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A nice day. That means I gotta do work. 

By: Decomposed in 6TH POPE | Recommend this post (1)
Thu, 06 Oct 22 10:26 PM | 44 view(s)
Boardmark this board | 6th Edition Pope Board 		Msg. 36153 of 60008
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Have you ever noticed how one job can turn into four or five? This day has been like that.

We went from hot weather (85ish) to cold weather (55ish) on a dime, with almost no wobbling. As a result, some of the things I'd been putting off because of hot weather suddenly couldn't be done because of the cold. One job in particular.

I've got a patch of bare wood exposed on my roof. It needs fixing.

I have one of those roofs that starts off real steep before connecting beneath an eave to an even higher roof that's not as steep. We'll call the first one roof 'A'. Roof A's uppermost shingle on one end had torn and bent almost into an 'L." It's been that way for 9 months but for some reason my wife didn't want to go through a second winter with bare wood showing.

That was job one. The second job, spawning from the first, came when I tried setting up the ladder and realized that the hill on that side of the house keeps me from doing so. It doesn't run toward the house but alongside it. So now I had to hunt for a pick and a shovel (lots of rock on my land, remember?) to dig out a hole for one ladder leg.

Job three came from noticing that my wife and I weren't the only ones taking advantage of sudden warm weather. There were about a thousand hornets and ladybugs flying around where the wood was exposed. I don't know about the ladybugs, but the hornets are apparently living there... either in the wall or the attic. It's surprising that we haven't been hearing them from indoors. (I could sure hear them buzzing next to my head when I was later nailing on the shingle.)

But, bright guy that I am, it did dawn on me that the thousand hornets might be be a problem... particularly when I nail right where they're landing. So, job three turned into finding the wasp spray and then spraying all of the edges where hornets were landing and entering. There were a lot of them. My house has vinyl siding, and 'most every gap was being used as a port-of-entry for the hornets.

Up the ladder I went again. The hornet spray says it will go 20 feet - but that's horizontally. I was standing on a ladder trying to spray stuff that was mostly up and ahead. The spray went maybe 8 feet. While I was spraying, more than I liked came back down... on me. I finished spraying, came down and called a break. I had to go in and take an unplanned speed shower. I'll call that job #4.

Back outside, there were still a lot of hornets but I'd done what I could. I figured on getting stung. I went up the ladder, lathered the exposed wood with roofing cement (which, if you aren't familiar with it, is about like tar), straightened out the bent shingle, shoved it back into place, put in a couple new nails, cut a fresh shingle to the right size, added more roofing cement and nailed the fresh shingle over the first. Miraculously, I never got stung. At one point, something landed on my face and caused me to spit out the nails I had in my mouth, but it didn't sting. Maybe it was a ladybug.

Done! Then my wife reminded me that one of the house's corner spotlights lost its lens cover. It's something that snaps in place and wind made it un-snap. I've fixed it once already but the snap is apparently defective. This time I decided to glue it. We moved the ladder and things went well except that the roofing cement now on my fingers also got onto the cover. Screw it. From the ground, my wife didn't notice and I sure wasn't going to tell her. That was job #5. What she DID notice is that the shingle next to the spotlight... a shingle corresponding to the same one we'd just fixed on the house's other corner... was slipping. It hadn't torn completely free and bent at a 90° like on the other corner, but had started doing so and was bent perhaps 20°. Again, a little bare wood was exposed. I repeated the earlier process. This corner, thankfully, was in shade and didn't attract hornets. About the only thing that went wrong was that the shingle wouldn't quite return to its original position. That caused the thick layer of roofing cement I'd applied to squirt out over the shingle I was positioning and onto my fingers as I was nailing. When I grabbed a second nail from my mouth, I apparently touched my lips and got this stuff onto them. Everything thereafter went well . . . except that I can't get all of it off. It seems that my lips don't really LIKE being scraped...

At this point, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED. I put everything away, used an alcohol cleanser and a little carburetor cleaner to get the roofing cement mostly off my hands, went inside and took another shower. At this point, it looks like I've got some heinous disease but at least the roof is fixed. That's all that matters. Right??




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Gold is $1,581/oz today. When it hits $2,000, it will be up 26.5%. Let's see how long that takes. - De 3/11/2013 - ANSWER: 7 Years, 5 Months

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