It's Raining Multi-National Roof Men, Halliluja!

A little over two years ago, we started to notice that every time it rained, a small leak would appear in the upstairs hallway ceiling. For a while, we would just put a bucket under it and forget about it until it rained again.

Unfortunately, as the leak didn't go away, and in fact kept getting worse, The SO decided he needed to take a look at what exactly was going on in the attic. As I stood underneath the access door waiting for the verdict, his foot came crashing through the hall ceiling.

"Yeah, it's what I was afraid of" he stated calmly, sticking his head through the gaping hole to peer down at me. "Oh my god, what the hell was THAT?" I shrieked. "It's bad. Very bad. You need to come up here and see for yourself." he replied. "It's worse than you deliberately kicking a hole in the ceiling?!" I shouted nicely. "Yep" he answered. "Much, much worse".

And so the saga of our roof began. It seems that previous owners had taken short cuts when it came to home repair, and had just layered shingle-upon-shingle on the roof. It's a 100yr old house, and they were seven layers deep in some places. This, I have learned, is wrong roof maintenance in a very wrong way.

When it rained, water poured through all those old decayed shingles straight onto the main support beam for the entire roof....which was rotting. Rotting so bad you could actually flick pieces off of it with your fingernail. Which I did out of curiosity, until I thought about what I was doing, got scared, and quit.

Lucky for us The SO is an old-school Southern boy who can fix or build just about anything. He decided that since the roof had to be repaired anyway, he would make the attic into another room, re-frame the roof himself, and then hire someone to shingle it. The way he explained it, it sounded easy-peasy and not so expensive!

Mom and I agreed that we KNEW there was a reason we loved him and said, "let's do it"!

He tackled it immediately, beavering away every weekend. Over the course of a year, he singlehandedly replaced the massive rotting support beam and re-framed almost the entire roof. He built a staircase up to the next floor, re-routed electrical wires and heating ducts, blew insulation out and in, and was just generally everything a girl wants in a man; handsome, sweaty and working hard for her.

Okay, so the roof had a blue tarp on it for eight months and we became a kind of land-mark in the area. I once heard someone in the local quickie mart say, when giving directions to a lost soul, "You'll want to take a left at the corner of Sunset - you can't miss it, it's the big house with the blue tarp on the roof". I was proud.

By the end of last summer, it was *this* close to being complete. He had gotten to the point where he needed at least one other person (who was not me) to help him get the last bit done. His brother kept promising to show up but could never find the time. Then The SO had his accident. We pretty much knew, after that, he wasn't getting back on the roof for any reason and we reluctantly began to look for someone who could.

Gone are the days of Billy-Bob's Roof Repair in these parts; it seems the good old boys have moved on to other professions that pay less but aren't nearly as hard work. In the end we hired a Mexican crew to come and finish it up, which they did very fast and very well. I thoroughly enjoyed watching them squabble over who had to take the old shingles down 3 flights to the skip and I distinctly heard the loser mention to the winner that the winner's "madre" was a "puta". Quality entertainment.

Now we have a Franco crew re-siding the house, replacing windows and screens and generally making it look like we aren't poor white trash. I believe they are Quebecois and am burning to know how the HELL they ended up down here but, quelle domage, only one speaks English. He has rebuffed all my attempts at conversation with that irritating Gallic habit of staring at you until you finish talking and then shrugging his shoulders and wandering away mumbling.

My school-girl French is spoken with such a distinct redneck accent - "quelle heure est-il" comes out sounding like "killeraay tee y'all" - that I am loath to attempt it again with real Frogs (I tried to speak French in Paris, once, which is a butt-clenching story for another time) and so I remain in the dark. Tomorrow I am going to shout "Freedom Fries" at him and see what happens.

Times in a small Southern town, they are a-changing....

But the fantastic news is; the roof is fixed, the house is re-sided, new windows are to be installed, and my children will be able to swear in Spanish AND French!

Now that's value for money.