Don’t take your roof for granted
- Laura Moore: Housebroken
- July 4, 2023
- 736
A bad roof leaks; a good roof doesn’t. That’s about all the thought we occupants give them. If it doesn’t leak, it never enters our mind, but if it does, it gets our total attention.
Roof repair is on the expensive side unless you live with a DIY. Taller Half always
wants to study a fix-it problem before we call in a professional.
We had a roof problem years ago following a terribly destructive storm. Our roof was literally torn to pieces with pieces decorating our entire yard. It was a ranch house, so it wasn’t too high, but it was long and wide. Almost everyone else in our neighborhood
suffered damage, but they all called in professionals right away. By the time Taller Half determined our roof needed to be replaced, because it was too big a job for one person to handle, we were placed on a rather lengthy waiting list.
It looked like it would take weeks to get our poor, sick roof replaced. In the meantime it was leaking like a sieve and our ceilings were breaking out in large water spots. We had two choices: hope for dry weather or roof the house ourselves. It rained. I was then appointed Taller Half’s roofing assistant, and the work began.
It was an educational experience, to say the least. It was a back-breaking, mind-numbing, repetitious, onerous, fatiguing, exhausting task that we will never, ever do again. It took us a month to finish the job. It was awful but also very rewarding. We never
again took any roof we lived under for granted.
Our lovely roof lived a long life withstanding storms, wind and another killer hailstorm. We heard it would be alive today if it hadn’t tried to save a hickory tree. When that tree fell, that roof caught it.