Monthly Archives: April 2016

Our House Has a Poncho

Continuing the story of unexpected homeownership expenses – we are going to be getting a new roof this coming week.

The roof on the house is the second roof, my grandparents had a full tear off done in 1994, so this roof is 22 years old. I had it inspected before we bought the house and the shingles were in good shape, looking like another 10 years of life. Even now, the shingles are in good repair and have another 5-7 years of life in them, but we have a different problem – somewhere above or around the chimney area of the roof, there is a leak. This has always been a problem in the house, one my grandparents tried to address in the past too, but something was missed.

We knew there was at least a small leak somewhere, as every few years we would get a very small water spot on the living room ceiling that needed to be addressed. But since it was so infrequent and inspection didn’t reveal anything, we just rode it out. Unfortunately, our luck ran out this winter, as the leak became acute. Just a regular rainstorm would lead to an excessively wet spot on a ceiling tile and\or water running down the front of the house as it ran down the rafters to the soffits. Inspection in the attic showed that there was clearly a problem that, left untreated, was going to get out of hand quickly (mold, etc.)

To prevent things from getting worse, I had the roofers stop by and put a big tarp on the roof, to make sure that the water intrusion stops and give a healthy amount of time for any wet areas to thoroughly dry out. In the meantime, our house is wearing a poncho.

As with all projects around here, there is a “while we’re in here” project to be addressed – properly insulating the cathedral ceiling. In short, this ceiling has never been correctly insulated, leading to ice damming issues, etc. So we’re fixing that too. And I’m going to add a sputnik light to the entry space. You know, while I’m in there and all.

This weekend I’ve been buying the supplies needed to do the insulation project and coordinating with the roofing contractor about how to get it accomplished. If the weather holds out, we should have a new roof, tightly insulated ceiling, and new sputnik light by this coming weekend.