Wednesday, November 26, 2008

@#$%*&?%$*& week

You get these weeks sometimes when it just isn't worth getting out of bed. On Monday I looked up as I was drinking my orange juice and noticed something odd in the ceiling of the kitchen... You guessed it good old H2O seemed to have infiltrated in the joints of the gyprock... so I climbed up into the attic after having emptied the closet of all the winter clothing. Once up there I noticed that the plastic protection (Part of an old liner from a swimming pool, thick and plyable. I didn't want to take chances so I put it up in case since there had already been a leak there.) was full of water and it was leaking out. So I emptied it. Emptying something whilst lying on you side with less than 2 feet of clearance is not an easy task. You can't just empty it on the ground since that kind of defeats the purpose. Having emptied the pocket, I closed off the vent (it's the vent for the kitchen fan), shut off the fan so nobody can use it and put a plastic sheet under the whole thing. I figured that everything was ok for a while. Then last night I went up to check again and there was a big wet spot that was dripping down. Water seemed to have infiltrated beside the vent... hell and damnation and other choice French Canadian swear words. Of course it had snowed and was raining and there wasn't much I could do. It wasn't raining hard, but the snow was melting so there was a constant trickle of water. Today I tried to call the the company who had done the job 7 years ago and there was no longer any service at that number. Also called at least eight other companies and either they weren't answering the phone or they refused the repair since they already had too many jobs lined up to finish (It was a very wet summer.). There was even a roofing company called "Couveurs toutes saison" (all season roofers) with 24  hour emergency service. Oooops, nobody answering the phone... hows that for false publicity. Finally I gave up the phone, went to my nearest friendly hardware store, bought a bunch of roof patching gunk in these handy cylinders for caulking, went up on the roof which had dried out a bit since it had been sunny in the morning and caulked all around the vent with a heavy hand. While I was at it I caulked everything else that sticking out of the roof whether they needed it our not. Lo and behold, of course, as I was finishing the job it started to rain, sometimes you just can't win! Hopefully this will do the trick. Now all we have to do is dry out the ceiling and hope it doesn't come down, it's already sagging a bit. Sometimes having a house is a royal pain in the butt.

8 comments:

Dr. Deb said...

I can TOTALLY understand this post!!!!

I love my home but it IS a money pit!

Jazz said...

Get rid of the house and buy a condo in Montreal so we can spend all our free evenings blogging together!

PS: sorry you're leaking.

Big Brother said...

Deb: yep it is surely a money and time pit.

lil' sister: sometimes it is very tempting...

choochoo said...

in the end, it always rains. Haha:D

pierre l said...

I see that it's just as hard to find a builder in Canada as it is in the UK. I am reminded of an episode in a Tintin book where there is a broken step at Moulinsart/Marlinspeke; the builder, having already missed several appointments, says "I'll be there first thing tomorrow", and doesn't turn up.

pierre l said...

oh, and didn't they use to say "don't wait for Spring, do it now", or was it "n'attndez-pas au printemps". (I'm old.)

Anonymous said...

I am so with you on this. Of course, you are tlaking to a wman who just had to replace an ancient AC & furnace last week.

geewits said...

I hope it holds. Home repairs are so tiresome.