A Grandma on the Roof

We recently had a rather severe windstorm in the night and every once in a while it sounded like we were being encircled by a tornado like Dorothy in the "Wizard of Oz". The next day I was looking around the house and yard to see if we had suffered any damage like having our trees blown down. There didn't appear to be any problems like that. But as shown here,

several of our wooden shakes were looking warped and sort of like they'd like to join the wind. From the looks of some of the shakes, I really couldn't understand why the neighbor's roofer had looked at our roof and and recommended against replacing or even rehabilitating it. About then I noticed two shakes in the sand box outside our kitchen. Either someone had moved a couple of shakes from around the side of the house or there was some roofing damage involving those two shakes.

I spotted a likely place where the shakes could have come from - a gap on the ridgeline of the bedroom wing of the house. I asked Carolyn to come look at the situation ( I needed that second opinion again) and she suggested we get out or handy dandy multi-purpose ladder so that she could climb on the roof and inspect it closer.


The pitch on this roof is higher than any house we've had before so I didn't feel like making the inspection but after determining which part of the roof had more traction, Carolyn climbed up on the roof like a pro. She walked a little more cautious over to the ridge I had mentioned. There was about a six foot length of missing shakes. The felt roofing underneath appeared to be intact but she thought that if we had any nails, she would try to nail the missing boards back in place.

While Carolyn was creeping back to the ladder, I fetched my carpenter's belt, a large handful of nails, and a hammer. Luckily I had some nails that were the same length as the staples holding down the shakes now. Carolyn snapped the belt in place around her waist and, using the hammer and a shake as balance guides, moved back to the damaged area.

In addition to the two shakes in the sandbox, there were a couple on the roof like the one you see behind her feet in the picture above and there were a couple more on the other side of ridge she's working on. Initially, Carolyn thought that she'd need a couple of shakes from those we got from our neighbor but it turned out she had all the ones that had blown loose.


At first Carolyn was a little shaky, but after a while, she looked like a pro measuring and fitting the missing shakes, then hammering them in place.

Finally, she was through with the repairs to the ridge shakes. But she still had nails left in her belt pouch. So all the way back to the ladder, Carolyn nailed loose shakes in place as well as nudging some up where they should be before using another nail or two on them.

I'm taking these pictures from the top of the ladder. You can see what a beautiful day it was for working outside. It was cold, probably in the high 40's, but as long as the sun was shining on you, it was almost comfortable.

Finally, Carolyn ran out of nails and, although I offered to get more for her, she seemed happy to finally come down the ladder. We were delighted that the ladder worked like it was supposed to.

As it turned out, she probably saved us a $150 service call and she showed how possible it was to get on the roof. Still, we were both glad when she was finally on the ground again.