ROOFING WITH THE BROTHERS CHADWICK

 

Sunday, April 29, 2012

Yesterday Chris and his brother John spent the entire day up atop our house trying to repair the open valleys chewed and dug out by our local overly pushy squirrels.  Thankfully they were successful and the blue tarp that once draped down over the whole back of the roof with the not-so-pretty view of the overhang in front of the kitchen sliding doors is no more.

It was About a year ago we discovered a squirrel (maybe squirrel's') was living in our attic and although we could hear him gnawing away at the wood in the evenings we didn't want to evict him in the cold winter.  So we prolonged it to spring and then of course we didn't want to evict him or her and any possible the babies so we prolonged it a little more.  Now it's spring again and after a year of  Chris' nerves be rattled by the constant gnawing in the ceiling and my nerves be rattled by Chris constantly jumping up on the bed with a broom handle and banging on the ceiling, we decided to finally nip this problem in the bud.  Chris blocked off the gap in the roof that the squirrels had been using as an entrance way to get into the attic up above the garage.

A few days after blocking off the squirrels front entrance, we noticed our neighbours house two doors down, now had her eavestroph hanging down and insulation scattered in various areas on her front lawn.  We're assuming our furry friends took a liking to her house as an alternate dwelling to ours (it was kind of hard not to snicker a little).  However; we didn't snicker too long when we were winding down after a long day and heard gnawing in the ceiling again.  The next day we discovered the clever little furry ones had gone around to the back of the roof and chewed their way down the valleys of where the two roofs meet and were able to make themselves a back door entrance instead.  Whomever built our cozy little house16 years ago (which I am now convinced, may have been quite possibly the same squirrels) didn't do a very good job and left a lot of things...errr...incomplete, to say the least.

 

So that's when the blue tarp went up about a month ago... 

Note the lovely blue tarp outside my (newly reno'd) kitchen  - blach!



Now that the exterior roof problem is fixed, we still have the interior of the attic to tackle.  After clambering up a ladder propped up against our bedroom closet shelf, over my clothes, and through a small square opening of about 2' x 4', we took inspection of former tenants home.




See that square?  That's the entrance to the attic.



 

Wow, what a mess! 

There was insulation chewed up and built up all over the place and tucked into places where it definitely shouldn't be, places where the attic "needs to breath".  It smells like a farm and there is squirrel pee and poop everywhere.  The roof panel boards have lots of mould on them and I think all this should be addressed fairly soon for health reasons, but you know how things go....that's another day.

And of course, after looking up into the attic several times, I now want to redecorate it to look something like this...

OR THIS...