Friday a week ago, about 10AM I had just finished another home visit and decided I’d go ahead on drive out to assess the job so we can get it done this week. I called ahead and arranged to be there in about 30 minutes.
I got lost twice. First I followed the written instructions but missed a landmark and gave up driving around in the backcountry. Then I used my Google GPS on my Blackberry cell phone. It told me to go further north to a certain street but I’d already driven more distance than I though necessary. I imagined that I knew where I was better than the Blackberry and I turned back.
Finally I gave up and retraced my steps to my trailer and started out again. I got to the house 15 minutes late but she was still there.
It is a small four-room house, two bedrooms and a bathroom on one side, the kitchen and living room on the other. I first checked out the exterior appearance. Navigating around the fire ant hills scattered all over the yard, I saw an earlier crew had reinstalled the old tin roof, badly replacing sheets that were too damaged to use. Her front porch had asphalt shingles installed. The work site description noted a leak. I could see where by the way the flashing was installed between porch and house.
Mrs. Betty said it was OK for me to look in the attic so I retrieved my stepladder and climbed through the small access in the ceiling of the kitchen. I didn’t feel good about going up in all the way because I couldn’t see the rafters. I could see light shining through unsealed nail holes. The roof rafters were the original old cypress or hemlock 2x4 boards on 24-inch centers. There was no ridge board. Someone had nailed crossties to brace the rafters. It looked like the ceiling rafters were also 2x4’s on 24-inch centers. My gut said we need to tear off this roof and install a good shingle roof, but there is no way the 2x4 rafters were going to support that weight.
I told Mrs. Betty we’d be out Monday with a good crew experienced with roofing. I could read the doubt in her face. She was very polite but had a passive air about her. I read her look to show that she imagined this is just another promise that would end in a bad finish. Already two earlier crews had been out and created mostly disruption and not solved the whole problem.
I drove back thinking maybe this new crew with its roofer and contractor would have a solution other than mine; namely, the only way to salvage the roof was to tear it off and put up shingles. That would entail at least new rafters on 12-inch centers between the 2x4’s but 2x6’s at least are required. How were we going to fit them into the 2x4’s? On top of that, the house is about one hundred years old. Its roof ridge looked like an old mare’s swayback and the foundation did not look too sound.
Come Sunday afternoon, two of the crew from Wake Forest Presbyterian Church in North Carolina went out with me and confirmed my assessment. We looked at each other and ignored the obvious, that the house really was in too bad a shape to warrant this expense, but Mrs. Betty had told us the house was one hundred years old and she’d lived in it her whole life.
What else could we do?
They decided we probably could get this done by Thursday or Friday morning (their flight out was Friday afternoon late.) I spent Sunday afternoon and evening at Home Depot pricing out lumber, roof sheathing and shingles. I arranged for the crew to start tearing off the roof while one of the guys from WFPC and I went to Home Depot at 6:00AM.
There was more than I could carry in one pickup. I took my work truck and he drove my Dodge. We loaded thirty-two 2x6x16 foot boards, ten 2x4’s, sixteen sheets of roof sheathing and seven rolls of roofing felt in the two pickups. It took almost three hours to get out of that store. I would come back later in the week to pick up the shingles.
We drove up to the house but the guys were on the roof just standing on the bare rafters and scratching their heads. I climbed a ladder and looked. On each rafter anywhere from a couple of feet to four or five feet was rotted away or eaten up by a past termite infestation. We were going to have to put in all new rafters. This was growing into a large job.
By Tuesday they had all the rafters replaced and were starting on the sheathing. There was no way to get it all done by noon Friday. We were respecting the homeowner’s peace (and getting a nice cooked breakfast at the village) by getting to the site at 8:30AM.
Since we take down all the ladders and tools in the evening and stretch a tarp over the roof to protect the insulation and ceilings from dew, in the morning we have to undo all this. It is close to 9 AM or later when work starts and it is so hot mid day that the roof work slows to a crawl.
The crew decided to commit to get the roof done, no matter what. They decided they would be at the site at 7AM if I could get the ladders and equipment there. We did this. The breakfast crew made us a separate breakfast and one of our volunteers went back to retrieve it so we could have some breakfast while we worked.
Wednesday about 6:30PM at dinner we realized there were severe thunderstorms up around Hattiesburg. I brought my laptop over to the mess tent and showed the weather radar to the crew. The storms were sinking south towards us.
By now we were pretty much in each other’s minds. We exchanged a few glances and one of the volunteers said, do you have any big tarps, we can’t take a chance on the rain ruining the drywall. That tarp we are using is OK for dew but a strong wind or hard rain will strip it off. We got up almost in formation and headed out the tent.
It was close to sundown. I went off in search of tarps but the ones I found at our site were not big enough. One of the village staff graciously drove down to Home Depot for the biggest they have. Meanwhile, we loaded ladders and headed to Mrs. Betty’s place. The new tarps arrived soon after and working by truck headlights we got the roof covered. I hit the sack about 10PM thinking about how soon that 5:30AM alarm would come.
By Thursday afternoon the crew had one side of the roof shingled. Still I couldn’t see them finishing by noon Friday.
That is when determination set in. These volunteers said we have to be on the plane at 5:30PM but we are going to work as late as necessary to get the job done. They worked hard and fast. I went off and dealt with other pressing issues at some other homes so I could get back in time to load the truck and get these good Samaritans to the airport. I drove up about 11:45AM. They had only about 5 or six shingles to install, trim the edges and caulk the joint where the electricity stack penetrated the roof.
By 12:30 we had Mrs. Davis out in her yard looking at her new roof. We took a picture of the whole crew with her. The Wake Forest crew gave her a plant stand with petunias and placed it on the corner of the house in her front yard as a home blessing gift.
Mrs. Betty had that priceless look in her face, a smile beaming the transformation of despair to joy. I’ve seen it in so many faces down here after a job is done. It is a humbling experience for me to see the big effect of our little effort over a few days. That smile alone justifies everything, the sleep-deprived days, the sunburn, the exhaustion and the absence from family. It is a semaphore showing someone knows hope is worth hanging onto.
The Wake Forest people were a great group of workers. It is an honor to know them.
I’m listening to rain drops on my roof as I write this entry. Mrs. Betty will be dry tonight thanks to Wake Forest.
Peace and sleep well tonight.
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