My Feet on the Roof

I finally got my feet on the roof, fixed, and it wasn't that bad, though it's precarious up there, especially when you get tired. Normally you just lean back and relax, but you can't do that when you're up there. It's a little stressful.

I needed to replace a piece of trim that was directly under the roof drip shield, and the whole idea of it was bumming me out to no end. I had hoped to ignore it for as long as possible, but truth be told, it was pretty rotted, stemming from icicle formation. At two points in particular, icicles and ice dams form pretty badly, and the exposure to all that moisture had caused the wood to rot. I could have reduced the problem a bit if I'd been more diligent about painting it, but it took me years just to get that extension ladder, so it was bound to become a problem. I actually discovered it when I went up there to paint. The wood was in bad shape, so as a quick fix, I covered it with duct tape until warmer weather, which not only was fairly ineffective, but was a bit of a mistake because the tape was really hard to remove. Funny thing about duct tape.

Anyway, the job took all day, and time is one of the few things I have very little of. Scratch that, it's one of the many things I have very little of. Factor in the fact that I had all these meetings to attend that day, and it was enough to drive me nuts. And like all home improvement projects, what starts out fairly straightforward becomes much more complicated, by virtue of the fact that the very act of trying to fix something, at least in my hands, results in more damage being done. Also, there are always hidden problems that only show their face once the job begins. Finally, let us not forget about the fact that not only do I have no idea what I'm doing, but at 25 feet, my hands and feet are shaking.

So while I knew it wasn't going to be easy, it ended up being harder than originally planned. This is actually a good thing, because if you knew all the hardships you were going to face in the beginning, you might never start a project in the first place. Not unlike being a parent, mind you.

What made it all the more difficult is the previous owners, SG and MG, were top notch builders, so they never did things the easy way. They used long pieces of wood that they seemed to custom cut/rip. This made my job all that much harder, because I couldn't buy stock pieces of wood and simply replace them, I had to cut them to size. What a pain.

In the end, I managed to get the pieces replaced, one on each side of the house. I nailed in the new boards, caulked the seams, and will paint at a later date. I may even get to it before next year... you just never know.

Until the next time, thanks for reading.