Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Adventures in leaky roofs - part of my Lenten penance?!

As I was looking for labels to tag with this post, I came across "house disasters" and thought:

"PERFECT!"

We've been here before, to be sure. And look, I found that post all easy-like by using that label as a guide. ;-)

Uuuuuggggghhhh. But this problem isn't nearly so bad as others, so I can't complain. It's a stressor, to be sure, but a minor one in the grand scheme of things. Let's chronicle.

Last night Mike was at rehearsal, and I put both kids to bed. Just before 9, I was happily listening to a podcast while I crocheted. After about 10 minutes, I took my ear buds out so that I could turn on "19 Kids and Counting." I take a delightful sip of my drink.

Hark. What is that I hear? Sounds like water running. Henry and I had both taken showers, so I assumed that the shower head just wasn't completely turned off. I head to the bathroom, and it quickly becomes apparent that the water noise is not originating from the shower. A beat goes by. Oh. This is bad.

We had rain earlier in the day and the temperature finally above freezing for any stretch of time, and all of this after record ice accumulation and jamming in the region as a whole. Uh oh.

*cue the ominous music*

I follow the sound to our guest room/office. Water is not dripping. It is *pouring* from a few spots in the center of the ceiling down onto the area rug. I run for a receptacle and hustle it into place, along with a towel to mop up the water that already fell. Wait...

I hear more water. I look up.

*little creature bearing a forked tail and horns flies by*

There are no fewer than a dozen beads of water scattered in different places throughout the ceiling. It seems to me that they all glare at me, and then begin dripping simultaneously. As I dash for containers to catch the steadily increasing drips, it becomes apparent that they are breeding and multiplying at an alarming rate, and they aren't always close together. All the Tupperware in the WORLD isn't going to catch all of them. I find a big plastic sheet and some additional towels to handle spots that weren't dripping as rapidly and were the furthest away from their evil minion friends.

When I stopped to take a breath, I realized that the scattered nature of the water was a really, really bad sign. This means that water is pooled up above the ceiling and is just looking for any little crack in the plaster to work it's way through.

Around this time, Mike gets home. He takes one look at my face when I green him at the door and says: "What's wrong?"

"We have a crisis."

Now we both go into the guest room and he scares up some more containers to catch the water. He also has an idea of where the water must be coming in.

"I need to check the crawl space behind Anne's closet. We'll have to wake her."

Fabulous.

Into Anne's room we go, and Mike accesses the crawl space. Yep, rushing water, check. The space is so small he can't get a large container in there to catch everything, so he gets what he can in the area and empties it every few minutes. Meanwhile, Anne has woken up and thinks this is the funnest adventure EVER. She bounces around a lot, asking questions a mile a minute.

Ultimately, Mike gets the water collection system down to a science, which means he'll be up most of the night. :( I take Anne into our room to sleep. And predictably:

"Why did you bring my pillow and quilt in here, Mommy?"

"Because you're going to sleep in here with Mommy, won't that be fun?"

"NO."

"It'll be like a girls' slumber party!"

"NO."

It took quite a bit of convincing to get her to go to sleep, including letting her take over Mike's side of the bed.

"Are you going to turn the light off, Mommy?"

"Yes Honey, after I read for a few minutes."

*3 seconds elapse*

"Are you done yet, Mommy?"

*long suffering sigh*

Somewhere around midnight I'm awoken by Mike trying to clear ice off the roof, and tiny feet kicking, kicking, kicking!

"Mommy! What's that?!"

"My kidney."

"Oh."

*more kicking*

Oh right, this is what it's like to be pregnant. There are some things about it that I really don't miss.

When we awoke this morning, we found the guest room looking a bit more innocent:

The water had stopped leaking down, and apparently everything re-froze around 2 am and stopped coming into the house. Mike was able to sleep following that, after dealing with just one more issue involving a backed up gutter and water coming in via the front door. Oh sigh.

So, calls are in this morning to the roofing guys and the insurance company. We're not the only ones. Leaky roofs are rampant in WNY this winter. It's a bummer, but we'll get through this.

Conditions were treacherous this morning from the freezing rain, thus the driveway continued to build up evil intent against us, in a clear plan to just kill us and be done with it. Anne has been SUCH a good girl, praying for Mike when his car got stuck this morning trying to get Henry to school. So adorable. We're just taking things one step at a time and I've been pulling out my rosary quite a bit. I think springtime and Easter will be even more welcome than usual this year. :)

2 comments:

  1. Oh, Tiffany! We are house disaster soul sisters. The melting snow on our roof started pouring in one of the windows in our girls' bedroom and now our living room ceiling is brown and leaking. Same as you, it all stopped middle of the night once the temps dipped again, but we're scrambling to find a company to get out here - you're right - they're all BUSY! And we're just left taking pics for insurance and crossing our fingers that we don't have to use our tax return for this potentially ghastly repair.

    In happier commenting - what are you crocheting?!? :)

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  2. Theresa, so happy for kindred spirits. :) The roofing company told Mike this is the worst winter for roofs in 70 years. Your homeowners insurance should cover it, thankfully.

    In crocheting news, still working on that forest themed afghan, and it's almost done! I will post a photo when I finish. :)

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