My roof is on backwards

This weekend, we were inundated by nearly 7 inches of rain.

Saturday morning I laid down to take a nap, but, as I was falling into the fog of sleep, I shot out of bed when the house imploded. A big chunk of bedroom ceiling decided it liked the view from the floor better and made its way there in a hurry - along with gallons of water and some rather soggy insulation.

Ah - the joys of home ownership.

I won't bore you with a wordy rant about the slippery climb up the ladder and the hour on the roof in the rain (at least it was a tropical system, and the rain was rather warm for October in Pennsylvania) with tarps and a staple gun. (what qualifies something as being referred to as a gun anyhow? And why do most of my paragraphs have more content lodged in parenthesis than actual paragraph body? Guns though - my beefy friends are said to have "nice guns" but that doesn't follow if it has to do with the capacity to shoot a projectile. Maybe muscled men's big arms shoot invisible bullets of perceived inferiority? For that matter, caulk guns barely get their projectiles out, yet they are called guns. Why call it a gun? It's the same principle as a tube of toothpaste, but I don't refer to that as a gun - cool as that might sound. "Honey...where's the Crest-gun?" "In your toiletry and gun kit. You'll need to reload it." Cool. What would the neighbors make of that? But - I was talking about my roof, wasn't I?)

So - my roof.

Today the son of the actual contractor whom we called came out and looked at the spot where the water was definitely leaking in. Ok, send in the son. Lots of people have roof issues - sure. I'm a home maintenance idiot anyhow, so a roofer's 3 year old probably exceeds my frighteningly small roof vocabulary. So, tell us all about it just-learned-to-drive teeny-bopper roof boy. What do we need to do?

The answer: "Just caulk it."
"Caulk it?!" says I.
"Yeah" he says, "it's coming in this hole just below the gutter. If you fill that up with caulk or something, it should keep the water out."

Here I must explain a few things to you. (or the theoretical you whom I imagine might actually read this someday for some reason I can't imagine. The reality is that this blog - like most others - is probably just self servicing. A figurative "place" where uncontested vanities and delusions of widespread literary significance can grow unchecked by and unfounded in reality. But it's fun - ain't it?) Ok - cessation of digression.

Just caulk it.

The thing you need to know; I already know that this solution is ridiculous. On a clear day I can see New Jersey through this hole under the spouting. What's more, in that balmy rain I pulled back the metal "flashing" (I learned a new word pertaining to roofs & siding! Yay!) and found that the only thing holding the "wood" together was the "moss" that was covering it. The wood was so rotted and wet... well - fruitcake would be a much more substantial building material.

So, caulk itself, unless there's some magical caulk I don't know about, can't be the answer.

"Umm - Caulk? I think the wood up there isn't in very good shape, would you take a closer look at it?" I was at work and talking to the kid on the phone.

After a less teenager-ish examination, here's his new story:

The previous owners/roofers
1 Didn't remove the old roof before adding the new one.
2 Put the flashing on upside down.
3 Didn't stagger the layers, so there are huge seems running down the roof
4 Put the bottom layer on upside down. (on top of the old shingles)
and therefore it can be concluded that they...
5 Had no idea what they were doing.

What's even more intriguing is that they managed to put the edge layers on upside down ALL AROUND THE HOUSE. My entire exterior wooden framing might be less stable than last Christmas' fruitcake from Aunt Ethel.

So, in effect, behind the 1970's avocado yellow aluminum siding, my entire house is probably being held together by moss.

We should sleep well tonight, and every night - until the first hard frost.