EEEEK! EEEEK! It's a Roof Leak!

It's day 16 of being hunkered down together. We are both feeling fine, and thankful that we have a safe spot to be quarantined in.  So far our northeastern county in Wisconsin hasn't had any cases with any confirmed tests. Things on TV aren't looking good for the rest of the country and world....  I can only keep watching the news for so long. While it's good to be informed, after a while I have to turn it off and put on some soothing soft music in it's place.

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We are having our own

 little crisis here in our 

National Folk Farmhouse, 

oh my~ A LEAK!!!

Last night with all the rain, a little leaky spot developed in the dining room. During the pouring rain, it started really leaking a lot! We had to put down plastic garbage bags to protect the hardwood floor, and then three or four bath towels to absorb the dripping water.  We tucked a few smaller ones along on the windowsill so it had somewhere to drip without ruining our hardwood floors.

Steve wanted to get up on the roof and see where the leak was coming from but I said that he had to wait until daylight. He tossed and turned all night, just thinking about it.  There is a section of our dining room that extends out under the older roof over the porch, not the new roof on the main parts of the house.

He got up there once it stopped raining this morning. He can see where he thinks it's going in but he needed to get that BlackJack fibered cement roofing compound in a caulk tube. It is the type that you can put on in moist conditions and still have it seal. The only problem is that we don't have any on hand!!

So we went online through the ACE hardware website and ordered two tubes. They offer curbside pickup right here at the little local ACE Hardware in Oconto!

We went ahead with the order and it said we could pick it up curbside TODAY in Oconto as soon as they email us to come and get it. We waited 3 hours. Nothing. No email.

(It's a very small store with one clerk...)

We finally called the store. He said the regular guy that takes those orders is home sick. He's just filling in! So we would have been waiting all day or maybe days for our order to get filled? 

Steve told him we want curbside pickup and if we pull up with our car, could we still pick it up?  The guy said he don't know, he has never done that before.  Steve offered that he will put our paid receipt (that I printed out already) on our car windshield under the wiper blade on the passenger side. And then Steve will pop the lid for the trunk and the clerk can put the two tubes right into the car trunk. 

The clerk agreed.....  so Steve said he will be there in 5 minutes.  And sure enough, the clerk was standing in the foyer vestibule of the store waiting for Steve. 

The clerk grabbed the slip off the wiper blade, double-checked the products, and put them both into our trunk in the bucket Steve had waiting. Slam the trunk and off he went. Done! 

When Steve got home, while wearing gloves, he sprayed down both tubes liberally with Lysol and let it sit while he got out the ladder.  Toot sweet he was scurrying up on the roof and checking out the situation.

Quick as a wink, he figured it out and put liberal amounts of the BlackJack roofing caulk into the little hole that he found rusted in the metal roof. The rest of our house has all new roof, but the actual front porch is metal and that is where he found a hole. That's where he thinks it's leaking in to the exterior wall of the house and oozing through and coming out on the inside on our dining room ceiling.

He found another area that was questionable as well.  This will hold for now, and we will order a big bucket of the proper roof sealant and give a good coating for the entire metal porch roof once the weather warms up.  We are due for more rain on Saturday, so we will see if that patch job holds.  Keep your fingers crossed?

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We took a nice walk this afternoon. The sun poked its head out about 2 p.m. and the temperatures went up to 45 degrees. As we ambled along, we came across this big slice of wood sitting at the parking lot to the museum.

It's over 50 inches across! 

The dogs thought that it would make a perfect little platform to sit on if we could wheel it home into our yard?  Can you just imagine seeing Steve do that?

They are going to use it on a display. It's most likely the oldest tree on our entire street, if not the whole city. We tried counting the rings and got up to around 150 years old. Here is the base where it was cut down from just down the street from our house.

Speaking of trees-----

A few years ago, before we bought this house, there had been two large trees right in the front yard of our house. The previous owner had to have them cut down. One was rotted through and a portion of that fell up against the porch. The other one was also rotted and ready to fall. It's a shame they had to come down. I would have loved to have been able to sit on the front porch in the dappled sunshine and shade of these big beautiful trees.

(this is an old pic from 2015 with the trees)

We are thinking of putting in a couple clumps of white birch in front of the house on each side where the trees would have been. That might be nice, but of course it will take a lot of years for them to grow up and give us any substantial shade.  But birch are quick growing trees and would really look nice in front I think.


Just dreaming ahead to Spring and getting some ideas of what we'd like to get accomplished this summer.  In the meantime, we are just watching the snow melt and the water is going down slowly in the back yard.

Spring is on it's way! 

Supper is almost done now-  I made up some stir fry chicken and steamed jasmine rice and some steamed fresh veggies.  Time to eat!