Week 5 – Leak 5

Enough of the sunrise and muffins. Up to the attic!

There were water stains in two of the upstairs rooms when we first saw the house, but they got a lot worse after a heavy rain. My guess is that the cobblestone part of the house has a hundred-year metal roof on it, but that it’s 150 years old. It’s been covered in a rubberized coating, but that’s leaking too.

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I have buckets and plastic catching the snow melt for now – a new roof is ordered but we’re still waiting for the materials to arrive. Not much call for roofing in the winter, so it appears to be slow in shipping.

You may notice the new wood in that photo. That’s because that was the worst of the rot, and we had to have it replaced. We contracted with Randy Cornelius for the repairs, and in these pictures you can see the temporary brace that was needed and some of the rotten wood that was pulled out of the corner.

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Fortunately, it was just the one corner, and the rest of the structure appears dry and solid:

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The one other thing that’s interesting in the picture with the rotted wood on the floor – on the rock wall by the brace there is a trace of an old slope. It’s hard to tell, but that looks to me like an old roof line. It also happens to line up with the top of the beam in the last picture, which would explain its placement. It’s certainly possible the roof was raised from its original placement. But it must have been done before that Wayne County History of 1877. Somewhere between having it built in 1832 and the drawing from 1877, Capt. Throop must have decided to update the look of the place.

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