When It Rains.....

The roofing guy came on Tuesday and spent most of the day taking the evaporative cooler off the roof and replacing all of the worn shingles in that area. He said that there was a leak around the flashings of the cooler and a spot further up on the roof where the tar paper (or whatever it is they use under shingles) had deteriorated. He was so cool about the bill, telling me to send half when I got the invoice and the other half "in 30 days, or whenever."

Yesterday, we had a really heavy downpour in the afternoon. When I got home, I went upstairs to check and make sure things were watertight and the area in the guest room closet seemed fine (no water on the plastic we still have covering the hole in the ceiling). However, just on the other side of the wall, in the hallway, there was quite a big leak, with the drywall sagging on the wall and the ceiling also sagging from the wall to about 6-8 inches towards the center of the hallway.

I have no idea if this is the same leak (as the locations are so close) or a different leak under the tiles (which they did not pull, as we figured the problem was just around the cooler area). I put an email into him, but he is currently away at his son's basketball tournament and won't be back for a week. Sigh.

Mike is going to get into the attic and see if he can tell where the water came from, and perhaps put a bucket up there to catch any futher leaks (as it is supposed to rain at least 2-3 more times before the roofer gets back into town). I guess this also will postpone my fixing the ceiling closet, as we may now have more work to do in the wonderful world of drywall repair (and might as well do it all at once).

I just want a watertight house. We've done so much repair work on this roof since we bought it -- it probably would have been best just to pull everything off and start from scratch (but who can afford $10,000 plus for a new roof, especially now?) Water damage and electric things are what I hate/fear the most and they just cause so much stress! I could tell Mike was really bummed when he saw we still had problems. Luckily, I'm on the schedule at work most days in July and I volunteered to work the 4th of July, as I get time and a half. I'd like to earn enough extra to pay for the roof without having to have a balance on the credit card.