Roof tales

So do you remember me mentioning that we had a storm a few days ago and that we had lost power for a bit? For a brief period of time it was some pretty torrential rain. We really didn't think anything of it at the moment. Then yesterday, I was walking through the second floor and happened to glance at the ceiling. We had water stains on the ceiling for a while, but I had traced around them so that I could reassure myself that they hadn't changed. Except yesterday when I glanced at them they had changed. The ones that were there were much larger and there were more of them. I didn't need to check pencil marks to tell me that. 

I call J. and he heads up to the third floor to see if he can figure out what was going on. He was afraid it was the air conditioning that has some vents that run above some of the second floor ceilings. (That's what the ceiling water stain in H. and R.'s room is from.) Of course to reach the under eaves crawl space to check, it means not only needing to navigate through K.'s room, but moving things to get to the entry points. This is not for the faint of heart or for those in a hurry. 

Did I mention that this was all happening about twenty minutes before J. and I were planning on leaving to see the new Indiana Jones movie? 

Well, K. managed to clear a path so J. could take a look at the air conditioning vents. No water anywhere. That was good news in that we could turn the air back on, but left us with the only other option that something was very wrong with the roof. Water must be getting in somewhere and running down a wall on the third floor. This was not good news. It was also not something we could do anything about at that moment, so we grabbed some dinner and left. This was probably the only time I've been glad movie theaters show so many previewed because even though we were nearly twenty minutes late, we weren't actually late. 

Today I spent all day at a warp painting class (which I'll share more about on Monday, and J. wrangled children and worked on figuring out what was going on with the roof. When he got up there he discovered an entire section of roof right at the top was completely missing shingles and the tar paper under it was ripped. No wonder we were seeing leaks inside. He and P. who had stopped by (probably not anticipating being a roofing assistant) got it covered up. There is still a little left to do, but we're not due for rain for another couple of days. 

It could have been much worse. Oh, and if you enjoyed Raiders of the Lost Ark, go see the new Indiana Jones movie. It was fun, though both J. and I wish Marion had a bigger part of the story.