March 28th: I arrive home from a trip to GJ with my mom and sis and see through the kitchen window that there's something hanging off of our roof. Little do I know that it is, in fact, the roof itself, which has been severely damaged by windstorms that came along while I was out of town.
April 5th: Brief snow storm.
April 6th: The snow melts, and while I am working, I hear dripping sounds coming from the living room. Yep, it's leaking through my ceiling, and soon enough the dripping becomes a deluge, coming into my living room, my furnace room, and the office. Cue Megan panicking, phoning the manager/maintenance guy, texting Glen to come home, running around like a chicken with its head cut off trying to stay on top of the leaking (which is next to impossible when the leaks are at their fastest and i'm not sure of where all the leaks are coming down), and refraining from strangling the downstairs neighbors when they come upstairs asking if I know anything about a leak. "No, I had no idea water was invading my apartment! Thanks for letting me know! AARRRGGGGHHHH!!!!"
By the time Glen comes home an hour and a half later (and i spend about ten minutes crying from stress once he does), the worst is over and he probably doesn't believe how bad it actually was, but we spend the rest of the afternoon/ evening mopping up the carpet and the spot on the ceiling where there has been an obvious pooling of water, thereby missing the first performance of the Easter cantata we've been preparing for for the previous two months.
April 10th: My manager finally has gotten a hold of the owner of the building, who will send roofers. (i've been bugging my manager every day about this, and the weather has fortunately been nice, but that's not going to hold.)
April 11th: Rain starts again. Nobody's come. Glen gets on the roof with a couple of guys from our ward, and they pull the enormous and heavy rubber sheeting back over our roof that had been blown over (exposing most of our apartment) and weigh it down. No leaking. Yay! Glen is my hero.
Glen after his exploits on the roof
April 17th: The maintenance guy finally returns my call. Thanks so much.
April 19th: I hear strange noises on the roof. Hope rises, but nothing happens.
April 23rd: Manager tells me the owner is getting roofer estimates, but they all seem too high, so he's still getting estimates. Good grief.
April 25th: Owner himself shows up, is a personable older gentleman, and I manage to not snarl at him. He finally realizes that the reason why the estimates have been so high is because the roof is VERY damaged and needs to be completely replaced, as opposed to the little hole he must have thought was there. Light bulb! He gives me money for us to buy ourselves a pizza because of Glen's efforts on the roof. Yeah, that makes up for it.
April 30th: Owner shows up again, this time with an insurance adjuster, who takes photos of the roof and the interior of my apartment. Could a fix be coming soon?
Month of May . . . nothing, nothing, nothing . . .
May 29th: Hallelujah! There are roofers! They're making a TON of noise, and making me think they're going to drop equipment through our ceiling, but hey, it's finally getting fixed after two months, so I'll put up with it cheerfully.
May 30th: 1 a.m. Someone comes banging on our door, and since they're not stopping and banging on all the neighbor's doors, as well, we figure we should actually answer it. We're told to evacuate the building because the roof is now smoking, and has been, it seems, for several hours. There's no fire that we can see, but there's definitely smoke, even though we couldn't smell it from inside. A neighbor's brother goes up and see a big smoldering patch in about the middle of the roof (finally, a part of the roof that isn't directly over our apartment, i kind of think to myself). Three or four fire trucks show up, they hose it down, try getting information from us about our owner/manager, the roofing company, etc. Several other neighbors come out, thanks to all the bright, flashing lights. After about 45 minutes, we're allowed to go back inside, but now we're wide awake. Glen and I try to make ourselves tired by watching the last hour of Pride and Prejudice, and subsequently go to sleep at about 3, but it still takes me a while to actually drift off.
The roofers show up at about 7 a.m., not having a clue about what went down last night, but one of our neighbors goes out and informs them, in case the black patch on the roof doesn't clue them in. I see two of them exit their truck, smoking. And I think, if that's why our roof was smoking last night, they're dead meat. In the end, we never hear about the real reasons behind what happened, since they were already fixing the roof and so they just replace that portion, anyway. But the rest of the week that they're working, I'm a little more resentful each time they crash around up there.
June 1st: The roof is finished.
So concludes the Roof Saga. Would that it were shorter . . . or non-existent.
-Me
"Frisbeetarianism is the belief that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and gets stuck." -George Carlin
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