Home "Improvements": The Epic Roof Adventure

Sunday:
When we woke up on Sunday, Aaron went outside to see the damage. It had rained. Not enough to really cause a huge problem inside the house but enough that we had to get everything on the roof dried off and some tar paper back onto the house since it had been blown off. The loose flying paper and the pile of debris made it look like we were the victims of a natural disaster.

We remembered later at church that we had painters tarps that probably would have been better than nothing. But it was too late now.

I was irritated. I didn't want to work on this project on Sunday. It was definitely not part of our original plan. None of this was.

While we were at church I went up to one of the only people who I feel comfortable asking to break the Sabbath with us. I felt so bad asking but his wife and him said that the ox was kind of in the mire because there was suppose to be a storm coming in that night (which I doubted since there was not a cloud in the sky). I felt so bad that I was making {J} do this but he agreed and came over at 4 to help us out.

He got to work putting down as many shingles as he could. We had to stop putting down shingles when we were trying to decided what to do about one side with a rotted board that was literally falling apart in our hands. Aaron and I had a discussion about whether or not he should go to Lowe's and get a new board now or the next day. We decided that since the forecast was for rain, we needed to get as much covered as possible (Even though there still were no clouds in the sky). We got the board and Aaron set to work putting it in place.
Meanwhile, my job wasn't standing around taking pictures. My job was removing the flashing from around the pipes which had been tarred into place...needless to say, it took a lot of my famous brute strength.

Success!!

Once Aaron was done putting in that new board, we put up the metal edging and it was time for more tar paper, and more tar paper means loads more shingles being placed down.

It was more or less at this point that a young family from our ward was taking a family walk and saw us while we were up there. Aaron and I don't really know them. We've talked to them a few times briefly and they are nice but we haven't really gotten close or anything. I was SUPER embarrassed that we were working on Sunday. Seriously.

They called over to us and said that they had a nail gun that we could borrow. We said that that would be wonderful and they brought it right over. Not only did they bring the nail gun but the husband, {S}, climbed up on the roof and the wife apologized to me over and over again that she had to go take care of her 2 month old baby. Ridiculously nice people.

And that is when we started to plow out the work. We had three sides almost completely tar papered and shingled by the time we all got off the roof that night at 9. That nail gun helped pound all those shingles into place so much quicker than we could have by hand.

Aaron and I got dinner and watched some cartoons to unwind from the day. At about 10:30pm it started to rain.

I don't know how to describe last night. Exhilarating, desperate, terrifying, intense, insane, tiring, courageous, stupid, genius...It was all a blur and every time I looked at the clock, times seemed to be moving too fast. And there will never be pictures of that night, unless Heavenly Father was taking them for me.

When we heard the rain we jumped out of bed, threw our work clothes back on and ran to the painters tarps we had remembered too late last time.

We climbed onto the roof with flash lights and these three tarps.

Let me tell you something. I don't like ladders. DON'T LAUGH MOM! I KNOW YOU ARE THINKING ABOUT MESA VERDE! I don't trust them and every time I climbed up one to get on the roof, I had Aaron stand at the bottom waiting to "hold it" for me. I had done it on my own for the first time that day when we had been working with {J} and got used to not being afraid. Well, doing it in the dark was so scary. When I got to the top of the ladder, Aaron was already on the other side of the roof since I had to take care of the dogs coming up. It was dark and I couldn't really see the roof very well. I was so scared and I had a thought put into my head, "You did it in the light, you can do it in the dark. You know where the roof is." And I climbed off the ladder and onto the roof (luckily this part was completely shingled so no fear of slipping) and scurried over to Aaron.

He needed me to climb out to the edge of the house and hold down a tarp while he threw shingles down to me to hold the tarp in place. I don't know if you have ever walked on a wet wood roof in the middle of the night down to the edge...but it is pretty scary.

What is even more scary is when you have tarped yourself into a corner and you need to climb up wet loose plastic that is sitting on wet wood.

It was scary but luckily I wasn't that far away from some solid shingles and pipes that stick out of the house.

It was also exhilarating. The wind was blowing and rain was coming down. Lightening would light up the work that we were doing and for a split second we could see what we were going with the tarps. Thunder would roll right after the lightening and the two were getting closer and closer together.

We laid down the three tarps we had the best that we could and climbed back down. We hoped that the rain wouldn't be any worse that it had been the night before and we were hopeful that no damage would be done.

We were in the house for 20 minutes before I found the first leak. It was 12:30am.

Monday:
I showed Aaron a puddle coming down from the swamp cooler vent...or as it would turn out, next to the swamp cooler vent.
He pulled the ladder in from outside to climb in the attic to see what is going on and he finds out that water is coming down from everywhere.

We start grabbing buckets and pots and pans and water coolers and anything really that I could get a hold of and bring it up to Aaron in the attic.

I knew that we had to go back on the roof. We didn't have a choice, we didn't have enough buckets so we had to go to the source of the problem. I told Aaron that if I cut up black garage bags, they could be big enough to help. He agreed and I started cutting. I scurried back up and down the ladder with the garbage bags...in the dark while Aaron worked on finding the holes to cover. The slates in the woods had to be covered.

The ladder was soaking wet and one time when I got on the ladder my foot slipped a little and I was back to being scared and then I had my mothers voice in my head, "When I'm scared of something, I say, "I'm not going to be scared of you, you stupid thing!" and then I do what I want!" So I said to the ladder, "I'm not scared of you, you stupid thing!" and I did what I wanted and ran over to Aaron with more bags.

It was 1:20am at this point and we were using plastic bags for everything. 4 bags, 8 bags, 12 bags...we didn't seem to ever have quite enough to cover every single inch. When we thought we had all the wood covered, we went back inside and Aaron climbed into the attic again.

Success!!! Only about 5 leaks still in need of a bucket. We redistributed buckets and I cut more bags. There was one piece of wood that was still being soaked through and we knew with at least 3-4 more bags, we could fix it.

It was 1:40am and once again, we were on the roof in the pouring rain. This last maneuver took the most time and energy. We had to move the painters tarps that we started with since they were the problem. We had laid them down to haphazardly in the beginning thinking that this rain storm wasn't a big deal. We had to start at the very tip top of the roof and make sure that everything was proper all the way down. By this time about 40% of the roof was wet plastic and 95% of the part we were on was wet plastic on wet wood. We had to work very very slowly.

At one point Aaron had what he was doing under control but a part of the tarp at the edge of the house was being blown off by the wind. I moved down there to fix the problem. I fixed it up and got everything in place. The only problem now was getting back to Aaron...or shingles.

I sat on the roof trying to inch my way up, too far away from my husband for help. I would try and push up to move and the plastic would slip down with me on it just enough to make me feel like I was going to slide right off the edge. I was cold, soaking wet, and most of all scared. I started to sing "A Child's Prayer" to myself like I used to when I was little. Slowly but surely, I inched my way to the shingles on the driveway side of the house. So much relief, but not time for feeling it. I had to get to another problem part of the roof.

Finally at 2:45am we decided that this was the best that it would possibly be.

Aaron went into the attic to check. The leaking had stopped. We could finally go to sleep.

At 3am, we crawled into bed and said our prayers and with our hands stinging from the fiber glass in the shingles, we fell asleep.

At 7am, Aaron was back on the roof with the man who brought us the nail gun {S}. They cleared off the tarps that took us nearly 4 hours to place and got to work laying down more tar paper and shingles. They worked until 10 and Aaron went to work. He is coming home in a couple hours and you know what?

I think that we might actually have a leak proof roof over our heads tonight.