Tuesday, June 26, 2007

Installment 9: Cascading waterfalls in my living room

Each new weekend (rehabilitating my home) brings me delightful experiences that broaden my know-how relating to house restorations.

I’m peppered with new terms and phrases continuously. Here’s the phrase from this past weekend – “dry in a roof”. It sounds simple enough. If a roof is “dried in”, it implies that no water will get into your home. It will not leak.

Here’s an example used in conversation:
Homeowner: “Is my roof dried in?”
Roofer: “Yes sir, your roof is dried in”.

My roof replacement began last Wednesday. It’s the first time in my life as a homeowner that I’ve ever had a roof replaced. I was excited. The excitement didn’t last.

I was told the roof was “dried in” on Friday. On Saturday I discovered it was not. I love waterfalls, but not in my house. No homeowner horror compares to seeing water cascading down an interior plaster wall.

The damage was not that bad due to some quick action and a thankfully short rain storm. I’ve learned, in great detail, how to “dry in” a roof. I’ve also learned that no matter how good it would have felt in the short term to apply a hammer to another persons head, the long term consequence of that action would not have been beneficial to Ted.

Life and the work on the house go on. I’ll share some pictures of the roof another time. Despite the problems, I really love it.

5 comments:

Ann said...

Perhaps your contractor just wanted to bring a little of the outdoors inside . . .

Around our house, the saying is: No matter who comes to your house to work, they will do something wrong.

So far, it's been true each and every time.

Anonymous said...

I love when Ted talks in third person.

B.W. Smith said...

Yeah, me too. It's like he's narrating his life as it happens. It makes me feel like I'm in a real-time novel. [joke]

Seriously, it sounds like you handled it much better than I would have.

dan chandler said...

Ted, I feel pretty lucky now.... as you know, I’ve taken out the newer, eight foot ceiling in my upstairs, which left just the original, hole-filled, plaster, 12 ½ foot ceiling. Without significant rain lately, I’d not considered that the lower ceiling may have been catching major roof leaks. I even had a plasterer scheduled to come in a repair the ceiling last week. But that was before last weekend's rain. During the storm, I had one small drip spot and two big waterfalls. This is likely the first time I’ve ever been happy that my upstairs is in bad shape because that just meant that there wasn't anything nice up there to damage. Thankfully the plasterer had been held up on another job the week earlier; else some not inexpensive plaster work would have washed away in the storm.

Unknown said...

It's a relief having your roof repaired, or else the damage will deteriorate your ceiling's strength to the point of costing a lot of cash to repair the roof AND the ceiling. That's why I always look out for spots that rainwater may possibly get in my house, so I can call for the Denver roofer before the problem becomes huge.

Having a leaky roof is one of the primary home problems whenever the rainy season arrives, which is the reason why I have the Denver roofers on call, especially when my shingles got blown off due to strong winds.