Update on House Facelift

Not much to report, no roof, no gutters, no paint.... poor old gal looks the same.

The lumber company arrived with the shingles early monday evening and using one of those basket lift thingies hoisted the shingles onto the roof. Scared the beegees out of my cats.... they didn't care for the thumping and crashing, it didn't thrill me either. Corny was caterwauling like a banshee and Fritz was dashing from one room to the other looking for a safe place to hide, finally decided under the desk between my feet would do.

Jeff, the neighbor/contractor stopped by later that evening to tell us the roofers would be by bright and early the next morning and by the end of the day our house would be sporting a dapper new roof.

Bright and early tuesday morning a huge dumpster was deposited in our drive way. Shortly after that the roofers arrived. Then they left...... never to return. What the heck!!

In the mean time I heard hubby crashing around in the kitchen. I kindly called out to him (I was accused of yelling, I did not yell, maybe called out in a loud voice, but I did not yell) a couple times but no answer... so I went upstairs to investigate. The cabinet doors under the sink were open, the throw rug was soaked and there was water all over the floor. Hubby, who is normally a very calm laid back kind of guy, had gone into his crazed "I hate plumbing disaster" mode. This is not a pretty site. When the kids were young it sent them running for cover. His total demeanor changes.... he not only hates anything to do with house repairs, he is very bad at it, especially plumbing!! This, however, has never stopped him from trying to fix it before he admits defeat and calls a plumber.

He is crashing around under the sink, ripping reams of paper towels off the roll and shoving them in great wads between the bottles, cans and boxes of cleaning supplies I have stored under the sink. He was sure the leak had something to do with the garbage disposal, I could see from across the room that wasn't the case. I suggested we take everything out from under the sink so we could get a better look. While I was taking things out and sitting them on the counter and table, he was slinging things right and left yelling at me for putting all that crap under the sink.

Okay, all the stuff is out, he turns on the water and crawls under the sink to see where it's coming from.... I'm against having the water on and head down to the basement to see if it leaking down there. And of course it is. There is standing water all over the floor in the area below the kitchen. I have been boxing up stuff to take to the auction and have been stacking the boxes..... yep, you guess it... in the area under the kitchen. Yikes, the water is headed straight for my boxes. I start moving them fast as I can and yelling "TURN THAT DAMN WATER OFF". He turns the water off and comes down stairs to see what I'm screeching about. I sop up some water, make sure my boxes are out of harms way, and we go back upstairs.

He goes back to ripping off paper towels and dives back under the sink.. wet blobs of paper towels are forming a hill at his feet. He went through two rolls in nothing flat. He then tells me to turn on the water AND the garbage disposal, I do, but I'm not happy about it. By now I'm shuffling around the kitchen chanting "Call the plumber, call the plumber, call the plumber"... only problem is our plumber just went out of business, I got a letter from him a couple days ago saying he'd sold the business to a place in Belleville, an hours drive from here. We've had bad luck keeping plumbers, the last 3 died .... at least this one just retired.

Hubby finally decided the leak had nothing to do with the garbage disposal so he let me turn it off and the water too. He was sitting on the floor looking under the sink with his trusty flashlight when he determined the leak was coming from a connection in the cold water pipe so he turned off the valve to the cold water and the leak stopped.

By now we are both exhausted, to much excitement for old folks. He thinks he might be able to repair it himself, (which causes me to shudder).... but in the morning... he's going to bed. Okay by me. I put all the cleaning supplies in a box and finish cleaning up the water on the floor. Made myself a snack and went in the living room to watch a little tv. Halfway though my sandwich I hear a knock on the door. It's my new best friend the neighbor/contractor Jeff. Jeff goes into great detail to explain why the roofers disappeared. The ladder they brought was to short. Apparently most two story houses aren't as tall as ours so they left, didn't say a word, just left. Why they couldn't go get a longer ladder and return is a mystery, apparently longer ladders do not grow on trees.

A light bulb goes off in my head and I ask Jeff if he knows anything about plumbing.... and he does, yahoo! I take him into the kitchen, show him the problem and he says sure he can fix it. Hubby comes back downstairs and the two men discuss the problem. Jeff goes over to his house to get a pipe wrench. For the next hour or so he is in and out going to his house, the store, back here, to his house.... you get the picture, lots of running in and out. He doesn't have the hardware he needs and the hardware store is closed so he agrees to come back in the morning and finish the job... To make a long story shorter... he does just that. The job was done by the time I got up, what a relief.

Now I thought the roofers would be back today with a longer ladder but no such luck.... not tomorrow either. The guy who dropped off the dumpster came by a couple hours ago to pick it up. That is a whole other story. Someone parked their car in front of our driveway. The dumpster guy knocked on the door... I thought it was Jeff making his nightly visit... dumpster guy wanted to know if that was our red car blocking the driveway... nope, our car is blue. We live down the block from a neighborhood bar, usually when a car is blocking our driveway the owner is in the bar. Dumpster guy inquired at the bar... nope, not there. He called the police and they arrived. The officer looked at the plates and made a call. Turns out the car owner lives in the apartment across the street. They come over and move the car, dumpster guy hooks up his dumpster and leaves.

I haven't the faintest idea when the roofers will return, I'm sure Jeff will stop by tomorrow and let me know.