Fortunatus S. Marchbanks' Quotidian Minutiae

I won’t have to “scerch” for a new house, but I will have to do for a new roof.  The adjuster came, pointed out some old hail damage on both the gabled roof and the flat roof, took pictures of the holes from below and above, more pictures of the water-rotted decking and ruined drywall and insulation, and went away again.  From what he said, I think he might try to write up the claim in such a way that we get the entire roof replaced, not just the flat part, and perhaps even fix some of the interior water damage as well, which I hadn’t intended to claim, myself.  We will have to absorb the cost of replacing the rotted decking and the decking that was punched through, but if I understood correctly we’ll be able to count that cost toward the one percent wind-and-hail deductible.

The roofer wanted $300 to put a temporary patch in place, which I can no more pay right now than I can stand on my head on top of the Chrysler Building, so I took Celine’s suggestion, went to a sign shop and bought several sheets of Coroplast (the plastic stuph they make those “Lose Weight Now!” roadside signs out of), which I then infiltrated between the decking and the rubberized roof, roof-cemented the bejesus out of it, weighted the patches to make them stick better, and covered it all with the tarp again.

Oh, and the wood from the branch that the arborist cut and stacked for me in the dark last night?  I got a better look at it in the daylight, and that’s no half-rick, it’s half a cord of seasoned firewood!  (For people who don’t have fireplaces or wood stoves, half a cord means a stack of wood measuring four feet cubed.)  I also had a go at counting rings on one of the biggest sections, and came up with something between thirty-five and forty years, which means the tree, when I finally get it cut down, will probably prove out to sixty or seventy years old.

It looked like a tree which had been blown down.  Fnord.

that my Uncle Robert, a portrait of whom you see upon the wall on your right, Piglet, while returning in the late forenoon from a—what’s that?”

There was a loud cracking noise.

And I suppose there must have been a loud cracking noise, although I wasn’t there to hear it, because when I came home at three from running an errand, I found a huge amount of pecan limbs in the back yard, and a large branch from the old Burkett tree sitting on the back (flat) roof.

Matters failed to get better once I got inside and found a four-and-a-half-foot length of branch sticking through a ten-by-eighteen-inch hole in the sewing room ceiling, matched on the other side of the room by an eighteen-inch chunk of another branch sticking through another ten-by-eighteen hole just above L’s sewing machine.

I’ve called the arborist to come clear off the big branch, which will take at least two people and maybe three to move, so he may decide to chop it up on the spot, called the insurance agency, they’ve sent a roofer’s flunky to look at the damage and see what an emergency patch would require, and L is gone to Target to buy a couple of big tubs to set under the holes in case we can’t get a patch in place before the next batch of wet weather comes on Wednesday and Thursday.

The aerial photography:  downed branches from the top

The big chunk of branch

The smaller chunk of the other branch

Where the big branch went through, topside

Where the smaller branch went through, from the top

(ETA:  The Tree Tender has been and gone, leaving me with a back yard full of twigs, a half-rick of new firewood, and a bill for $280.  They also found two other, smaller holes through the roof—but not the ceiling—that I had missed.)

“Supposing a tree fell down, when we were underneath it.”  “Supposing it didn’t.”  Fnord.