Best Laid Plans

Well, we thought we were ready for the rain. The skies laughed at our readiness. Our luck with the weather had dramatically, wetly, run out. All day yesterday, there was a light, misty, constant rain from early over night until around 10 pm. All our prepping did help, some, but plenty of water found its way around our tarps and buckets.

Water was streaming out of cracks in the columns, out of new spots on the ceiling that have never leaked before. The most came from the cold joint between the different phases of the concrete construction.

Water was cascading down the stairs. I started humming the Titanic theme.

We set up more tarps, more buckets, vacuumed up the puddles with the shop vac. It was a mess. Fortunately, no water made it into our living space and nothing was damaged. We were worried we would wake up to drips falling on our heads.

Fast forward to this morning. The sandblast crew showed up to, hopefully, finish chipping and blasting the last of the pitch off the concrete. It was essential that this happen because the roofer is scheduled to start tomorrow. If he can’t start tomorrow, we have a weekend of rain to deal with. Tom was coming back from walking the girls and heard from one of the crew “We’ve got a problem”. Just what you want to hear when you were up late fixing one mess, that there is a fresh new mess that needs attention.

On pitchy pond.

It is amazing to see how much water the pitch can contain. The pond was a couple inches deep. Where the pitch had been removed there was some ponding, but nothing to compare to the uncleaned side. The side with the pitch leaked very little. The crew tried chipping in the pond, but they couldn’t see what they were doing and the water was straying everywhere. Tom joined the crew, armed with squeegees, brooms and one of our submersible pumps. It took about an hour, but they were able to get back to work.

Once the pond was drained, back to chipping.

They still didn’t finish (the F Word, in our world) but they are returning early tomorrow morning.

Tonight, we working on a few tasks, including chipping some pitch blobs and cleaning the freshly tuckpointed brick.

Spraying and scrubbing the new mortar.

Tomorrow- NEW ROOFING STARTS!