Let's have some faith in the roof

All together now: "Let's have some faith in the roof!
Let it rain , let it pour, it won't leak any more,
If we only have faith in the roof!"

Years ago, I heard this song sung in a church I attended. Seems the church had had a few years of leaks and some shoddy jobs, and the song was written as a fundraiser to inspire people to fork out for a better roof.

When I was doing a Christmas play at McGill one year, I wrote some verses perticular to our faculty, which was undergoing it's seventh or eighth roof in about ten years...

And some friend of ours had severe roof difficulties one year, and I wrote them some verses.

Now it's our turn.

The current roof over our heads is not a day under thirty-five years old, possibly older. It's been patched so often it might actually qualify as a quilt. Every spring and every rain for the past eight or nine years, different spots have leaked - all on the southern side, which I guess just gets more exposure, or something. Every year poor Sean would get out the ladder, scrape off the gravel, try to figure out where the water was getting in, pour something along or into the crack, cover it over, climb down and wait for the next leak.

Once, we were sitting at the dining room table and there was a fine mist falling on us! A meter square of ceiling was releasing a mist most special effects guys would die for. Or perfume manufacturers.

Well, since I finally got enough cash together to get it fixed, we started calling the roofers. ONly to find out the price of fixing the roof was tied to the price of oil - oops, that there tar contains oil. Rats.

So Hubby & his Brother spent all this past hot weekend fixing things that weren't in the contract with the roofers, since we have exactly what was quoted, and not one red cent more.

So they sweated and heaved and grunted and sawed and hammered. If I could figure out how to put pictures in this blog thing, I could show you how eaten away some of the edges of the rafters were. Suffice it to say, between thirty-five years of occasional leaks becoming more and more regular, and several generations of ants, in some places there weren't any rafters left. Some pieces were still solid enough to come out as pieces, however, a gentle squeeze would cause it to shatter, and a gentle scrape produced sawdust.

Day after tomorrow the roofers arrive for real, and we all dearly hope the house will be dry till we are no longer able to live here. In honor of the occasion, I've scratched out a few verses, but there's really only one that matters.

"Now Hubby likes his feet on the ground.
And though his judgement's quite sound,
When you say the word ladder,
He looks a lot sadder,
And suddenly, he can't be found!"

All together now:

Let's have some faith in the roof.
Let's have some faith in the roof.
Let it rain, let it pour,
It won't leak any more,
If we only have faith in the roof!"