My water spot: when I woke up it was the size of a nickel, and this is what happened over the course of 2 hours!
Yesterday morning I woke up to two things. The first was a dog puking Styrofoam. Yuck. The second was a great rain and thunderstorm, then a fast water dropping sound immediately over my head. The sound was so loud it was easy to spot the action, where a small discoloration was rapidly forming on the ceiling.
Even coming from one of the wettest of all the United States, I had never experienced a leaky roof before. Having seen lots of water damage in pictures of Houston homes while we were looking through the real estate listings, however, this was my first suspicion. I got up on the arm of the couch to feel the spot, and sure enough, my growing spot was wet. Arg!
I sent Jeff a text at work and told him about my dilemma, and he told me to go up in the attic and put a bucket under the spot. Now, I don't do attics, crawl spaces, or anything out of the immediate living area of the house. In Texas I don't even do garages, because that is where the bugs live. So I was absolutely horrified by this idea. The spot was getting really big, though (and Jeff was getting kind of annoyed that I was willing to let our ceiling cave in rather than gut up and brave the attic while he was way too far out of town to come home and deal with it) so I got my arse up there with a flashlight, and Quinn followed me, probably afraid I was going to fall through the ceiling because I am so clumsy.
We didn't find the water source we were looking for, but Quinn did spot another leak just above the garage. A BIG one! We kept looking and looking for a drip coming over our spot in the living room, though, and could not find it to save our lives. It might have also had something to do with the fact that we only got about 5 feet into the attic and then didn't know where to walk because all the supposed beams you are supposed to walk on were covered with insulation. So we were kind of perched in the middle with the flashlight trying to check it out, while our lungs slowly closed because insulation is totally TOXIC! The baby is probably going to be born with respiratory disease now.
Anyway, feeling fairly useless I came back down to check out my ever growing water spot in the living room, and remembered that Jeff's dad had the week off work. Jeff called the house and within a few minutes Howard was on his way over. Howard to the rescue! He's pretty handy at everything, so I was really glad he was able and willing to come out at 8am on his day off work!
Howard showed up with a couple ladders, a bunch of buckets and some roof putty stuff. Side note- this is why guy relatives who are dad/grandpa age are absolutely the best... who else would have things like roof putty on hand, seriously? Certainly not most of the guys my age, who would show up and stand in the middle of the attic as baffled as I am. It reminds me of the time I moved into my old house and the bathtub wasn't draining properly, and my Uncle Jerry showed up with his tools, took my bathtub apart, and fixed it. How they learn to do this stuff, I have no clue, but they have so many darned tricks up their sleeves it's amazing. Now back to our story...
Howard looked at the spot, then checked the other side of the wall (not something I had thought to do) and there was another spot where it was coming through there, as well. He went up in the attic while I banged on the area he was looking for with a curtain rod, and he found it. Turns out the challenged former owners (probably the same people who put up 3 layers of wallpaper and then painted over it, thus destroying the kitchen walls) had nailed up a board over the spot that was leaking. He thought it looked like it had leaked before, and apparently this was part of their solution to fix it. So water was coming in at the top of the board and then dripping down to the bottom (it's slanted since it's at the top of the roof) and into our living room! It was impossible to fix without going on the roof, and it was way too wet to try that, so he got a bucket under it and our ceiling was saved. Thank goodness! Now Jeff and I just have to go up on the roof and patch our couple of leaky spots.
I am slightly irritated with our home inspector. Why he did not notice the leaks, particularly when there was a weird board nailed to the roof of the house, I have no idea.
1 comment:
Howard was pleased that he could help out! Your uncle and Howard's accumulated knowledge was gained from having to tackle repairs and projects around their homes. It is too expensive to always call a repairman, so they learned from just having to dig in and figure it out :)
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