Roof Repair

We live in an old historic home from the 1850's which sits on a lot of beautiful pristine land.  We bought the property for the land, certainly not for the old tired house.  The house still needs a lot of work to be done to bring it up to my standards (i.e., no leaks when it rains, insulated interior walls that don't freeze in winter, AC and heat throughout house, grounded 3 prong electric plugs in house, floors without weak spots, etc, etc.)  This work is going much slower than I had hoped when we bought the place, but I guess I thought I could just snap my fingers and have it all done for me.  Darn, I was wrong!  But we are making do with the house, making repairs and renovations as possible. 

The main portion of our old home was built in the 1850's, but the kitchen and a downstairs bath was added on in the 1950's.  Not only does this add-on not match the rest of the house's style, but it isn't connected to the house's air conditioning/heating ducts, and therefore, isn't cooled or heated.  In addition, the roof in the kitchen leaked very bad, sending a deluge of water onto the refrigerator below every time it rained.  The kitchen roof was shingled, but the rest of the house has the original silver tin roof.

Since the kitchen has a large fireplace, last winter we put in a wood stove with a blower, and it keeps the kitchen and bath pretty cozy in the winter.  The next step was to fix the roof leak.  Upon inspection, it was noted the roof had a change in slope pitch which was shingled over with tar paper and plain black shingles.  In the past 60+ years since the roof was built, the tar paper crumbled and the rain water started pooling at the change in slope, running through the shingles, through the roof boards, and into the kitchen.

Old shingles removed, rotten boards at end of roof removed



Change in roof slope/pitch can be seen here
now that the old roofing is removed

Last weekend we tackled the roof repair project.
Once all the old shingles and tar paper were removed we could see the change in pitch of the roof. We also could see some boards at the end of the roof were rotten and needed replaced.  We put down metal flashing over the change in roof slope and replaced the rotten boards.  Then we put down fresh tar paper and new shingles.  It sounds like a simple project, but it took all day.  Now that it's done, it's so nice to have a dry kitchen!  It rained the day after we finished, and there were no leaks in the kitchen!

One more project has been checked off the list.  Many more to come in the future.

Change in roof slope from different angle



Roof repair in process can be seen in bottom left, old tin roof is above. 
You can see some of the fireplaces with lightning rods, and the front
weather vane lightning rod in this picture, too. 

New shingles

New roof shingles over flashing on change of roof pitch