Restore This Old House: The Roof Saga Begins

(Please note that this work actually took place in December of 2011.)

Before we even moved in we were aware that our roof leaked.

There were obvious water stains in the master bedroom. If you look carefully at this picture you can see were the wall on the right has been water damaged and repaired.

Up on the roof Dan could spot the problem areas rather quickly. This picture was taken while standing on the roof looking toward the front of the house. The master bath is under the raised section covered with the silver corrugated roofing material. Beyond the master bath, under the same raised corrugated roof section, is what we call the guest bath.

This photo was taken while standing over the kitchen,

looking toward the back of the house and the 'sunset room'.

The previous owner told us that she had to go up every winter and patch the roof with "Henry's roof patch". Hmmm...seems like a band-aid when actually what is needed is surgery!

Looking down on that same raised roof.

This lines up with the master bedroom wall that shows water damage.

Because we knew the rains were coming soon we decided that we needed to work on a quick solution that would prevent further water damage. Then we could work on replacing the whole roof in the spring or summer.

Dan decided to do two things to minimize the chance of further damage. First, he would tear off all of the damaged siding and build a small eve or overhang to minimize the water running down onto (and probably behind) the siding.

Second, he put in some temporary flashing and new siding.

So, here is a photo of the eve that Dan and my brother-in-law built.

It has an overhang of about 1 foot.

You might also notice that he put down new flashing on top of the old roofing.

He sealed it to the roofing using this stuff. It has a foil 'face' and the other side is kind of a rubber-tar that the guy at Home Depot said would definitely stick.

Being winter, it was pretty cold when Dan was working on this project. Since it was important to work with this tape while it was warm, he heated up the rolls in front of the fireplace.

Here is a close up of the flashing held in place

(roofing nails in the rough siding and the patch tape on the roofing).

He then put a layer of 30# tar paper over the rough siding and flashing. He re-used the old siding if it was not too water damaged. He did trim it a little so that the edge of the siding would not come in contact with rain water flowing down the flashing.