Being the Nice Guy... That's Me

You know me--I can never say no.

After I got home from my grocery shopping yesterday it felt pretty good to be inside and warm on such a nasty day and doing my chores in the nude.

Then Teresa called. "The skylight over the dining room table is leaking. We came home and there is a puddle on the dining room table and the drywall is all wet. What should I do?" I could hear the "frantic" in her voice.

We discussed it for a bit, and I suggested she go downstairs and get the stepladder so she could get a better look. While she did that, I talked with Sarah for a little bit. When she scooted the dining room table out of the way and climbed up on the ladder (the skylight is recessed about a foot and a half up into the ceiling) she got back on the phone.

"The drywall is all soft and wet and I can just push through it," she said. "What would cause that?"
"Duh," I said, "The water leak of course. Drywall is just basically pressed dust. When it gets wet it disintegrates."

We talked about it for a bit longer and discussed the condition of the roof (which is not good) and various ways to seal the leak, etc. I told her that somewhere in her house was a gallon of wet/dry roof patch that I used on our old house one day when the flashing around the range hood roof vent failed in a rainstorm. It's the kind of stuff that's designed to go on whether or not the affected area is dry or not. After much looking in the basement and garage, she finally found it. I told her when my laundry load was finally done and in the dryer I'd come over and have a look. I told her in the meantime to pull Sarah's car out and get the giant ladder out of the garage so it was ready when I got there.

Grudgingly, I got dressed and went over. At least the rain had stopped for a while. We went up on the roof with the roof patch stuff. Normally, she would never go up on the roof because she is afraid of heights, but since our divorce any time I have worked on/repaired anything there she is looking over my shoulder. Good for her.

Her roof is the low slope variety that they call a "torch down" roof. Originally they are made of hot tar over a membrane of some kind, and then they put gravel or some sort of rock on top afterward for protection. Her roof is pretty old and the rock is long gone. It has been painted routinely by the previous owner using that aluminum-colored paint stuff, but that's just "getting by" instead of doing what really should be done, which is replacing the roof. Besides, that silver stuff makes it look like a mobile home. Anyway, with that low type of roof all the skylights are raised up somewhat. I think each of them was about 6 or 8 inches high off the roof. In other words, they are mounted on a sort of a frame instead of mounted flush. It appears that the failure spot on the affected skylight was actually the rubber seal of the glass itself and not the frame, so I got some rubber gloves from her and carefully smeared that black goo around each of the 3 skylights on her roof. Even though only one of them was leaking, it the others didn't look all that great either, so what the hell.

As far as the drywall goes, I doubt if that will ever get fixed. I just hope we stopped the leak.