Roofers. in The Big, Blue, House. Year two.

It’s been raining hammers for the last three days. Or at least it sounded like it. Nail guns, pry bars, slamming rolls of roofing, BANG BANG BANGING from eight a.m. til’ noon, then a one hour break, then again from one til’ five. Air compressors, hoses, ladders in front of all of the windows, and loud guys yelling at each other.

Never look a gift horse in the mouth. My father said that, said that his step dad used to say it. Old Man Hughes. I’m guessing that Old Man Hughes wasn’t noise sensitive, and never had five guys with the collective intelligence of a beagle climbing all over his house with power tools.

Old Man Hughes made and sold whiskey from Kentucky Island in the 30’s. But he kept my father and his siblings fed, so he gets a tip of the metaphorical hat.

I generally sleep from about two a.m. to noon, which is impossible when the roof is being replaced. So I’ve been seriously sleep deprived for days. I actually took a brief nap on the dining room floor yesterday because it was the least noisy corner of the house.

Today I finally got enough rest, because they don’t work on Sundays. Tomorrow they put up the new gutters. Thrilling.

All that just accentuates how much the driveway needs to be redone, and the house repainted. I’m hoping we can do that ourselves. Don wants to put gravel in the drive, but presently it’s cracked asphalt, so that’ll be a serious job.

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Friday night we had a tornado warning. In northeast Ohio. I took the cats to the basement, and I was watching the weather on my tablet, then the stupid internet went out. So I go to the kitchen and turn on the old radio, and look for weather reports, just like old times.

Then I feel water on my face. There was water dripping from the ceiling, and down from the freaking ceiling fan. This is a three story house, I was on the first floor.

Long story short I called the construction company doing the roof and left them an exasperated voicemail about how I’d been running up and down stairs, getting every pan I could find, to try to catch the water coming through between the boards where I could only assume a tarp had blown off. I put several plastic storage tubs in the attic closet where the huge freaking leak was, sopped up water off that closet floor with a towel and wrung it into the storage tubs, put down plastic there, and in the upstairs bathroom floor, and took a sponge mop to the upstairs bathroom ceiling. That bathroom is between the attic closet on top, and the kitchen underneath, and the floor in there is STILL wet, two days later, with baking soda and a fan on it.

The foreman came in the next day, apologized profusely, and took pictures. He said they’d put some “mud” and paint on the ceilings. At the time that sounded very considerate, but after some thought, Don said he didn’t like the idea of them working inside the house, and I concur. They’re probably fine at roofing, but this place has the original oak trim all over. I’d be very upset if it got paint smudged on it. So Don went out and told him not to worry about it, that we were going to cover those ceilings anyway. (I hate lies, but it’s for the greater good.)

Now I’m going to go clean on that bathroom. There are brown water stains everywhere. There were wasps nesting in the vent pipes, and several roofers got stung. I really hope the jackleg who didn’t property secure that tarp was one of them. Fortunately I hadn’t put up the new wallpaper yet. Freaking unskilled day laborers. Construction should require at least a 90 day training course! I mean come on.

Grumble

Last updated August 27, 2023