Happiness and Joy!

The roofers finally showed up! I just got the call from the home scene. They are there working on the skylight as we speak.

One of the true thorns in our metaphorical side since we moved into our house has been the incorrectly installed skylights. I’ve been up there now several times to re-caulk them. It appears that they were installed after metal roof and instead of working the upper edge of the collar up under the roof, they stuck it down on top of the roof sheet.

In any event, it was raining steadily during the March that we bought the place. At that time the skylight leaked so profusely that a rivulet of water ran steadily down the ceiling and wall. The sheetrock was all spongy and the carpet was ruined (no big loss). I threw a rope up over the peak and tied it off behind the house, put a ladder up on back deck, walked along the peak, and then climbed down the rope to caulk the joint (Brit loved that). That mostly stopped it from leaking, except for a week or so after it starts raining in the fall. I guess something must swell up enough to cut off the leak.

We’ve had roofers out a few times over the years to look at fixing it permanently but they weren’t all that enthusiastic because it would be a lot of set up for not much work and they’d be liable if it started leaking again. But after hearing horror stories about mold (Ann + Lori), we decided to try again.

Enter the roof doctors; They came out and quoted us a pretty reasonable price to take the skylight out, put a new gasket or collar (I know that’s not the right terminology) down under the roofing sheet and reseal everything. That was in August. Today, it is apparently getting done. Yah! Forward progress!

SD

PS; Ann’s post about affordable electric radiant floor heating has me thinking about when we get around to redoing our basement – that would be just the thing for our chilly chilly slab floor basement o’ dank.

posted by Scott in Washington at 8:37 AM |