the Walnut Diary

Today I announced to my wife that there would never be a better day to find and repair the hole the squirrels made in the roof to take over the attic in the brick wing last winter.

Bet couldn’t argue with that. The problem is that my shaky balance has kept me off roofs for the last five years. At my age I have a hard time standing up in a dark room.

Nonetheless I set about the project this morning, with my wife ready to do backup as needed. The logistics of the task sound easy: crawl out a second floor window onto a moderately-sloped (4:12) verandah roof, walk to the other end of the house where it is joined by the addition, and climb up under the overhanging soffit of the 2 1/2 storey brick Victorian to where the soffit intersects with the roof of the 1840 stone cottage. Its roof is a steeper 8:12 pitch.

The devil is in the details. The stone house originally had one dormer, but three more were added during repairs after Hurricane Hazel in 1953. The east end dormer is the original, plumbed as a bathroom. The narrow gap between the dormer and the brick wall on the other side is more than covered by an 18″ sheet of corrugated steel roofing, with accompanying nail heads protruding from the ridges. My unwelcome task was to climb twelve feet of steel roof — without enough headroom to stand up because of conflicting soffits — on hands and knees to where the squirrels had found a way into the attic of the brick house.

The only reason I had worked up the nerve to do this was because last week I had purchased a set of eighty-dollar Milwaukee heavy duty knee pads for a flooring job. Normally I am averse to kneeling because of the arthritis debt which comes due the following day and persists for weeks. With the layers of armour and gel in these sci-fi props, however, the knee pain never developed after the last session. I figured the protruding nail heads on the steel roofing would give that armour a workout, but I was hopeful.

Armed with a flashlight, I tentatively crawled up the slope. The pads weren’t comfortable, but they did the job. Then I poked one of those open concept wasp nests. Turns out there was an occupant, so I retreated for a can of spray. In retrospect, I would have been better off going hand-to-gland with the bee than what the spray did to my footing. For the record, bee spray is a fine lubricant for corrugated roofing and asphalt shingles. Instantly, the only traction I could get on the steel was when a screw top dug into the plastic on the knee pads.

The real problem with the repair involved cutting a piece of wood which would block access under the soffit of the brick house. The coping against the brick came down eight inches at a 45 degree angle, where it joined a flat piece of chestnut 12″ wide to extend to the 9X1″ fascia board. The plug was easy to draw in the shop after I transferred the angle from the soffit where I could reach it. But that was at a 90 degree angle. What happens to that coping angle when it intersects with an 8:12 slope? Short answer: it becomes about a 15 degree angle. Cut two inches off the fat part of the angle and you’ve about got it.

In three tries on the same piece of plywood, I had it. I pushed it up the slope with a floor broom. It would fit if I cut away enough on the other side of the plug to let some flashing from the other roof do its thing and leave room for a heating cable. I ripped a 9 foot 1X2 off a piece of cedar in the shop, screwed it as a handle to the half-inch plywood plug I planned to screw into place, using the leverage from the roofing below it to force it up against that portion of the soffit which vanished into the unpainted darkness.

The plug in place, I screwed the handle down to a ridge on the roofing underneath. So far, so good. Turned out I got up there with the cordless drill by climbing the handle. Everything else was still slippery. In went some fifty-cent roofing screws, and I removed the handle’s screws from the plug and gratefully slid back down it to the verandah roof, where I removed the remaining screw and re-inserted it into the steel to fill the hole.

I should mention that by this time I was walking back and forth on the verandah roof without hesitation or loss of balance. Over the last few years of variable health I had forgotten my muscle memory. Getting in and out of the window became much easier after the first debacle when I remembered that I had removed the top half of the single- hung window, as well as the lower half. Then I could step through.

The 2004 pine siding we built for the rear dormers of the house needs some maintenance and paint, and after five years of worried reluctance, I’m looking forward to the job. Today I remembered that I’m not really afraid of heights.