Leaky roof

October 19, 2011
I'm trying really hard to be grateful for our historic home.

Really hard.

We finally decided we couldn't wait another winter to fix our leaky garage roof. There were leaks everywhere and getting worse with every downpour. Jeff figured it would only take a few days to take all the old shingles off, lay down new boards (I have no idea of the proper technical term for those big, flat boards), and then re-shingle. That is until he started pulling off the old shingles and discovered our crappy roof had no less than four layers of shingles, not to mention a 20x20 foot tarp nailed down to fix the leaks, and rotten boards everywhere. It turned into a major headache, make that backache. All 2,000 + lbs. of old roof-ache. For us non-building inclined, that is a ridiculous amount of weight on a roof that size. Thankfully my Dad and Jeff's brother came down twice to help us.

It was irritating because the people we bought the house from said they had taken everything off when they put a new roof on. Um, not true. I imagine our entire roof is like the garage's, which isn't good and I'm sure only a matter of time before it starts leaking inside or collapses. When they finally got through the mass of layers where the garage connects to the house, water came gushing out of the shingles from the house. Apparently the motto with the previous fixes/owners was one more layer obviously means the water can't get through. Yeah, not so much. It was a royal-pain-in-the-you-know-what. And it cost a pretty penny too, which was a bit disheartening considering our garage is just cinder blocks with gaps everywhere. The best part though? We got a freak wind/rain storm before we were able to finish the roof and water seriously gushed down where the garage and Pearl's room meet. Our entire garage got flooded... the deep freezer, sheet rock, stairways, toolbox, bikes, stereo, and 4 wheelers. That was fun.

I really shouldn't complain though. I had the easy job.... keep the kids off the ladder and feed the men. And now that it's done, we haven't had a single drop of water in the garage!