Emergency gutter trepannation

Today I'd planned (inter alia) to take some pictures of the various work that needs doing on the southeast corner of the house. There's water damage, and we were aware of this—we're just making a plan for what needs doing and how.

In particular, I was aiming to find out where the water was coming in, what damage the water had done, how to stop the water coming in, and what needed to be done to repair the done damage.

The window is just as much of a mess as we'd thought. The top of the window frame is shot; there were two pieces of wood making up the exterior casing: one sitting horizontally and projecting 2 inches, providing what's nowadays done with an aluminum drip edge. Below that was the flat (relative to the wall) trim, maybe 5 inches wide. Half the drip edge is gone; half of that casing piece is split away, too, and—as you can see in the photo—the split angles back toward the house, funneling rainwater into the window and wall. Oy. Stay tuned for updates on all this, I'm just getting to today's adventure.

As I was up on the ladder, it started to rain. Hey, a great opportunity to see where the water's

going, check out the guttering. I went inside and upstairs to look out the window, to take a picture from above. Here's what I saw:

Holy moley. The picture doesn't show it terribly well, but there's a huge spray of water directly against the house. With great vigor. Clogged drain. Clogged drain + water + cold=ice, expanding and splitting the gutter; split gutter plus [still-]clogged drain plus 1" per hour of rain times, oh, 450 sq feet for the half of the roof this is draining, works out to about 18 cubic inches of water per second. Oof.

It's not the leak at the top of the window, but it's certainly not doing anything good for the wall. And it's doing certain not good quickly.

Time to get back on the ladder, with the shears and the dead blow hammer, and relieve the pressure in a direction other than directly against the wall.

Snip, snip, bash, bam. Oh, with that 1"per hour rainstorm on my head.

Seamless gutters, anyone? And a big ol' clearing-out of the drainage.

Down to business

We plan a proper introduction...at some point. But down to business! We closed on Friday, and spent Friday afternoon cleaning. Friday night brought out first visitors (thanks for coming everybody! and an especial thanks to H. for salt [that our life may have flavor] and bread [that the house may never know hunger] and wine [for happiness]). Saturday we started pulling out carpet, and cleaned more. Sunday we cleaned (are you detecting a theme?), though we planned more work than we got done, because we had more guests! The pitter-patter, no, I should say the stomp-thud, of little feet was delightful.

Monday morning brought the first true demand of homeownership. The first thing that we're not deciding to do for our own good, the first thing that we can't put off til next week or next month, and the first thing that was really unpleasant given the temperature! It was time to clean the fishpond filter. Going up to your elbows in forty-degree water is quite the way to way up on Monday morning.

But, a half-hour of reach grab muck hose cold cold cold wrap it up bungee it back together and chuck it back in the pond, and all was well: