year so it picked up green moss on the north side of the house oh, so I need to do that and when I power washed some of it I started feeling a little bit of paint up on the Gingerbread. What a bummer! But it's okay because it will look fresh as a daisy when the trim is repainted. As I write this I can honestly say that the trim is finished on the porch and the first coat of primer is on so that's kind of exciting. Inch by inch. I think I will be able to get some of this done. As for the roots in your yard oh, there must be a tree that's sending out feeders. I have a silver maple that I took from my house upon the Canadian border hand planted it there. Inside of two years it had feeder Roots all the way through several acres and I had silver Maples popping up everywhere. Every week I cut them down a little bit more and pretty soon I will cut the roots and pull them out. I'm going to take a look out at the trees tomorrow because believe it or not pecans have a season where they bear a lot of nuts and then the next year hardly any. Because I haven't really seen much I'm wondering if this is the ultra a year but I'll let you know and if there's the break is over abundance I will be happy to send some your way. Be a pal and say that you'll take them off my hands. I'll keep you posted on them.
Oh yes, I do have a tree in the backyard. Nine trees, in fact, but one in particular that is causing me headaches. It needs to come out, but is going to cost me between $4,000-$6,000 that I'm not looking forward to spending. I'm giving some serious thought to forgetting my age and cutting it down myself, piece by piece.
I was happy to have the roofing guys do the soffits, too. That's another chore I could have done, but was happy to watch someone else do.
Oh yeah, I'll take some pecans! And I will make pie! Now that I'm already looking forward to!