it’s all in how you look at it

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by Ekie

My mother came home from dinner and a play tonight and I met her at the door. 

“Guess what?”

“What?”

“We get to put new carpet in the living room!”

“………what?”

“And you probably won’t have to pay for it!”

My mother considered this for about two-tenths of a second, then, being able to read me better than anyone I know, pushed past me into the living room and surveyed the damage.

You see, we had a roofing company here this week, putting a new roof on our 150 year old farmhouse.  It hasn’t had a new roof in 30 years, and it needed it.  All was going well, until it started to rain today, hard.  And oddly enough, despite the new roof, it was raining inside the house.  Inside the house, over the ‘new’ (20 years old) part of the living room, the part where my mother has displayed her antique chest from some dead uncle, and the painting and lamp from her late parents, and some other fancy things like that. 

My mother being out, I did what any other sensible person would do when they discovered rain on the wrong side of the roof; I panicked, and called some good friends who live nearby, and came over and helped me move stuff out of there, and now my mother’s home, and I’m quite glad to hand the whole problem over to her.  Our friends seem to think the roof was installed wrong.  I don’t know, but it does appear we will have to replace the carpet (which unfortunately is wall-to-wall and extends quite a bit beyond the wet part) the ceiling, the recessed lights, a lamp, and probably part of a wall.  And it’s supposed to keep raining tonight!

My mother thinks this is a catastrophe.  I persist in thinking it’s kind of funny.  I mean, isn’t there something deliciously ironic about installing a new roof on a part of a house that has never leaked before, only to have it start leaking enormously less than 48 hours later?  It’s like a house I saw once, where they spent thousands to make it wheelchair-accessible and put an elevator in the kitchen, only to have the door to the kitchen too narrow by three inches to let a wheelchair in. 

Lessons learned:1,  just because you call 5 references, does not mean your house will not leak. 2,  Roofers should read the weather report.  3, make sure your home owners insurance is up to date 4, make sure your roofers have good insurance and 5, if you end up having to use that insurance, just try to look on the bright side and think of it as redecorating!

 

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