Last night was the worst in our remodeling adventure. The dormer has been sheeted and tar paper put on the roof, but the framers underestimated the winds last night and didn’t bother with the tarp. Although, in my opinion, tar paper is in no way water tight and especially in areas where there are vent holes CUT! DUH!

Anyway, I was up late reading “The Subtle Knife” and started hearing really loud drips in the kitchen. We have no heat ducts at the moment so I was not getting up out from under the warm covers with our space heater blasting unless I needed to go to the bathroom. Well I did, about 3 a.m. (I’m a night owl). Huge raindrops pelting all over the kitchen from the roof above. Then I saw it was also coming from between the slats in some of the attic fir flooring and I became REALLY torqued off. If that flooring gets wrecked, I’m going to definitely invoke some damage clauses in our contract. Ruin my 93-year-old wood floors by something easily preventable as a cheap tarp, there will be blood!

I guess I was feeling a little too charitable, as I did not call the contractor in the middle of the night. I figured there really wasn’t much he could do that Jeremy couldn’t do as a quick fix. Jeremy could no longer access the roof as the dormer is pretty well closed up and no way to get up without a large ladder (which is packed away in the back of our garage), and with high winds and no light, I didn’t really want to force anyone up on the roof at 4 a.m. (by this point). I did text message the contractor a heads up to bring blowers, towels, and whatever else he thinks was necessary for damage control.

So I trashed a few good bath towels and mopped up the areas where the flooring was sopped. Jeremy laid down plastic and created dams around the edges so the water would be mostly trapped, and we could figure out what to do in the morning. I’ll know more about the state of the floors tonight. The framers showed up this morning and were very apologetic. It had been raining when they left, and they thought it was staying dry. That was until the winds ripped up some of the tar paper creating perfect channels into the house in places. So until the shingles go up, they better be putting that tarp up and tying it tight! I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt and hoping the blowers help dry things up today.

The other little “adventure” we had yesterday was that our freezer toasted out. Thawing everything in there along with the big ice dams that have formed (the fridge is about 20 years old I think). This water found its way out of the refrigerator and onto the oak floor in the dining room even though its on some hefty layers of plastic. So now we have a fridge on our porch. I caught this leak early enough I don’t think there will be permanent damage. Thank goodness.

NO MORE LEAKS!