OUCH....

The joys and pains of home ownership are many. I bought my house in the fall of 2002. It is a 3 bedroom colonial on the Westside of Cleveland. It was built in 1917. Some of the joys are the sense of ownership and home that I get when I work on making it more mine. It came with new windows, new siding, a new front porch, updated kitchen and bath… a whole bunch of nice stuff for suck an old house.

The house still has its original slate roof and that’s OK because there seem to be no leaks and the roof is very stable. However it seems when the previous owner had all the updates done, which included new gutters, they or whomever they had complete he work didn’t do such a great job.

It seems that the flashing that should have been put under the edge of the slate rook to held lead water off the rook and into the gutters is missing on about ¾ of the sides of my house.

What this has done in the time I have lived in my house is allow water to get to the fascia boards that the gutters are attached to. This fascia board attached to the end of the rafters and helps to enclose the attic. Wet fascia boards leads to rotting which leads to the boards pulling away from the rafters that leads to more leaking and possible water in the attic. You get the downward spiral picture.

So I took another half-day vacation today and hade Mr. Handyman out to see how bad it was and how much it will call to fix. I have 2 more calls into companies that do roof/home repair. That should tell you that the picture ain’t pretty. The 1st estimate is about $1500 to $2000 and as little as I know about home repair that sounds about right. My only chance is if I can get the labor cheaper with another company.

Oh well… at least I can play my stereo loud and walk to the washer in my underwear!