Our 1870's house requires quite a bit of upkeep. Peggy and I worked several days patching concrete and painting the front porch. Then Peggy power washed it. It looked very neat and clean when we finished our work - after this picture was made.
There was just one more problem. Even after I cleaned the gutters, water seemed to overflow and drench the porch every time it rained. I didn't understand it - I thought perhaps the gutter wasn't tight to the house. Huh. It wasn't that simple.
Three days ago, Peggy called me to come upstairs. I seldom venture upstairs - everything I do is located downstairs. Peggy pointed me to the north bedroom window and asked me to look at the porch roof. Oh, no!
What I saw is in the picture below - a 2 foot by 4 foot hole in the porch roof. It was too late in the day do do anything but look at it from a distance and formulate a plan
of action for the next morning.
When I was a young man in 1951, I was a roofer and I could scamper around at any height - but that was then and this is now. I had to promise Peggy that I wouldn't go out there without some sort of safety device.
So, the next morning I tied a cable around my mid section, and carefully crawled out to the hole.
I didn't like what I saw. The roof had leaked and rotted out the sheathing in that one section. I crawled back inside and began gathering tools. I didn't realize how irritated I was until I saw this picture - in ordinatry circumstances, I never bite my tongue, ha ha.
After I tore into the mess, I found why the roof leaked. Shingles have a strip of tar-like substance on them. It is protected from sticking to other shingles in a package by a thin plastic strip. When the sun heats the shingle, it sticks to the hidden area of the preceeding shingle. That keeps wind from blowing the shingle up and keeps water from blowing back under the shingle. If the sticky stuff on the shingle doesn't stick down, in time the shingles can break off in high winds and/or leak water to the wood sheathing beneath, causing rot and usually, ceiling damage inside the house. Our shingles didn't stick, which explains why we've had other shingles break off during storms.
I had this happen on another house in the 1980's. It was a manufacturing defect and the roofing manufacturer had to replace the entire roof. This house was reroofed before we bought it - so we don't know the who and where of the roofing.
Now I had a choice. Repair the damaged area myself and hope for the best or call a roofer to strip off all the sheathing and replace the entire roof at a cost of $$$$. No contest there. I always do my own repairs if at all possible and this would be no exception. So I made a list of what I needed - we already had extra shingles - and my supplies cost me a total of $31.00 at a local builders supply. By the time I finished the above preliminaries it was noon and 92 degrees in the shade and the hot sun was beaming down on my work area. Simple decision - I'll fix it tomorrow morning.
Today (Thursday) is that tomorrow morning. I collected all the tools that I might need, tied my anchor cable around my waist, and with Peggy standing at the window to pass parts and tools out, I went to work in earnest, trying to beat whatever the weather person might have in store for us.
By the time I finished the first section of sheathing, the sun was already creeping toward my work area and the temperature was rapidly rising.
Starting the second section. What you don't see is the 2 by 4 supports that I added to the weakened rafters - I used bolts to secure them instead of nails.
After securing the sheathing, I sealed the seams with roofing cement, added a plastic covering over it, then a row of shingles to build it up.
By the time I finished all that, the blazing sun bathed the entire roof and the temperature was in the 90's. I passed the tools to Peggy, packed up the trash, crawled inside and announced, "We'll finish it tomorrow morning." I went downstairs, flopped on the bed and took a nap. Retirement is wonderful.
Above: waiting for Friday morning to do the finishing touch.
Friday morning: all finished before heavy rain Friday night.
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